Abolish the black jails of china communists

A crowd of faeces-stained, starving figures with haunted eyes stared at us from behind the bars. Some looked cold and wet, as if they had been hosed down with water. Most of them were old, and some handicapped. They began wailing and pleading with us. %u2018Let us out!%u2019 they sobbed. %u2018This is a prison!%u2019 They showed us one ragged woman. %u2018Look at this. She was beaten!%u2019 They carried another elderly woman towards the bars who appeared to be paralysed. Guarding the inmates were young men in black jumpsuits. I knew they would stop us filming any second now, but at first the guards reacted slowly. %u2018Those are the thugs that beat us!%u2019 yelled one of the inmates, pointing. %u2018They strangled and beat me!%u2019

http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/all/247856/the-terrible-secrets-of-beijings-black-jails.thtml





A chinese activist who has spoken out about the country's "black jails" said Saturday that he was being held against his will in one of the unofficial detention centers used to discourage people from complaining to the central government.

zheng dajing stood behind a locked metal door, whose screen window was covered with semi-opaque plastic, and answered questions from The Associated Press. The location was a two-story building in the dim courtyard of an alleyside hotel in west Beijing. The stocky 48-year-old recited his wife's mobile phone number to confirm it was him.
"I have no idea when I can leave," he said.

china has denied the existence of "black jails," but a state-run magazine last month described the secret detention centers where petitioners citizens who come to Beijing with complaints about corruption in their home towns are held and sometimes beaten.The report said officials are under pressure to shrink the number of petitioners from their localities to "zero" and pay people to detain those who come to beijing before they can complain.

Zheng said he was detained Friday with "several thousand" other people marking china's annual "Legal Publicity Day" meant to promote awareness of china's legal system with numerous protests around the capital.

The china-based chinese human rights defenders reported Saturday that zheng, from central Hubei province, was an organizer of the protests, but zheng said he was merely standing near a beijing railway station observing them when he was taken away."We were just standing there watching," he said. "They must have detained thousands of people" around the city.

American woman battles chinese communist injustice
Pulling her scarf a little higher to cover her mouth, she braved the bitter wind chill on one of beijing's coldest days to march to the supreme people's court.

Like hundreds of chinese who haunt government offices in the capital every day, American Julie Harm is seeking attention and help from national authorities in redressing her grievances against local officials. She could have blended in with the crowds outside all the nondescript buildings she's visited in the past year  if not for her tall frame and strawberry-blond hair.

Harms, 31, has unwittingly become the first and only foreign and thus the most famous %u2013 petitioner in China, with her story and photos splashing across newspapers, magazines and Web sites. For the Houston native, her unlikely celebrity status grew out of a simple yet daunting mission: clearing the name of her chinese fiancé, imprisoned on what she says is a false charge.

"The decision to petition is not made easily," Harms tells CBS News on her latest trip to Beijing. "It's a very time-consuming and involved process, and really was our last resort."

She is following the footsteps of countless chinese from around the vast nation who, for centuries, have been bringing their complaints of injustice, and their hopes for resolution, to emperors and then, later on, communist party leaders.