Yang will be subjected to mind torture, says former China prisoner

An Australian writer detained in China will have a much harder time escaping ­because of his Chinese ethnicity, a former prisoner says.

Chinese-Australian writer Yang Hengjun. Picture: AP

An Australian writer detained in China will have a much harder time escaping the country ­because of his Chinese ethnicity, a former prisoner there says.

Australian Carl Mather said Yang Hengjun’s interrogators would be subjecting him to “psychological torture” and trying to either force him to confess to a crime or reveal information about his friends or contacts.

He also said Australian diplomatic efforts to get him out would make “no difference”.

“Part of the point of their prison system is the psychological torture to get people to agree to whatever,” Mr Mather said from New Zealand, where he now lives following his release in 2013 after serving six months in a Nanjing detention centre over a physical dispute with his wife’s former business associates.

“It won’t be nice until they can get him to recant or they think they have punished him enough; it depends what he’s said.”

Yang’s arrest at Guangzhou International Airport last Saturday has put increasing pressure on Australia-China relations.

Representatives from the Australian embassy in China were able to meet Yang after requests from Foreign Minister Marise Payne and Defence Minister Christopher Pyne, who visited China this week.

Mr Mather said Australian diplomats would be very limited in how much assistance they could give to Yang because “it’s an embassy and the purpose is to trade; they’re not there to help people. They can observe and see if things are done wrong but it doesn’t make any difference.”

Sources in China yesterday were at pains to explain that “house arrest” in China was far more serious than the picture of being the equivalent of “home ­detention” in Australia, mentioned by Mr Pyne at the embassy on Thursday.

Yang’s arrest prompted calls for his release, including from the chairman of the parliamentary ­intelligence committee, Liberal MP Andrew Hastie.

Mr Hastie said the detention was designed to deter members of the Chinese diaspora from speaking against the Communist Party.

The arrest of Yang, 53, and two ­Canadians in China last month had set a “very unsettling precedent for Australia” and other countries dealing with China. “There is only one way to make this right. Dr Yang needs to reappear on an Australian-bound aircraft in the next few days,’’ Mr Hastie said.

Mr Mather said Yang was far more likely to be detained longer than he was and treated as a ­Chinese citizen despite his Australian passport. “If he was born in China, no matter what his passport is they will consider him to be ­Chinese and they will treat him accordingly. They will treat him differently than I would be treated,” he said.

Nick Bisley, professor of International ­Relations at La Trobe University, agreed, saying that while average tourists should be “fine”, he advised against ­Chinese-Australians travelling to China. “Those of us who watch this stuff thought China was clearing the decks for tough times with the US and … thinking let’s not worry about tensions with Australia,” he said.

Jerome Cohen, a Chinese legal expert at the New York University School of Law, said Mr Pyne was “mistaken” in characterising Yang’s detention in “residential surveillance” as house arrest.

“Residential surveillance frequently constitutes impermissible torture that violates both Chinese and international law,” he said.