Over 2,000 Nigerians dying in Chinese prisons

Three days after Chijioke Obioha, a 38-year-old Nigerian, was executed in Singapore for drug trafficking, The Guardian has received a prison note smuggled out of Dong-guan prison in China by a source, which gave graphic details of the plights of over 2,000 Nigerians languishing in the Chinese prison. Obioha was hanged in Changi Prison early on Friday morning alongside a Malaysian national, who was convicted on separate drugs offenses. He was arrested in April 2007 after being found in possession of more than 2.6 kilogrammes of cannabis. The quantity surpassed the 500 grammes threshold that triggers the automatic presumption of trafficking under Singaporean law. At the weekend, a fresh deportee from China, who had a brief stint in the Dong-guan Prison and managed to hide dozens of prison notes scribbled on tissue papers in his anus, said the prison facility alone where he was held for over three months had more than 2,000 Nigerians detained for various reasons, mostly drug-related. According to him, many Nigerians have been incapacitated owing to the daily torture meted out to them by prison officials, while a lot more are on death row waiting for the hangman. “One of the most commonly forms of torture is the shocking treatment where inmates are given continuous shocking from an electric device for up to two hours. When going through this procedure, most of us urinate and defecate on our pants. Some people, who have spent some time there have developed brain damage or some form of mental problems,” he said. Excerpts of the letter read: “Dear fellow citizens of Nigeria, this is the voice of your compatriots suffering in chinese prison. We have been looking for an opportunity to make our plights known to the public, but God is so kind, one of us is being released now. This is why we are using him as our contact to the outside world. “Many of us have a very heavy sentences of death and life imprisonment. Some of us have spent over 15 years in prison. We want our home government to come to our aid. We are being treated like animals, mostly Nigerians and other Africans. “We are tortured daily with electric device. The worst part is that it is our fellow prisoners officials use to carry out this torture. When we ask why they do this to us, they say. Source: Guardian