them. Sometimes I would get confused about whether or not I had stuck a piece of rice up for that day. To pass the time I forced myself to exercise.
My first experience of the dark-room happened not long after I arrived at Meizhou Prison. There was an annual assessment, which was considered quite important, of the political study of every prisoner. Everyone had to write a report confessing their crimes, expressing their willingness to obey instructions, and to express their attitude towards mental reform, labour attitude and labour reform. I refused to write my report for the first year and the cadres found this intolerable. However, because of my particular situation they could not bit me but came to talk with me every- day, lecturing me repeatedly despite my reluctance. I was also attacked by labour reform leaders and members during the nightly group discussions. After about a month I replied with a report which I claimed I was innocent and was made guilty by the irre- sponsibility of the judge. This irritated the cadres very much and put me into the dark-room for the first time.
I was kept for more than ten days, until I wrote a repent. But I only said I should have listened to what the cadres had said, and did not admit any counter-revolutionary crime.
My second experience of the dark-room came when I asked my par- ents to smuggle my prosecution document back to Hong Kong. This time I was held for more than a month and was released only because I was transferred to Huaiji Prison. That month was the most difficult of my time in prison.
Both my experiences in the dark-room happened during the winter but even so the mosquitoes were still fierce despite it being like a freezer in there at night. Water would drip through the leaking ceiling and my only protection from both cold and damp was a thin cotton sheet.
Treatments toward stubborn prisoners
As far as I know, the tactic of using other prisoners to beat someone was less common compared with the Cultural Revolution period, but I still heard about this occasionally. Besides this I heard of different methods of torture applied to 'stubborn' pris- oners. These included: using hand-cuffs and foot shackles; hit- ting at the joints of prisoners with wooden clubs; using 'tiger bed' to tied up the limbs of prisoners so that he is not allowed to go to toilet; and prisoners were tied to iron fence on pre- wetted floor where high voltage truncheon were applied. As for me, I did not suffer from any physical torture but I felt that, mentally, my torture was worse than anyone. I felt being discrim- inated and outstandingly being closely watched which was already a kind of mental ill-treatment.
In 1983, when a nation-wide campaign to fight crime (cong zhong
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