While he was serving his eight-year sentence in a Chinese prison, Romanian teacher Marius Balo never knew whether he’d receive “a bullet or freedom.”
“This (thought) was a huge pressure (on prisoners) especially for Asian prisoners,” he said on Saturday at the launch of his book “The Pink Blanket. Imprisoned in Communist China” which describes his ordeal in Chinese prisons.
Despite deprivations, uncertainty, and fear, Balo, 41, found his time in prison strangely purgative and transformative. Subsequently writing about it was cathartic.
“This novel had the role of exorcism for me,” he said sitting next to friend and collaborator Peter Humphrey, who was also incarcerated in China and now helps the families of foreigners imprisoned in China’s grim jails and lobbies for change.
“I have become an activist campaigning to expose the system in China and to help other foreign prisoners suffering in that system,” said Mr. Humphrey, who had traveled from London for the Bucharest launch. “We are collaborators; we share the same goal.”
“Of the millions of men and women in Chinese prisons, there is not a single man or woman who has had a fair trial.”
This is the message that the two men take to policymakers in London, Brussels and elsewhere to draw attention to the plight of others who are serving jail time in China.
Mr. Humphrey mentioned the case of a British man who has spent 45 years in China of which five have been in a prison in an unknown location. Mr Balo has staged a hunger strike to gain attention to the case of Alina, 28, who is serving a 13 ½ year sentence in a remote Chinese prison where there are no foreign inmates. Since his protest, the Romanian foreign ministry has started the process to get her transferred to Romania to serve her sentence here.
Publisher Litera described the book as: “A heart-wrenching novel in terms of its subject matter, it starts from the dark experiences of a teacher who found himself in China as a result of a series of deceptions that led to his eight-year detention.”
The book is called “The Pink Blanket” as each prisoner receives a pink blanket when they start their detention. The item has become emblematic for prisoners recalling their incarceration.
Mr. Balo was 33 and teaching at the University of Beijing when he was arrested and thrown into prison, without knowing why or for how long. His autobiographical account is a testimony of freedom, love, and hope in a Kafkaesque universe.
A professor at Renmin University Beijing and a foreign expert in the XinDongFang Technology and Education Group (New Oriental) Beijing, he moved to China in 2010.
He was arrested in March and accused of receiving $80 from Chinese citizens without knowing that the money came from criminal activities.
Mr. Balo was sentenced to eight years in prison on March 24, 2016 based on the testimony of a person he had never seen before. He was subsequently locked up in a jail in Shanghai. When he was released, he was stuck in Shanghai due to Covid-19-related restrictions. He arrived back in Romania on April 24, 2022.
