22-09-2013, 06:23 PM
is this a joke?
Tom Hancock
AFP
Sunday, Sep 22, 2013
QINCHENG, China - Fallen high-flyer Bo Xilai can expect hotel-style treatment at a jail for China's political elite, where he will enjoy comfortable surroundings but be constantly monitored by government agents, former prisoners say.
Hidden in wooded hills north of Beijing, guards stand outside the red gate of Qincheng prison, where the once-powerful Bo is widely expected to begin his life sentence after being convicted Sunday of bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power.
The jail has high grey walls, but there are no obvious signs of barbed wire or watchtowers.
"It's like a five-star hotel," said Bao Tong, a former secretary to the ruling Communist Party's all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee who spent seven years in the prison for opposing the 1989 crackdown on protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
Inmates at the facility - which has housed almost all the high-ranking politicians jailed in China since the 1960s - are given large private cells equipped with soft beds, sofas, desks and an en-suite bathroom, former residents said.
"I was pleasantly surprised the first time I saw my room," Dai Qing, the adopted daughter of a Chinese commander, wrote in a description to AFP.
Dai, who spent 10 months in the prison for supporting the Tiananmen demonstrators, described her cell as about 30 square metres large (320 square feet) and coming "with high ceilings... and even a bathroom", while prison guards treated her with "warmth and care".
"The head of the prison let me put on better clothes before I left," she recalled of one occasion when she was let out to visit a sick relative. "He reminded me of my old school headmaster."
Prisoners can choose their clothes, drink milk for breakfast and eat selections of soups and meat dishes for lunch and dinner, they said.
Some of the jail chefs used to work in one of Beijing's top hotels and prepare food to "ministry chief level", according to a recent report by the Beijing Times.
Tom Hancock
AFP
Sunday, Sep 22, 2013
QINCHENG, China - Fallen high-flyer Bo Xilai can expect hotel-style treatment at a jail for China's political elite, where he will enjoy comfortable surroundings but be constantly monitored by government agents, former prisoners say.
Hidden in wooded hills north of Beijing, guards stand outside the red gate of Qincheng prison, where the once-powerful Bo is widely expected to begin his life sentence after being convicted Sunday of bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power.
The jail has high grey walls, but there are no obvious signs of barbed wire or watchtowers.
"It's like a five-star hotel," said Bao Tong, a former secretary to the ruling Communist Party's all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee who spent seven years in the prison for opposing the 1989 crackdown on protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
Inmates at the facility - which has housed almost all the high-ranking politicians jailed in China since the 1960s - are given large private cells equipped with soft beds, sofas, desks and an en-suite bathroom, former residents said.
"I was pleasantly surprised the first time I saw my room," Dai Qing, the adopted daughter of a Chinese commander, wrote in a description to AFP.
Dai, who spent 10 months in the prison for supporting the Tiananmen demonstrators, described her cell as about 30 square metres large (320 square feet) and coming "with high ceilings... and even a bathroom", while prison guards treated her with "warmth and care".
"The head of the prison let me put on better clothes before I left," she recalled of one occasion when she was let out to visit a sick relative. "He reminded me of my old school headmaster."
Prisoners can choose their clothes, drink milk for breakfast and eat selections of soups and meat dishes for lunch and dinner, they said.
Some of the jail chefs used to work in one of Beijing's top hotels and prepare food to "ministry chief level", according to a recent report by the Beijing Times.