128 days in ‘China’s Guantanamo’: writer tells of secret detention after Occupy Central visit

Mainland writer Kou Yanding still does not know where she was ­detained on the mainland for four months after visiting Hong Kong in the early days of the Occupy Central movement.

Kou, 51, a volunteer for education and charity NGOs, was picked up and blindfolded by ­security officials on her way from Beijing to Mount Wutai in Shanxi province in October 2014.

She was held for 128 days at a secret site, without access to family or legal counsel in what one of her interrogators described as “China’s Guantanamo”.

Kou details her detention in her book How is an Enemy Made? – Chinese Who Don’t Have the Right to Remain Silent, ­becoming one of the few people to speak publicly about their time in custody on the mainland and shedding light on how civic movements in the city and Taiwan have touched a nerve in Beijing.

Launching the book in Hong Kong last week, Kou said her family had no idea where she was or what had happened to her until she was released in February last year. She asked repeatedly to see a lawyer and relatives but her ­requests were denied on state ­security grounds, she said. “Doesn’t the United States have Guantanamo?” she quoted one officer as saying. “Well this is the Guantanamo of China.”

The officer told her that she was being held for subversion.