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Addition: This is a Witness Statement to the U.S. Congressional Executive Commission on China (pdf) by Cedric Witek, a French national and corporate-crime investigator who has helped foreign nationals imprisoned in China.

An Australian Senate Committee has been told that around 10,000 foreigners, including Australians, are currently held in the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) prison system.

At an inquiry hearing on Sept. 26, Peter Humphrey, a former British journalist and businessman involved with China for 50 years, shared his experience of being wrongfully detained by the communist regime. Humphrey and his Chinese American wife were arrested in 2013 on false charges of illegal “information gathering.”

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Humphrey also said the CCP did not provide Australians or foreigners with proper legal proceedings. “Not a single Australian prisoner has had a fair and transparent trial. Some are in dire health. Some are over 50, aging rapidly,” he told the Senate Committee.

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The former businessman explained that all organs of the judicial system–the police, the prosecution, the judiciary, the prisons, and Chinese lawyers–formed an organic whole under the regime’s complete control.

“No judge is independent or impartial. He is just a messenger of the party,” he said.

“The system is exploited by connected individuals to harm people they have a grudge against."

“Cases are built upon forced confessions, often televised and upon forced witness statements.”

At the same time, Humphrey shared about the harsh living conditions of prisioners […] in CCP’s prisons, where they had to sleep on the floor in a small cell full of people and eat filthy, appalling food.

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There was also the withholding of proper medical treatment [from prisoners], even for cancer, Humphrey added.

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Furthermore, Humphrey said Australia and other countries had a mindset of putting commercial relations above the interests of individual citizens who had been wrongfully detained.

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Specifically, Humphrey said there needed to be legislation that would put a greater onus on the Australian government to act, and legislation that would punish China for its acts of arbitrarily and unjustly detaining Australian citizens.

“You need to send out the message that if you touch an Australian, we’re going to make you and your friends’ life hell,” he said. “Western democracies should link hands in this approach and put on a united front.

[…]