UK – Pen International, Sept. 30, 2025
30 September: Today, PEN International joined the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong (CFHK) Foundation, PEN America and dozens of other organisations in a joint letter to UN officials drawing urgent attention to reports of systematic abuse in Hong Kong’s prisons. Included among those currently subjected to arbitrary detention is writer and publisher Jimmy Lai, who has been subjected to over four and a half years of solitary confinement. We join the coalition in calling on authorities to end the practice of solitary confinement and other punitive measures used to silence dissent.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
Palais des Nations
CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Dear High Commissioner Volker Türk,
As a coalition of 52 civil society organizations committed to human rights and the rule of law, we write collectively to urgently raise serious concerns regarding the systemic abuses occurring inside Hong Kong’s prisons, as detailed in the recent report by the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong (CFHK) Foundation, “We Were Made to Suffer: Systemic Abuse and Political Control Inside Hong Kong’s Prisons” (September 2025).
The report documents harrowing violations such as prolonged and punitive solitary confinement far beyond internationally accepted limits; arbitrary and excessive use of solitary confinement and isolation to punish political prisoners; systemic physical, sexual, and psychological abuse tolerated by prison officials; chronic medical neglect resulting in severe deterioration and preventable deaths; widespread degradation of prison infrastructure and hygiene; and weaponization of psychiatric detention against dissidents. More than 700 political prisoners, including prominent human rights defenders, journalists, and pro-democracy activists such as Jimmy Lai, Leung Kwok-hung, Chow Hang-tung, and Joshua Wong, remain subject to extended isolation, communication censorship, and forced indoctrination through state-run “deradicalization” programs as they languish in jail.
Some of these violations have been documented by the UN human rights mechanism, including the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention opinions on Jimmy Lai and Chow Hang-tung‘s detention. Multiple UN member states have raised concerns about Chow’s repeated solitary confinement in the UN Secretary-General’s 2025 report on reprisals.
