A Bar Tussle Ends in a Beijing Jail: A Young Expat’s Story
By
Sofia McFarland
Bo and Kristin Jonsson embraced their time as expats in China. Then their son ended up in a Beijing jail.
The Swedish family had moved to Beijing in 2007 for Mr. Jonsson’s job at Ericsson. They lived in a suburban compound near the international school their four kids attended and were part of a vigorous social life with other expats. “It’s a bubble,” said Mrs. Jonsson. “Yet, we lived a very ordinary life.”
By the fall of 2013, the Jonssons’ daughter was still in middle school in Beijing but the two older sons had returned to Sweden to start university and the Jonssons were starting to consider moving back, too.
Their youngest son, then-18-year-old Noak, had graduated from high school—he was in the same year as my son and the two have many friends in common—and was spending a semester studying Mandarin at Peking University. He was planning to start university in Sweden the following fall.
A Wednesday evening in November changed all his plans.
The account of the next grueling months is Noak’s, with his parents weighing in on some parts. Documents related to the case and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal add to the picture but it hasn’t been possible to speak directly to Chinese authorities or Noak’s lawyers about what happened that night.
Noak’s problems began during a night out with a half-dozen friends, all expats, at a club in Beijing’s university district. There had been some drinking. As they were leaving, there was an argument over the purse of one of the girls, which according to Noak wasn’t returned from coat-check. Words were exchanged; the group was thrown out.
Outside the club, the argument continued. It came briefly to blows; a bystander who had jumped into the fray was bleeding and complained his nose was broken.
Noak, who says he didn’t hit anyone, found himself in a police car.
He wasn’t particularly worried; he expected his role in the brawl to become clear quickly and then to be let go.
A night in a cell was followed by waiting. Hope that he might make it to class the following day dimmed little by little. He wasn’t allowed to make a phone call but was told his parents were there, summoned by his friends. A South Korean friend was also in detention.
“I was still not scared,” Noak said. He had surmised from the guards that he couldn’t be held longer than 24 hours at the police station. His parents had lunch sent in.
Late that Thursday evening, he and his friend were taken on a drive. Noak assumed he was moving closer to freedom.
Instead the car entered gates surrounded by tall walls topped by barbed wire.
“Until then I had almost been laughing at how silly it all was,” Noak said. Now, “fear was coupled with a sense of: How has it gotten this far?”
The two friends were issued coarse gray pants and jackets. They were given a thick comforter each and taken through a series of locked doors. Then they were separated.
Noak was taken to a cell with six beds, all occupied. Two men were sitting up, one Nigerian and one Chinese, part of a system where the inmates divided up two-hour shifts of “watch duty,” a way to maintain order and perhaps also a result of there not being enough beds. Guards made sure those on watch didn’t drop off via periodic checks.
The Nigerian said he had been there 15 months. He told Noak to take over for the Chinese inmate, who immediately went to sleep on the floor.
Noak settled in as best he could. It no longer felt that his release would be imminent. His arrival tipped the balance in the cell to five foreigners and four Chinese.
The Monday after he entered the jail, two Swedish Embassy employees visited. He told them to pass word to his parents that he was cold. But it was to be two weeks before he received a box of blankets, clothes and books from home, as everything sent in had to be thoroughly screened.
The embassy wouldn’t comment on specifics of Noak’s case, but said fewer than 10 Swedes a year become involved with China’s justice system.
Meals were a sloppy affair, delivered into two buckets from an opening in the door. Mostly it was a watery soy broth with a vegetable or two.
For the next few weeks it was Noak’s job to clean the cell’s bathroom area and wash the towels used by the cellmates in the sink, another system set up by the guards and enforced by the cellmates.
“I came in last, and was a Westerner so I was lowest in rank,” he said.
Meals were a sloppy affair, delivered into two buckets from an opening in the door. Mostly it was a watery soy broth with a vegetable or two. There was rice only twice a week. Tomatoes and scrambled eggs was everyone’s favorite, a once-a-week highlight.
Bo Jonsson said the worst part was not being able to see or talk to Noak.
“The first period, especially the first weeks when Noak was in detention, was like a dark hole. I was totally blocked and didn’t work,’” he said. “Once I had arranged a lawyer after a week or so I calmed down. But I was still feeling terrible.”
The jail, Beijing’s No. 1 Detention Center, is on the city’s eastern outskirts, not far from the airport. Susan Finder, a Hong Kong-based China law scholar, said it is described as “first class” and approved for holding foreigners.
During the twice-a-day outdoor exercise break, Noak and a Pakistani cellmate peered up at an opening that showed planes taking off overhead, playing a game of spotting which airline was taking passengers away.
“I thought of course, ‘One day, I’ll get out of here.’” Noak said.
At night, he put a mask he had made from an old sheet over his eyes and pulled the comforter over his head to block out the light that was always on in the cell. “That was when I missed my family and when thoughts about the future hit me,” he said. “I cried a lot under there and had a horrible time trying to sleep.”
On Christmas, his lawyer visited with a letter from Noak’s family that she was allowed to read aloud but not to leave—the first direct word from home since Noak’s detention.
His two older brothers were in Beijing for the holidays. “It was hard to think that the whole family was gathered and I was the only one not there,” Noak said.
From paperwork he had signed when entering the prison, he had gleaned a date: Dec. 29. He poured all his hope in it as the day he might be released.
When the date arrived, he waited all day to hear his name on the jail’s P.A. system. Toward evening, the summons came.
After a month in jail, Noak was allowed to leave. He distributed some of his clothes to his cellmates. His dad and older brother Lukas were waiting to take him home, as was the mother of his South Korean friend, who was also released. Noak described the moment: “Tears and joy and relief.”
But it wasn’t yet over.
The authorities held on to Noak’s passport. Prosecutors several times called Noak in for talks. Noak’s Chinese was functional but he requested an English translator, partly to have time to shape his answers better.
The prosecutors also asked the police for more information, the family said, in order to decide whether to take the matter to trial or drop it. The allegation against him, as Noak understood it, was “disturbance of public order.”
Noak says the police also sought to talk to some of the other expats who had been at the club, but several had ended their studies by then and left China.
Mrs. Jonsson said when she and the girl who had lost the purse at the center of the argument visited the club the following day the purse was returned by employees at the club.
In a call to the club, a manager who identified herself as Ms. Li said that neither she nor any of the other managers or employees had any knowledge of the fight outside the club.
The Jonssons had had contact with the man who claimed he had been injured in the fight and reached a financial settlement with him, after advice from lawyers and others in the expat community. In a subsequent letter to prosecutors reviewed by The Journal, the man said his injury had resulted from a scuffle with another of the expats and that Noak—referred to by his Chinese name, Zhou Ke—had tried to stop the fight.
That didn’t end the matter but Noak was told by his lawyer that the prospect of a trial wasn’t high. Still it loomed. With China’s high conviction rate, a trial would have meant an almost guaranteed guilty verdict and a likely prison sentence to follow. “I forced myself not to think about that,” Noak said.
The days passed, then weeks. In March, Noak’s student visa expired. He was now without the right to be in China–but unable to leave.
His lawyer told Noak that prosecutors thought he had a “bad attitude” and suggested that he write a letter expressing regret over what had happened. Noak reluctantly wrote a statement that he had participated in a situation where one person was injured and that he regretted having been part of the brawl.
Appealing to the prosecutor for understanding, his lawyer added some sentences to say that Noak loved China and Chinese culture. The letter had no obvious effect.
The Jonsson family, which had been hopeful the resolution would be swift, had made the decision to leave China by the summer of 2014. Noak had won a coveted spot to study engineering physics at Uppsala University. But the weeks of waiting were turning into months.
In July, Kristin Jonsson and Noak’s sister moved back to Sweden. His dad stayed on for a bit, hoping he would be able to fly home accompanied by Noak.
But a few days before the start of the academic year, with no news from the prosecutors, Noak gave up his spot at Uppsala. “It was a difficult decision. I knew then that it would be a year before life would restart.”
Shortly after that, his dad returned to Sweden and Noak moved in with family friends. He spent his days tutoring and coaching rugby at his former high school, Western Academy of Beijing.
Courtney Lowe, the school’s director, said Noak was very well regarded at the school.
“Though I felt terrible about his long wait, he was always positive and was a great role model for our students in coping with his situation,” Mr. Lowe said.
Noak’s mother returned to Beijing in October. A few weeks later, liberation: The family was told the case had been dropped.
The Haidian District Procuratorate Office didn’t respond to calls and faxed requests for comment on the case.
Some bureaucracy remained; Noak got his passport back quickly and a process to renew his visa in order to be able to exit was also smooth.
On Nov. 19, Noak boarded a plane for Sweden. A band, champagne, family and friends greeted him at the Stockholm airport. A photo of Noak partly obscured by blue-and-yellow welcome balloons posted on Facebook received 357 “likes” and 73 comments, many from other expat families in Beijing who had lived through the ordeal with the Jonssons.
Three months later, Noak has started classes in math and computer programming at Stockholm University. He is applying to physics programs in Gothenburg, Stockholm and Uppsala.
He has talked about the experience with some of his friends. But he hasn’t told many of the new people he has met at school. “I don’t know why,” he said. “I guess I don’t want it to become something I use to seem interesting.”
He regards the experience as “an injustice that I’ve been through,” but says he wants to return to China one day. “I would like to have a positive effect on China’s future, democracy and rights,” he said.
His mother says she and her son have had long talks about what happened and have decided not to let it overshadow their otherwise happy years in China. “Then all seven years will be ruined,” she said.
–Kersten Zhang in Beijing contributed to this article.
http://blogs.wsj.com/expat/2015/03/06/a-bar-tussle-ends-in-a-beijing-jail-a-young-expats-story/
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