Journalist Cheng Lei and academic Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert finished off this year’s TravelManager’s conference in Hobart with a powerful Q&A session that brought the audience to tears.
The two Australian women recounted their years of wrongful imprisonment abroad and the lessons they carried home.
Cheng Lei, a former Australian television presenter, was detained in China for more than three years on espionage charges, while Moore-Gilbert, a University of Melbourne lecturer specialising in Middle East politics, was held in Iran for two years and three months after being arrested at Tehran airport in 2018. The pair have since co-founded the Australian Wrongful and Arbitrary Detention Alliance, alongside fellow former detainee Professor Sean Turnell, to advocate for Australians detained overseas.
‘I’ll be fine’
Both women described the shock of their arrests and a lingering disbelief that the ordeal was real.
“Because I felt so good and that I was so innocent, I wasn’t actually that scared,” Cheng Lei told the audience. “I was almost preparing for one day saying, guess what happened, they made this humongous mistake, and I’ve lived to tell the tale.” She recalled that even as she was blindfolded and put in a car, “I still thought I’ll be fine… when the officers reminded me to turn off the gas and water at my apartment, I thought, what for? I’ll be back soon.”
Moore-Gilbert said the same denial took far longer to break down. “It took a really long time. I don’t think there ever was a penny drop moment,” she said. “I would say weeks, if not months, before I started to disassemble the lie that I’d created in my own head that it was all going to be over quickly.”
She added: “Even when I was thrown in prison, I was in solitary confinement, I was being psychologically tortured, I was thinking, okay, the Australian government’s going to get me out… it took so long to kind of dismantle that mirage that I’d constructed in my own head.”
Conditions in custody
Cheng Lei described being watched constantly during her first six months in custody, a period of detention China calls “Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location.”
“Make no mistake, it’s not residential,” she said. “I’m being watched every minute of the day by teams of two guards standing very close and sitting very close to me, watching me shit, shower, and sleep.” She said the lights were never switched off: “I cannot sleep with my arms above my eyes to shield against the light, nor can I turn towards the wall… I cannot put my hands inside the coverlets. If I do any of that, they will wake me.”
Moore-Gilbert, who spent roughly 12 months in solitary confinement in Iran, said isolation was its own form of torture. “Solitary confinement is torture,” she said. “Prolonged removal from human contact drives you insane. I mean, it’s deliberate. It’s there to break you psychologically, make you open up and tell all of your secrets, and maybe make a false confession.”
She said she ultimately preferred being moved to a crowded cell holding around 100 women over being alone. “Even though it was chaotic, it was scary, it was a bit dangerous even… I could make friends. I could have social interactions. So I actually much preferred that scenario,” she said. “You become your own torturer inside your own head.”
Finding ways to endure
Both women described mental strategies, small rituals and friendships that helped them survive.
“You discover just how much you can do with your mind,” Cheng Lei said, describing how she filled long hours in isolation. “You try to remember anything that ever gave you pleasure… you try to write stories in your head, try to make up dialogue between the guards.”
Once she had cellmates, she said, morale became a daily project: “Every morning I would think, what am I going to make up today, whether it’s a game, a joke, or an exercise, that’s going to make the mood in the cell a little bit better?”
Moore-Gilbert described a secret note-passing and air-vent communication network she built with Farsi-speaking fellow prisoners in neighbouring cells, calling it central to her survival. “Being able to make friends with people who did not mean me ill, who genuinely wanted to help me and to know me… this is the number one ingredient for my survival,” she said.
Cheng Lei recalled learning a wall-knocking code to exchange messages with prisoners in nearby cells, including a game trading abbreviated country and capital names with a neighbouring cell. “I opened up the atlas one day, and I looked at the countries and cities that they chose, and it made the shape of a love heart,” she said. “That is how romance can break down walls.”
Cheng Lei said a smuggled copy of Moore-Gilbert’s memoir became a lifeline for her and her cellmates, introducing them to the Farsi word for freedom. She described an image from the book of Moore-Gilbert climbing onto a prison roof and shouting “Azadi” – freedom. “That image just gave us so much power,” Cheng Lei said. “Our fear can travel borders, but so can hope and courage.”
‘Stronger than you think’
Both women said they were determined not to let the experience change who they fundamentally were.
“They win if they change you,” Moore-Gilbert said. “I was determined to come out of my experience the same Kylie that I was when I went in, and not let them get to the core of who I was… they never broke me.” She told the audience: “You are all stronger than you think you are.”
Cheng Lei agreed, describing a turning point she said gave her lasting strength.
“You discover a kind of serenity when you have gone so low it cannot get any worse,” she said. “After that, it can only get better.”
