Black jails
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Black jails () are a network of extralegal detention centers established by Chinese security forces and
private security companies A private security company (PSC) is a business entity which provides armed or unarmed security services and expertise to clients in the private or public sectors. Overview Private security companies are defined by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Sta ...
across the People's Republic of China. They are used mainly to detain, without trial, petitioners (上访者, ''shangfangzhe''), who travel to seek redress for grievances unresolved at the local level. The right to petition was available in ancient China, and was later revived by the communists, with important differences. Black jails have no official or legal status, differentiating them from detention centers, the criminal arrest process, or formal sentencing to jail or prison. They are in wide use in Beijing, in particular, and serve as holding locations for the many petitioners who travel to the central Office of Letters and Calls to petition. The jails were introduced to replace the
Custody and Repatriation Custody and repatriation (C&R; ) was an administrative procedure, established in 1982 and abolished in 2003, by which the police in the People's Republic of China (usually cities) could detain people if they did not have a residence permit (hukou ...
system after it was abolished in 2003 following the notorious
Sun Zhigang incident The Sun Zhigang incident () refers to the 2003 death of the migrant worker Sun Zhigang in Guangzhou, as a result of physical abuse he suffered while being detained under China's custody and repatriation (C&R) system. The case received massive at ...
. The existence of such jails is acknowledged by at least part of the CCP officialdom, following a
police raid A police raid is an unexpected visit by police or other law-enforcement officers with the aim of using the element of surprise in order to seize evidence or arrest suspects believed to be likely to hide evidence, resist arrest, be politicall ...
of one of them and criminal trial of the company running it. According to human rights groups, black jails are a growing industry. The system includes so-called "interceptors" (截访者, literally "inquiry-stopper"), or "black guards", often sent by local or regional authorities, who abduct petitioners and hold them against their will or bundle them onto a bus to send them back to where they came from. Non-government sources have estimated the number of black jails in operation to be between 7 and 50. The facilities may be located in state-owned hotels, hostels, hospitals, psychiatric facilities, residential buildings, or government ministry buildings, among others.


Background

The appearance of black jails was the authorities' response to the use of the "letters and calls" system (also known as "petitioning"), which attempts to resolve disputes at the local level.Human Rights Watch
"An Alleyway in Hell"
, 12 November 2009
As a modern version of the imperial tradition, reinstated by the communists after 1949, the petitioning system permits citizens to report local abuse of power to higher levels of government. Because local courts are beholden to local officials, however, and since pursuing redress through the legal system is too expensive for rural Chinese, petitioning in modern China has become the only channel for seeking redress. The number of people using the petitioning system has increased since 1993, to the extent that the system has been strained for years. However, despite its enduring nature and political support, the system has never been an effective mechanism for dealing with the complaints brought to it – largely because it is chronically overwhelmed by the number of people seeking redress.


Treatment of detainees

Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human r ...
published a report exploring the issue. It documents how government officials, security forces, and their agents routinely abduct people, usually petitioners, off the streets of Beijing and other Chinese cities, "strip them of their possessions, and imprison them."Human Rights Watch
"China: Secret "Black Jails" Hide Severe Rights Abuses"
, 12 November 2009
According to reporters visiting the jails, those detained inside them are beaten, starved, and sometimes hosed down with water. 20 or 30 people may be forced to inhabit a single room, including those suffering from disabilities. On 15 May 2010, a guard of a black jail located in a Beijing hotel received his final judgment of eight years of imprisonment for raping a female petitioner who had been illegally held in custody.


Official stance

The authorities have repeatedly denied the existence of black jails. In an April 2009 Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) press conference, an official responded to an
Al Jazeera Al Jazeera ( ar, الجزيرة, translit-std=DIN, translit=al-jazīrah, , "The Island") is a state-owned Arabic-language international radio and TV broadcaster of Qatar. It is based in Doha and operated by the media conglomerate Al Jazeera ...
correspondent's query about black jails by stating categorically that, "Things like this do not exist in China." In June 2009, the Chinese government asserted in the Outcome Report of the United Nations Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review of China's human rights record that, "There are no black jails in the country."


See also

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Law enforcement in the People's Republic of China Law enforcement in China consists of an extensive public security system and a variety of enforcement procedures used to maintain order in the country. Along with the courts and procuratorates, the country's judicial and public security agencie ...
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Weiquan movement The Weiquan movement is a non-centralized group of lawyers, legal experts, and intellectuals in China who seek to protect and defend the civil rights of the citizenry through litigation and legal activism. The movement, which began in the early ...
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Petitioning (China) Petitioning ( zh, s=信访, p=xìnfǎng, literally "letters and visits")). is the administrative system for hearing complaints and grievances from individuals in the People's Republic of China. It is the primary tool for dispute resolution in the ...
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Laogai ''Laogai'' (), short for ''laodong gaizao'' (), which means reform through labor, is a criminal justice system involving the use of penal labor and prison farms in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and North Korea (DPRK). ''Láogǎi'' i ...
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Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location (RSDL, ) is a form of detention regularly used by authorities in the People's Republic of China against individuals accused of endangering state security. RSDL is usually carried out at special fa ...


References


External links


China crawls slowly towards judicial reform
by Thomas E. Kellogg and Keith Hand, '' Asia Times''. 25 January 2008.
Rise of Rights?
''
China Digital Times China Digital Times (CDT; ) is a US-based 501(c)(3) organization that runs a bilingual news website covering China. The site focuses on news items which are blocked, deleted or suppressed by China's state censors. History The website was started ...
''. 27 May 2005
"Hostages of the State"
''
Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
''. 16 June 2003. *
Use of Custody and Repatriation detention triples in 10 years
Human Rights in China Human rights in mainland China are periodically reviewed by the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC), on which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), government of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and various foreign governments and h ...

Kidnapping by Police: The Sun Zhigang Case Exposes "Custody and Repatriation"
Testimony before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. 2 June 2003

Aljazeera Al Jazeera ( ar, الجزيرة, translit-std=DIN, translit=al-jazīrah, , "The Island") is a state-owned Arabic-language international radio and TV broadcaster of Qatar. It is based in Doha and operated by the media conglomerate Al Jazeera ...
. 27 April 2009
"The terrible secrets of Beijing's 'black jails
''
The Spectator ''The Spectator'' is a weekly British magazine on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving weekly magazine in the world. It is owned by Frederick Barclay, who also owns ''The ...
''. 13 October 2007 {{DEFAULTSORT:Black Jails Penal system in China Law enforcement in China Family registers Political repression in China Human rights abuses in China Black sites