Britain slams China over its ‘brutal torture’ of UK official
BRITAIN yesterday accused China of the ‘brutal and disgraceful’ torture of a British official – ratcheting up tensions between the two countries.
The Foreign Office labelled the mistreatment of former consulate worker Simon Cheng last summer ‘shocking and appalling’.
He was held by the Chinese for more than two weeks in what ‘amounted to torture’, said a damning 30-page report.
The six-monthly review of Hong Kong relations also urged Beijing to ‘step back from the brink’ and warned that the former British territory faced its greatest period of turmoil in decades. Hong Kong has been convulsed by unrest since last June. Increasingly violent protests over plans to allow extradition to mainland China grew into calls for full democracy and an inquiry into police brutality.
Now the territory faces a new security crackdown under draconian new laws rubberstamped by Beijing.
Mr Cheng was working for the British consulate when he was held in the border city of Shenzhen neighbouring Hong Kong.
He described last year how he was handcuffed, shackled, blindfolded, hooded and beaten with sharpened batons during his time in detention. He put in a ‘tiger chair’ – a metal chair with bars that disables a detainee’s movements and forces them to sit in a painful posture, often for hours.
Mr Cheng said his captors also ordered him to squat and pose in fixed positions, also for hours. If he failed to remain still, they would beat his knee joints with spiked batons.
He said they also yelled abuse at him during the torture, branding him an ‘intelligence officer sent by the UK’ and ‘worse then s***’.
In a foreword to the report, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said: ‘The UK was shocked and appalled by the mistreatment suffered by Simon Cheng, a valued staff member at the British Consulate- General in Hong Kong.
‘ His treatment in Chinese detention, for more than two weeks, amounted to torture. On 19 November, I summoned the Chinese Ambassador to express our outrage at Simon’s brutal and disgraceful treatment.’
The Foreign Office report said such incidents ‘damage China’s international reputation’.
It said Hong Kong has experienced its ‘greatest period of turmoil since the handover’ in 1997 and warned the UK was ‘deeply concerned’ by China’s plan to impose a national security law.
‘There is still time for China to re- consider, to step back from the brink and respect Hong Kong’s autonomy,’ the report warned.
The former British colony was handed over to China in 1997. Under a ‘one country, two systems’ deal, its people retained more rights than those in mainland China. It is feared that under the new laws, it faces widespread use of secret police, arbitrary detention, surveillance and control of the internet.
‘Shackled and blindfolded’