CHINESE PRISONS

Greymouth Evening Star, 21 July 1927, Page 2

CHINESE PRISONS

A BRITISH DESCRIPTION. Lieut.-Col. Etherton, late British Consul-General in Chinese Turkestan, gives in “Chamber’s Journal” a realistic description of Chinese prisons. The prison system and mode of punishment in vogue take us back (he says) to the feudal system existing in Europe during the dark days of the Middle Ages, when such ingenuity 'was displayed in the invention of punishments.. J With the Mongols offenders are treated in an original manner. They are placed in a large oblong box about five feet in length and two feet square, the counterpart of a coffin, and there, chained and manacled, are left to pass weeks, sometimes months, and years, according to the enormity of the crime. They can neither stand up nor lay down, but must perforce assume a semi-crouching posture, with the result that their limbs become shrunken and useless. After a time they are nothing but shrivelled wrecks from this constant agonising posture, being taken out only for a few minutes daily should their gaoler not be too drunk to attend to them. Food is given through a small hole in the side of the box, and for covering at night a thin worn blanket is allowed, this being exchanged in the winter for a sheepskin coat, totally inadequate as bedclothes, especially when the thermometer drops to twenty degrees below zero. Indeed, how the prisoner survives the torture of this coffin, the disgusting food, and the unspeakable filth, is beyond me.

I have visited Chinese prisons and have seen something of the procedure therein, where realism can be studied with effect. The prisoners, incarcerated for various offences, are lodged in dark rooms with only a small opening some eighteen inches square for light and ventilation. One such I cannot recall without a feeling of horror. The floor was reeking with the dirt and filth of years, and as 1 groped my way in the semi-darkness I stumbled over a prostrate form, and found that it was a man chained to a stake. Striking a match, I beheld a human being dirty and begrimed beyond description, and others were revealed in the flickering light chained together to a board fastened to stakes in the floor of this Black Hole. No tendence of any kind is given the prisoners, the State not undertaking the provision of food, which must be found by friends or relatives.

The Chinese views on the prison system are original. Whereas with us the gaol is large and comfortable, replete with modern conveniences, and constituting a formidable item in the public exchequer, the Chinese argue that the criminal has outraged society, and that it is a public crime to maintain him in comparative ease and luxury. Moreover the calculating Celestial contends that in order to fulfil its object the prison must inspire the requisite dread; otherwise there would be a rush of applicants for such comforts as could not be obtained in their own homes.