Dongguan Prison () is located in the Shilong area of

Dongguan Dongguan (; ) is a prefecture-level city in central Guangdong Province, China. An important industrial city in the Pearl River Delta, Dongguan borders the provincial capital of Guangzhou to the north, Huizhou to the northeast, Shenzhen to the s ...

Guangdong Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020) ...

, China.

History

According to the

Laogai Research Foundation The Laogai Research Foundation is a human rights NGO located in Washington, D.C, United States. The foundation's mission is to "gather information on and raise public awareness of the Laogai—China's extensive system of forced-labor prison camp ...

, the Dongguan Prison opened in November 1988 as Shilong Prison, and was given its present name in 1995. The prison complex was expanded in the subsequent decades, so that it now occupies most of Xinzhou (), an island in the

East River The East River is a saltwater tidal estuary in New York City. The waterway, which is actually not a river despite its name, connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end. It separates the borough of Queens ...

upon which the prison is situated.

Inmate population

According to a July 2013 report by the Shenzhen-based ''Daily Sunshine'' (), Dongguan Prison has a population of around 5,000 inmates. The report stated that nearly 500 of the prisoners were foreigners from various countries. The prison reportedly received its first foreign inmate in 1996.

Living conditions and forced labour

Prisoners at Dongguan Prison are reportedly forced to work manufacturing goods, and are allegedly routinely beaten. In 2013, former inmates told '' The Australian Financial Review'' that they were forced to make disposable headphones sold to major airlines for the equivalent of around £0.85 per month. They said they were beaten, tasered, or put in solitary confinement for failing to achieve production targets. Similarly, ''

Der Spiegel ''Der Spiegel'' (, lit. ''"The Mirror"'') is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of 695,100 copies, it was the largest such publication in Europe in 2011. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...

'' interviewed several ex-inmates of Dongguan Prison in 2019. They described overcrowded living conditions and sweltering heat in the summertime. A German ex-prisoner said that the prisoners were forced to work nine-hour days, six or seven days a week, manufacturing model Porsche cars, Samsonite-branded luggage locks, and transformers. Several ex-inmates described torture and abuse of prisoners, including the strapping of prisoners to a torture chair for days or weeks, and electric shocks.

Notable prisoners

* Chen Meng – musician jailed for leaking a Chinese government blacklist of overseas dissidents * Lau Chun-hin () – Hong Kong Internet personality * James Peng Jiandong – Australian businessman abducted in 1993 from Macau, then a Portuguese territory, by the Chinese government. Transferred to

Qingpu Prison Shanghai Municipal Qingpu Prison () is in Qingpu District on the outskirts of Shanghai, China. Supervised under Shanghai Municipal Prison Administration (), the 300- mu prison officially opened on 24 December 1994, guarded by 300 police officer ...

in 1997.

References

External links