Inside the dystopian Chinese 'Sunshine Jail', where a British 'spy' is held, where twelve prisoners per cell are forced to chant communist mantras
ALLEGED British ghost Ian Stones is believed to be suffering behind bars in one of China's most hellish prisons – Beijing's Second Municipal Prison.
Ironically known as the “Sunshine”. Jail“, prisoners are packed into cells like sardines and brainwashed with communist propaganda, while reports of abuse and torture are widespread.
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Prison No. 2, designated as a pre-trial detention center, appears to be the hole in it China into which he throws his foreign prisoners, many of whom have been convicted of espionage.
Officials in Beijing announced this for the first time on Friday British businessman Ian Stone who disappeared six years ago Secretly imprisoned for espionage.
Stone, now about 70 years old, spent more than four decades building a lucrative career in China, working for major companies, including General engines And Pfizer.
He was sentenced to five years in prison in 2022 after being held since 2018 on suspicion of corporate espionage.
Now his daughter Laura has revealed he is fighting for his life in a notoriously grim Chinese prison, which British officials claim is the capital's second.
Within its walls, he is denied access to adequate medical care and suffers from life-threatening injuries and serious health problems after years of neglect and poor nutrition.
Inside hell
Both Prison No. 2 and its terrifying twin Prison No. 1 – which house death row inmates and life sentences – have long been associated as places of horror.
The sites have received many accusations of overcrowding, abuse, coerced confessions and suspicious deaths.
Their names alone are enough to send a shiver down the spine of any Beijinger.
But not much is really known about what happens deep within their eight-meter high, heavily guarded walls.
One of the first official reports came in 2003 from imprisoned Chinese dissident Wang Xiaoning, who was sentenced to ten years in prison for “incitement to undermine state power.”
He spent most of his time in Prison No. 2 and hardly saw the light of day for years.
According to a complaint to the World Organization for Human Rights, he was “denied any access to recreation or even sunlight for weeks and even months, even though it is the prison norm to let prisoners outside once a day.”
In the early 2010s, both Prisons No. 2 and No. 1 underwent a revamp to try to clean up their outward reputations.
In 2012, foreign media got a very small glimpse into what China was now calling their new “sunshine detention centers.”
Cameras were installed in interrogation rooms to reduce the risk of torture, health examinations were made mandatory, a library was opened and prisoners were given noodles on their birthday.
However, more recent testimonies from former prisoners have revealed that No. 2 Prison is still a gruesome horror show.
Japanese businessman Hideji Suzuki, now 67, was arrested by China in 2016 on suspicion of espionage – claims he denied.
After years of interrogation, he was eventually convicted and imprisoned and sent to Prison No. 2 in 2019.
Once there, Suzuki described that he was soon forced to participate in “education for newcomers.”
This torturous training involved forcing prisoners to ruthlessly sing revolutionary songs about the Communist Party.
Suzuki had to endure five weeks of this “brainwashing,” according to the Japanese news outlet, Mainichi reports.
Prisoners were forced to greet propaganda programs and films about the history of the Communist Party, as well as starkly different renditions of past wars that portrayed China in a positive light.
He slept on floorboards, shared a cell with twelve prisoners and lost weight quickly.
After six and a half painful years, Suzuki was finally able to leave prison and China for good, weighing less than 68 kg.
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Big alarm
For nearly a decade, Beijing has intensified efforts to crack down on potential threats to its natural security, creating increasingly sweeping laws to jail would-be spies.
In 2014, Xi Jinping introduced a sweeping counterintelligence law, which was followed in 2015 by the National Security Law, which strengthened surveillance of foreigners.
What followed were frequent interrogations and arrests of foreigners and a strict crackdown on foreign companies operating in the country.
China is helping to infect a state of paranoia in the country and encouraging people to participate in counterintelligence work, including creating channels to report suspicious activity.
Spy paranoia
Britain and China have feuded in recent months over allegations of alleged spying and the resulting impact on national security.
But in recent weeks, Beijing has stepped up warnings about national security and the threat of foreign spies.
Earlier this month, China arrested the head of a foreign consultancy firm after claiming this was the case espionage for the British intelligence service MI6.
Beijing said the suspect – who is neither British nor Chinese – has been stealing state secrets for Britain's secret intelligence service since 2015.
Beijing's feared Ministry of State Security revealed the suspect's surname was Huang, but gave no further details about his identity.
In a statement, they said the foreigner had attempted to establish a “collaborative intelligence relationship.”
Britain, in turn, has done so warned that Chinese spies are increasingly targeting officials – allegations that Beijing has denied.
However, the claims about a Chinese spy working at the heart of the British government marked a potential major escalation in Beijing's attempts to meddle in British democracy.
In September, a government researcher was arrested under the Official Secrets Act, although he subsequently denied spying for Beijing.
In July, Britain also investigated allegations that a Chinese spy disguised as a tourist attempted this infiltrate parliament.
It followed Security Minister Tom Tugendhat's criticism of China for being “unacceptable” and secretive police gas stations in the United Kingdom.
Over the past year, China, which has a broad definition of state secrets, has widely publicized several other alleged espionage cases.
In May, Chinese authorities sentenced 78-year-old American citizen John Shing-wan Leung to life in prison for espionage.
China also raided a series of major consulting, research and due diligence firms last year.
Last May, China said it had raided the offices of US consultancy Capvision to safeguard its “national security and development interests”.
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