As the baton cracked at the back of his ankles, stinging the sores he had accumulated from hours of physical torture, Simon Cheng attempted to stifle a guttural howl.
Blindfolded, the Scottish Development International worker could not see who was inflicting such intense, agonising pain, but he felt certain he knew who they worked for: the Chinese state police.
In an exclusive interview to mark five years since his release from prison, Mr Cheng, 33, tells of the physical and psychological torment he suffered at the hands of the authoritarian regime.
And in a message back home to his parents, who he has not spoken to since he fled the country after he was freed, he said: ‘I love you and I am safe.’
Triumphant, he added: ‘My survival in itself is a victory.’
Simon Cheng, proudly wearing a Saltire lapel badge, standing next to Nicola Sturgeon at the start of what he thought would be a glittering career in global trade
A woman in Hong Kong holds a poster of Mr Cheng
A ‘tiger chair’ is a metal torture device that restrains the body from any movement, and fixes the subject in painful positions
Until the evening of August 8 2019, Mr Cheng had never seen himself as a hardcore freedom fighter, but had attended a handful of pro-democracy rallies as a private citizen in his home country of Hong Kong and was in favour of the cause.
That summer night, as he boarded a high-speed train to return to Kong Kong from Southern China after attending a conference he thought he would likely be fine – the Chinese authorities had let him into the country for work, so why would they not let him out?’
He did have some niggling concerns about his part in the recent demonstrations which had served as the largest challenge to Xi Jinping’s Chinese Communist Party to date, so, for good measure, he sent a message to his then-girlfriend, which read: ‘Pray for me’.
The train pulled up at Hong Kong’s West Kowloon station and all seemed fine.
But, upon swiping his identity card and scanning his fingerprint he became increasingly nervous. He looked at the steel barrier expectantly, his heart rate rising with every second that passed, but it refused to budge.
‘Standing at that gate was a critical moment,’ he said. ‘I knew I was in trouble.
‘I immediately got my phone out and tried to delete any sensitive messages which were critical of the Chinese government.’
Soon, he was swooped on by border patrol guards and taken to a small holding room off the train station – his phone, bag and glasses confiscated.
‘There were two guards just watching me, and then some plain clothed guards came. There was such hostility.
They looked at me like I was an animal,’ he told The Mail on Sunday.
Despite several hours passing – and many desperate attempts to find out what he was being held for – Mr Cheng was put back on a train to Shenzhen and handed over to plain clothes police.
‘They were not Border Force officers anymore. They were the national security service,’ he said.
In August 2019, Mr Cheng was detained by Chinese authorities after attending a handful of pro-democracy rallies as a private citizen in his home country of Hong Kong
Mr Cheng is pictured shortly after his 2020 release
He added: ‘I kept asking them for what reason I had been detained, and they wouldn’t tell me, they just told me to shut up. They put me into the back of a police van and took me to Lianhua police station. I still remember the signage as we pulled up.’
The young man was forced into a small metre-squared concrete cell and strapped to a ‘tiger chair’ a metal torture device that restrains the body from any movement, and fixes the subject in painful positions.
He said: ‘They asked me a series of very strange questions, like, ‘what were you doing here? And what do you think about Hong Kong?’
And then they started narrowing it down to three main questions.
First of all, it was ‘What’s your job? Why are you working in a British Consulate.’ The second one was: ‘Did you join a protest and was it legal?’ or something like that.
And third one was, ‘Do you know who joined the protest, and whether the UK is behind the scenes?’
They also showed me records which seemed to show they were tracing me even when I was in Hong Kong.’
The interview continued for hours, until officers eventually gave up and left the young man to curl up on the cold, hard floor of the musty, damp-smelling enclosure.
‘It smelt of death,’ he recalled. ‘I went into a bit of break down.
I felt such fear. I just keep talking, saying ‘No, no, no, please. I didn’t do anything wrong.
I didn’t do any illegal activities and why are you treating me like this?’ I just kept talking.’
Early the next morning, any hope of being freed was dashed as he was bundled into a police van and taken to another holding place.
Brought up in Hong Kong, Mr Cheng had enjoyed a close relationship with his mother, father and sisters.
He had always hoped to make them proud; he had worked in the European Chamber of Commerce in nearby Taiwan and even completed a year’s master’s degree at the London School of Economics studying the political economy of Europe.
He was excited when in 2017 he was offered a job working in the British Consulate for the Scottish Government’s international development arm.
Pictures show him smiling delightedly as he posed next to the then First Minister Nicola Sturgeon at one of many events he attended promoting the Scottish Government in the region.
He had hoped to be a star of the international relations world, and at the time the image was snapped, he was well on his way.
Yet his promising professional life was far from his mind as he was ferried to the next interrogation cell on August 9, 2019.
Upon arrival he was faced with people he believed were ordinary Chinese officers who were aggressive and looking to charge him.
A clip released by Chinese police showed a man wearing a pink T-shirt admitting to violating the Chinese law. Police said the man was Simon Cheng and he was making confessions to an officer
For what, he still didn’t know, until eventually they growled that he had been going to massage parlours and soliciting prostitutes.
They told him that if he didn’t cooperate and confess, they would return him to the plain clothes officers and he could face more serious charges.
The charge allowed them to detain him for 15 days.
If he did not cooperate in detention that could be extended for two years for ‘education’ – a reference to Chinese encampments, where the UN believes more than one million people are held, tortured and indoctrinated about the Chinese regime.
‘So I confessed,’ he said, ‘under duress.’
Next, he was handcuffed and shackled and driven to a detention centre, where he would spend 14 days in solitary confinement.
His isolation was only broken by periods of intense and terrifying interrogations – sometimes lasting for up to 48 hours at a time.
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Guards would remove him from his cell, blindfold him and put a hood on him and lay him down on the backseat of a car, before driving him to another location.
There, he was shouted at and humiliated, and told he was a British spy.
Mr Cheng would regularly be shackled into a spread-eagle position and forced to squat for hours and raise his hands above his head.
If he collapsed, he was beaten with a baton causing excruciating pain – yet he was not allowed to scream or speak.
At his lowest, most vulnerable points his oppressors would try to twist his thinking.
‘They saw it as the perfect opportunity to brainwash me and would tell me democracy was flawed,’ he said.
But at 4am on August 23 2019, Mr Cheng was roused from the detention centre and led out by guards.
His prayers had been answered; he was to be taken back to the Hong Kong border – he had served his time.
Now, five years on, as he sits in shared accomodation in North West London having been granted political asylum by the UK Government in June 2020, a warning uttered by a plain clothes officer on that final journey to ‘freedom’ sticks with him: ‘Maybe your life will be more difficult after being released.’
For while he cherishes the freedom he prayed for in captivity, his life has changed forever.
No longer can he dream of working across the globe in the profession he loved, for fear he will be recaptured and killed; he is now classed as a fugitive by Hong Kong national security, and has a HK$1million bounty on his head.
He also fears he has been tailed a number of times by Chinese operatives on UK soil. Nor is he able speak to the family he left behind, for fear they will be targeted by Chinese state police.
Yet in a moving message via The Mail on Sunday, he wants to reassure his mother and father.
He said: ‘I would like to say to them, I love you. I am safe in England and in the UK, don’t worry about me. I am being well-protected.
I hope you are okay. I will keep on fighting for our human rights.’
Mr Cheng has now turned his hand to raising awareness for the plight of Hong Kongers and those, like himself, living in exile via his UK-wide diaspora group, Hongkongers in Britain.
He also collaborated with others to launch an online advice platform, Haven Assistance, for Hong Kongers seeking asylum.
‘It is like a mission,’ he said. ‘It is not about financial reward or how much I earn, it is about social justice.’
The young man added: ‘Just surviving, that is enough for me.
My survival in itself is a victory over such a powerful state.’