> Meng is right now enjoying the freedom of Vancouver’s lovely streets and the luxury of her own $15 million mansion there through privilege of bail in a free and open democratic society under the rule of law. The two Michaels, by painful contrast, suffer conditions equal to torture in the lawless Chinese gulag.

> Pre-trial detention in China is used as a weapon of duress which, in its aggregate, adds up to torture. The accused are held in harsh conditions in a “detention center” designed to break resistance and crush the human spirit in order to extort a confession. As a result, such self-incriminating confessions, when they happen, are false. The following description of those detention conditions comes from my own experiences during 23 months in captivity, in addition to listening to and reading about other prisoners’ experiences, including conversations with prisoners released in 2019.

Full description: https://thediplomat.com/2019/12/the-cruel-fate-of-michael-ko...