ACE-Diary of a prisoner

Dear Diary,

Here I am stuck in this smelly and brutal prison with goodness knows how many other poor souls like me. Prisoners like me are arriving everyday in swarms, there’s just no end to them. Since I was kidnapped from my bed by masked men, I had endured a twelve hour journey to the middle of a desert---this prison. One of my fellow prisoners told me that this is what they call a ‘political prison camp’ and are used to house those thought by the government as anti-government. Ok, I admit, I had been writing a few articles criticizing the present government on their views towards military spending. However, never in my life did I ever imagine that I would be labelled as a ‘political opponent ‘ just for this, and that such things could happen in such a democratic country such as America!

Here at this camp, the prisoners are treated as if we were slaves, we were worked to death every single day, doing all sorts of heavy labour, I was beginning to wonder if the guards had any orders to work us to death. Speaking of the guards, the guards here are worst than Adolf Hitler, all of them had machine guns and at the slightest sign of disobedience, they would give the unlucky person a good beating, or even kill him.

Every day, we were expected to wake up at 5am. Breakfast consisted of just a piece of bread and a cup of water. Work started at 5.15am, those who were not fast enough at getting ready were whipped. We worked all the way till twelve noon, stopping for a quick drink before continuing our work. Bedtime was at 1am. Under these conditions, many prisoners dropped like flies, dead. But this was no problem to the guards, as they had an endless supply of prisoners coming in to work for them.

I had made up my mind that I am going to escape from this godforsaken place with a few of my fellow prisoners, we had sworn that if we had managed to escape, we would use all our influences to reveal the cruelty of the present government and unseat them. Lately, we had obtained guns from two guards, Tom and Jack, whom we had befriended, as they sympathised with our cause. I pray to God that we will succeed.

Zi Jie