I was an American political prisoner in Hong Kong — and saw the savagery and squalor firsthand

I first heard the shouting as my cellmates and I were preparing for bed in the hospital wing of Hong Kong’s Lai Chi Kok prison.

It was coming from down the hallway in a staircase known to be conveniently free of surveillance cameras.

Several guards from the city’s Correctional Service Department were yelling at a prisoner, who was crying and pleading with them.

Suddenly, I heard the unmistakable sound of punches and smacks, followed quickly by wailing.

Horrified, I froze standing in place, powerless and unable to intervene. The beating went on for a few minutes, then quiet.

A few minutes later, a guard put up a blue screen in front of our door.

I went over to the cell to look out the remaining crack and saw the victim walk by, slouched over and dripping blood.

Another prisoner quickly grabbed me and moved me away from the door, shushing me and whispering to stay out of it.

I was in prison as the only American sentenced as part of Hong Kong’s crackdown on political freedoms.

Arrested in 2019 — purportedly for stepping in to stop two men beating a teen in a metro station — and convicted in 2021 in an absurd show trial, I found myself jailed for what appeared to be retaliation against the United States for its actions against Hong Kong officials.

After two months, I was released but barred from leaving the city, after which I remained outspoken in my criticism of Hong Kong’s government and its abuses.

A few months later, an appeals court put me back in prison, which is where I found myself that evening in February 2022, witnessing the bloody beating of an inmate.

The incident I witnessed that night was far from isolated.

For a new report released to coincide with this piece, “‘We Were Made to Suffer’: Systemic Abuse and Political Control Inside Hong Kong’s Prisons,” researcher Frances Hui — herself a politically persecuted Hongkonger — and I wrote for the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, we interviewed 17 former prisoners in depth, corroborated by open-source records, to present a picture of injustice against both political prisoners and the broader inmate population.

The findings are damning.

Across the system, prisoners endure beatings, sexual violence, medical neglect and squalid conditions that would shock the conscience anywhere.

Guards take inmates to spots without surveillance cameras to assault them; in juvenile facilities, staff empower prisoner collaborators to carry out daily abuse, including widespread physical and sexual assaults.

Prisoners are left untreated for seizures, broken bones and severe mental illness.

Cells are overrun with rats and cockroaches, overflowing toilets remain broken for weeks, and inmates swelter in concrete blocks where summer heat regularly exceeds 95 degrees Fahrenheit.

One case we document is that of Conde Mamady, a prisoner from Guinea. Beset with increasing mental and physical disabilities, guards neglected to get him treatment despite concerns other prisoners raised.

As his leg swelled and he stopped eating and speaking, fellow inmates begged guards to intervene. Officers said care would only be provided if Mamady requested it himself — something he could no longer do.

Eventually he collapsed, and only then did guards act. He died en route to the hospital.

Another former prisoner described being placed in solitary confinement in a rat-infested cell with overflowing toilets. Vermin ran across the floor at night, and sewage backed up for days, leaving the cell nearly uninhabitable.

He recalled guards presenting these livability problems as a deliberate form of punishment, not an infrastructure failure.

We also chronicle the misuse of psychiatric detention as punishment.

One prisoner at Stanley who’d filed complaints related to prison conditions suddenly disappeared, only to reappear days later looking pale and subdued.

He said he’d been held at the notorious Siu Lam Psychiatric Center for three days in an isolated, bare cell without anything to pass the time. He’d received no treatment, psychiatric or otherwise.

In juvenile detention, officers rely on “B-boys” — favored inmates deputized to enforce discipline.

Former detainees told us these B-boys routinely beat and sexually assaulted younger and new arrivals, often in spots without camera coverage, while guards looked the other way.

One political activist recalled a B-boy forcing him to complete 1,000 squats as punishment, leaving him numb for days.

Others spoke of daily sexual assaults, with staff clearly aware and even encouraging the violence.

These conditions violate the United Nations’ rules for humane treatment of prisoners, protocols Hong Kong supposedly supports.

With the UN General Assembly opening its meetings in New York this week, it’s a perfect moment for members of the body, which is frequently criticized for being ineffectual, to publicly condemn Hong Kong’s treatment of prisoners while calling for the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to investigate.

The prisoners certainly have no voice.

Those who dare to complain are punished with more isolation or dispatched to psychiatric detention.

And those grievances lead nowhere: From 2020 to 2024, the government’s Complaints Investigation Unit substantiated only 1.23% of cases.

Even when prison-run CIU does find a violation, a committee of senior correctional officers can overturn its findings at will, ensuring the system protects itself rather than the prisoners.

Political prisoners face an additional layer of abuse and targeting.

More than 1,900 Hongkongers have been jailed for their activism since 2019, with an estimated 732 still behind bars today.

They are surveilled daily, denied letters and visits and locked in isolation for months at a time.

Political prisoners are also expected to “volunteer” for Project PATH, a political-indoctrination program requiring them to sit through pro-Communist Party films, confessional-therapy sessions and patriotic classes.

Under Hong Kong’s own prison rules, solitary confinement is capped at 28 days. Yet authorities routinely sidestep this limit by coercing political prisoners into “requesting” so-called removal from association, disguising punishment as choice.

Fewer than a quarter of those removed from association spent more than a month there in 2020 — already a troubling figure given that international law deems solitary confinement beyond 15 days to be torture.

By 2024, that share had nearly doubled to 42%. 

High-profile democracy activists like media tycoon Jimmy Lai and veteran legislator “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung have been kept in near-total isolation for years.

These efforts’ goal is not just to punish political prisoners but to break them — to erase their political identities and replace them with loyalty to the party — while deterring others from taking up the cause of democracy.

I spent less than four months in prison — an experience that changed and traumatized me.

For years I suffered from post-traumatic-stress-disorder symptoms, including social disconnection and anxiety.

Even now, more than three years after my last prison stint, my personal and professional identities have been reframed around those events, which will forever shape who I am.

Yet countless detainees, including many of the 1,942 political prisoners jailed since 2019, endure these conditions not for months but for years.

If they survive to the end of their sentence, they will inevitably emerge with deep psychological scars and physical ailments.

Such suffering is not inevitable: It is the product of choices Hong Kong authorities made, and it must end.

Hong Kong leaders hope the world will forget the sweeping crackdown that saw newspapers shuttered and journalists jailed.

Officials — and in some cases Western business leaders — want to pretend everything is normal in a place that seeks to be taken seriously as a global financial center, even as lawyers, politicians, activists and students languish in appalling prison conditions.

No government is free of abuses, but those claiming to defend human rights have a responsibility not to let Hong Kong’s rulers break their critics and bury their repression behind prison walls.

It is unlikely the city’s government — an entity largely subservient to a violent and abusive police establishment — will act without significant pressure.

Democratic governments and multilateral bodies should demand reforms, including international-observer inspections of prisons.

They should also predicate future trade and investment dialogues on clear benchmarks for prison access and humane treatment.

We are not blind to the fact many of the governments we are calling to act have their own problems with substandard prisons, along with broader human-rights abuses against their residents — an increasingly alarming problem in places counting the United States.

The difference, however, is domestic populations in these countries can still exert organized pressure for reform, including through elections.

In Hong Kong, where free speech and fair elections have been stamped out, the people have no such privilege.

The UN meetings present a prime opportunity for governments that support human rights to highlight these shocking findings.

With the global media paying attention to the General Assembly, the concerns will be heard.

While no resolution is possible at the UNGA — the agenda is set far in advance, and China’s influence would prevent such a vote in any case — this time is a chance for governments to spotlight Hong Kong’s prison conditions and political detainees through speeches, statements and side events.

These initial efforts can lay the groundwork for more formal action by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and the Special Rapporteur on Torture.

Almost exactly three years ago the High Commissioner issued a report raising alarm about China’s treatment of Uyghurs in detention.

A similar investigation and report are warranted on Hong Kong — and urgently needed.

Samuel Bickett is a human-rights lawyer, policy advocate and the founder of Bickett Law & Policy. Previously a longtime Hong Kong resident, he was wrongfully imprisoned there twice, in 2021 and 2022, before being deported to the United States.