The Times (London) April 5, 2001, Thursday
Crew face isolation and harsh questions
By Laura Peek in Washington and James PringleTHE 24 crew members detained on Hainan island have probably already been subjected to some of China's gruelling interrogation techniques, experts claimed yesterday.
Although the massive publicity surrounding the incident would have discouraged Chinese authorities from resorting to outright violence, they would have used stressful psychological techniques, John Pike, director of Global Security, a Washington-based defence policy group, said.
"The crew are obviously in possession of a great deal of highly classified information," he said. "The Chinese have already separated them."
Isolation is typically used to break down a subject's spirit. It also allows authorities to play detainees off against each other, with each uncertain what the others have revealed. Repetitive questioning is typically the next stage in the interrogation, Mr Pike said.
"They will probably ask: 'What was your mission?' 'What were your duties?' 'What equipment did you operate?' 'Where were you trained?' 'What clearance did you hold?' " Prisoners in China are often forced to write an account of their lives and describe their errors. They are made to rewrite these accounts until they satisfy the authorities.
In China, questioning of domestic suspects frequently turns to torture. Amnesty International USA, in its 2001 report, Torture: A Growing Scourge in China, says that detainees are given electric shocks when they refuse to confess. "The examples we have seen out of China are egregious. China is willing to use torture against all types of detainees, criminal but also high profile cases," Alistair Hodgett, media director of Amnesty USA, said: "It seems to be indiscriminate and widespread."
Chinese torture techniques include aerial suspension, hand, thumb and foot cuffs, cattle prods, exposure to extreme temperatures, vicious dogs, sexual assault, whipping with stinging nettles, inserting bamboo sticks under the fingernails and solitary confinement. Sleep depravation or the sounds and sights of others being tortured, especially children and other relatives, are commonly used.
The husband of Gao Zhan, the US-based academic being held in Beijing, said that his five-year-old American son is still traumatised by the treatment the family received at the hands of the Chinese authorities. After 26 days in solitary in a secret house outside Beijing, Xue Donghua was finally freed and taken to see his son, who had also been held alone. His son told him that at first he cried every night and could not sleep but then tried to co-operate with instructions to be a "good boy". Mr Xue said: "His first words were 'Daddy, I want to go home'."
Of his wife, Mr Xue said: "There is no reason for her to become a victim of the US China relations. I am pleading to both the US and Chinese governments. Please do not put my wife and my family as a sacrifice for any political reasons."
The Chinese military are unlikely to have found much of use to them in the
plane. US defence officials said that the crew had destroyed all
sensitive reconnaissance data before the aircraft made a forced landing.
Copyright 2001 Times Newspapers Limited
