‘I’ve never suffered such personal humiliation’: Chinese business chief Zhang Shiwen’s 21 days in detention
- Zhang Shiwen was held in a cell with 24 other men before prosecutors declined to press charges against him
- A now deleted social media post about his struggle to resolve the case has struck a chord with many critics of China’s detention system
Zhang Shiwen had gone four days without water, too appalled by his surroundings to drink, when his sense of cleanliness finally gave way to his thirst.
He picked up the bowl that he shared with 24 other men at the Dalian municipal detention centre and took a sip. Conscious that he was possibly drinking the saliva of assorted drug addicts, pimps and thieves, the detained businessman said later in a commentary on social media that he felt his self-esteem “shatter”.
“I have never suffered such personal humiliation,” he says now.
The 41-year-old, who uses his real name Zhang Yan professionally, but is known to his friends as Shiwen, is the founder of an online education firm and a network technology company with investments of 20 million yuan (US$2.9 million) as of 2015, in Dalian, a port city in the northeastern province of Liaoning.
Zhang was held in the cell for 21 days after his detention by Dalian police on tax evasion charges, from November 15 to December 5.
But prosecutors declined to place him under arrest, and he was released on bail and told to go to the tax bureau to pay his back taxes.