THEY left China as political or economic migrants looking for a new life in the Land of the Free. But, says a new report, the American dream has turned into a nightmare for many of the hordes fleeing the mainland. For the first time, detailed accounts of the suffering encountered by the thousands of peasants during their desperate flight to America have been documented by an expert on Chinese gangs. And, in the words of many of the illegal immigrants now in the United States, their lives are 'hell'. Professor Ko-lin Chin conducted interviews with at least 300 mainland Chinese who had bought passage to the US from ruthless smugglers. But he believes that an average of at least 10,000 each year leave their homes in Fujian, risking their lives for a new life in the New World. Horrific stories of hundreds of people crammed into the holds of rusting hulks for months are commonplace. But their later detentions in safe houses in New York's Chinatown are far worse than previously recorded. 'A lot of human suffering goes on in safe houses in the middle of Manhattan,' said Professor Chin. 'I never realised that these people had to suffer so much . . . They are being tortured and exploited right under our eyes.' Professor Chin's study, funded by the United States' National Science Foundation, has for the first time uncovered the brutal realities of dealing with the mainland's smugglers in human cargo. 'The ma jais (enforcers) on the ship did not treat the passengers like human beings at all. They assault those they do not like and rape the women passengers at will,' said the professor. One female passenger told him that women were separated from the men and kept on another deck so they had no protection if the crew or ma jais tried to rape them. A male passenger on another ship said 20 women on board were raped by the crew and 'guides', and that men were beaten with iron bars and pistol-whipped if they walked around. He said the women were abused again after they arrived in New York when a different set of debt-collectors took charge of them. 'These guys even raped the women while they were talking to their families over the phone so that their relatives would be forced to come up with the money in a hurry,' he added. Being treated like animals soon made the smugglers' human cargo act like animals as they realised they were fighting for their survival. Immigrants told the professor of people falling overboard and drowning during mid-ocean ship transfers, of waiting in international waters for weeks at a time as the crew awaited instructions . . . and of drifting in rough seas after their ships broke down. 'All of a sudden the ship broke down and was immobilised,' one male passenger said. 'Huge waves crashed over it. The ship swirled around and almost turned over. 'At that point the sailors were ready to abandon us. They even considered dynamiting the ship . . . with more than 200 passengers on board.' When the immigrants first boarded vessels they were divided into groups, with the result that these factions often fought each other over food. 'It was always the strong exploiting the weak,' said one. Conditions on board were 'horrible'. While a lack of sanitation quickly lead to widespread outbreaks of disease among many of the passengers, others soon found themselves starving as the crew sold rations, mainly rice, that were supposed to be free. The ordeal was far from over when they made it to New York. 'The place I was kept in was like hell,' said one man. 'We ate, lived, and urinated in the same place. More than a dozen people were kept in a room. The air was awful.' The illegal immigrants were beaten daily, handcuffed, given cold showers in the winter, made to carry out menial cleaning tasks and then forced to pay $100 for phone calls to relatives in China to arrange payment of their debts. During these calls, the debt-collectors threatened to kill the immigrants if their relatives did not pay up. On payment of outstanding debts, they would be released onto the streets of New York, penniless, starving, alone and without work, but most survived their ordeals to start new lives in the Big Apple. According to one account, a number of the women who were forced to turn to vice to pay off their debts carried on as prostitutes after buying their freedom. But although life is now better, none of the immigrants has forgotten their ordeal. One man, released within a week of arriving in New York, said: 'If I met them in the street now I would stab them with a knife.'