Freed Chinese Dissidents Tell of Brutality in Prison

Chinese caught in waves of arrests after the army’s suppression of the pro-democracy movement are emerging from prisons with descriptions of overcrowded prison cells, beatings and brutal interrogations, foreign diplomats said Sunday.

At least 5,000 people have been arrested in Beijing alone, the diplomats added, quoting informed Chinese sources.

The Chinese capital has been under martial law since May 20. Arrests are often made at night by plainclothes police in unmarked cars. Suspects disappear without their families being informed.

“You don’t know where you are taken. You don’t know where you are,” said one former prisoner.

Conditions vary. One well-known intellectual, who was detained for several days, said he was treated humanely and had no complaints, according to the diplomats.

Unbearably Hot Cells

Several others described small, unbearably hot cells packed so tightly with 40 to 60 people that there was no room to lie down. The toilet was a bucket.

Nobody who has been in prison and later released wants to be identified in reports by journalists. Most do not want to talk at all, the diplomats said.

Interrogations are sometimes preceded by a beating, according to two accounts. A student was hit by electric prods, a writer by rifle butts.

Martial law troops and police alike use violence--the worst beatings apparently administered to workers and unemployed youths who fought the army with Molotov cocktails and rocks when armored troops crashed through Beijing to Tian An Men Square on the weekend of June 3-4.

It appears that many Chinese arrested have been released and then some detained for a second or third time, the diplomats said.

Also on Sunday, the new head of China’s Communist Party put his stamp of leadership on the governing party with the release Sunday of an essay on discipline.

Jiang Zemin took a hard line on fighting corruption and enforcing obedience to central leadership--both issues that senior party leaders have accused his predecessor, Zhao Ziyang, of neglecting. Zhao was ousted as party leader last month.

Jiang’s essay was printed in full in the magazine Party Building and summarized in leading newspapers Sunday.

“We must sternly observe unified party discipline, namely: The individual obeys the group, the minority obeys the majority, the lower levels obey the upper levels, the whole party obeys the center,” Jiang said.

“We cannot allow the unchecked spread of individualism, separatism and money worship.”

The People’s Daily said the essay was written in May.

It was the second essay by Jiang to be widely disseminated in recent weeks. In the first Jiang wrote about the “dangers” of allowing businessmen to get too rich from private enterprise.

In the essay published Sunday, Jiang said: “Today many people’s thinking is lively, and they dare to express various views, which of course is a good thing. But we party members must ponder deeply new ideological trends and public opinion and keep clear heads.”