David Xie stared at the ceiling. The white light was on day and night and he couldn’t look away. But that was the least of his problems.
He was lying on a bed, his hands spread above his head and handcuffed to its metal frame, and his feet tied down with pieces of cloth. He was detained indefinitely. There was no sentence to serve, no future to hang his hopes on.
They call it the “death bed,” Xie said. He endured beatings and other despicable forms of torture, but this was even worse—simply being tied to a bed, nonstop, unable to move. It didn’t take long for his body to start hurting, he said. And it never stopped, even when a prisoner begged for death. But that wouldn’t be allowed. They would be hooked on an IV drip, kept alive day after day, week after week, month after month….