Gao was one of four intellectuals who went on a hunger strike shortly before the tanks rolled onto Tiananmen Square, crushing the pro-democracy protests of 1989. Fearful of bad publicity, Beijing gave special treatment to most of the well-known figures arrested after the crackdown, even detaining some of them in guest houses. But perhaps by accident, Gao, 36, was thrown into a common detention center; for six months he faced the same harsh conditions experienced by the hundreds of nameless workers and peasants hauled in by the government’s dragnet. “The guards beat people every day,” says Gao, a former teacher who is now a visiting scholar at Harvard University. “I was terrified-so many of the prisoners around me were executed.”
Gao saw the sun once in six months. Four cellmates slept on a wooden plank; the others slept on the cement floor. Gao was allowed no exercise, no books and no newspapers, but he managed to write poetry on a roll of toilet paper. Through a tiny window in his cell’s door, he could communicate with a prisoner who had been arrested for joining a crowd that was beating a soldier the night of the massacre. Gao and his fellow inmate flashed the victory sign to each other until the day guards took Gao’s friend away for execution.
Usually, Gao recalls, guards beat prisoners in their cells. But to scare prisoners into obedience, they beat some inmates in the halls, where the pleas, cries and sounds of the blows would resound for all to hear. One prisoner down the hall from Gao-a peasant who, according to Gao, was wrongly accused of setting fire to a military vehicle on the night of the massacre-complained that his cell was too hot. A guard and two prisoners who were forced to cooperate bludgeoned and shocked him with electric clubs, then shackled him with a 25-pound ball and chain, forcing him to run back and forth in a thickly padded jacket. “Please, please forgive me,” the prisoner begged. “Afterward,” adds Gao, “he had to say, ‘Thank you, Captain’.”
Hunger strike: Gao was among the lucky; he wasn’t beaten. Beijing has treated workers and peasants much more harsh ly. Li Lin, a labor activist during the protests, made the mistake of returning to China from Hong Kong to visit his family after escaping the country. The dreaded midnight knock on the door came in February. “You finally came home?” the police officer asked. “I’ve been waiting to grab you for two years.” Li was jailed for five months and forced to work tearing cotton scraps into threads. Li says he was beaten often, and his cell was infested with rats and centipedes. Li and his brother were released in July as a result of international pressure; they are recovering in Hong Kong. Says Li: “I still have nightmares.”
But more than 1,000 prisoners detained for their role in the 1989 protests are still living the nightmare in Chinese jails. Wang Juntao and Chen Ziming, intellectuals who ran a political think tank before the demonstrations, have been sentenced to 13 years for allegedly masterminding the student movement. According to NEWSWEEK sources, both have gone on hunger strikes to protest their dismal conditions. Wang, according to his wife, has been manacled and kept in solitary confinement. Under international pressure, Beijing recently admitted that Wang has been hospitalized for a “relapse” of hepatitis. Despite the bad publicity, Beijing may decide to keep prisoners like Wang in isolation. Says Gao: “The other prisoners all respected those of us who were at Tiananmen.”
