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2000 Nigerians Are Being Tortured In Chinese Prison, Former Prisoner Says

November 21, 2016

According to the whistleblower, most of the 2000 Nigerian prisoners were charged with drug-related offenses, some of which are punishable by death in China, and are subjected to torture on a daily basis.

Some 2000 Nigerians are currently living in squalid conditions and being tortured in a Chinese prison, according to a prisoner who was recently released and returned to Nigeria.

The prisoner was held in Dong-guan Prison for more than three months and diligently took notes on the conditions of the prison and prisoners throughout his sentence. He took his prison notes back to Nigeria and handed them to The Guardian, which published a report on his notes on Monday.

According to the whistleblower, most of the 2000 Nigerian prisoners were charged with drug-related offenses, some of which are punishable by death in China, and are subjected to torture on a daily basis. Specifically, prison officers shock prisoners with an electric device for up to two hours at a time.  The former prisoner said that such treatment has caused mental health problems for some prisoners.

In his notes, the source also said that Nigerians and other Africans are treated “like animals,” worse than other prisoners.

“We are tortured daily with [an] electric device. The worst part is that it is our fellow prisoners officials use to carry out this torture,” he explained. “When we ask why they do this to us, they say it is because we are blacks, our government [doesn’t] care for us and our government can’t do anything to them.”

He revealed that prisoners are also subjected to forced labor.

“We are made to work long hours in [a] factory every day without any salary being paid to us. Yet, we are not well-fed. The only thing left for them to do is to exterminate us or put us in the gas chamber just as the Nazis did to the Jewish people,” he said.

He lamented that many foreign prisoners from countries such as Ethiopia, Senegal, Iran, Jordan, Colombia and Yemen have returned to their home countries due to the intervention of their respective home governments, but this has yet to be the case with Nigerian prisoners.

News of this Nigerian national’s poor treatment in Dong-guan Prison comes just three days after Chijioke Obioha, 38, was executed in Singapore for possession of cannabis. 

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Human Rights