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 Seeking Justice, Chinese Land in Secret Jails
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Chinese Human Rights Defenders, an organization in Hong Kong that recently interviewed more than 3,000 petitioners, has documented what it says is the lucrative business of abduction and repatriation. “When you’re taken to a black jail, no one knows where you are and you are totally vulnerable,” said Wang Songlian, a researcher.
The authorities insist that there is no such system. During testimony to the United Nations Rights Council last month, Song Hansong, a representative of China’s Supreme People’s Procurate, said, “There are no such things as black jails in our country.”
But over the past year, rights workers have been gathering evidence of what they say is an underground network of jails, first established in 2005, that was aggressively expanded in the months leading up the Olympics.
Alarmed by their unchecked spread, a group of lawyers has taken to organizing citizen raids that seek to free detainees through a show of force. Although they say instances of extralegal detention dropped after the Summer Games, one of the lawyers, Xu Zhiyou, said they had risen sharply in recent days, coinciding with the start of the annual legislative session.
He and other advocates say that armies of paid retrievers, euphemistically known as “liberators,” have been roaming the city in pursuit of as many as 40,000 petitioners, many of whom swarmed the entrances to the city’s main petition centers during much of the week.
By Friday, however, the tough-looking throngs of retrievers outside the State Council and supreme court petition offices appeared to outnumber would-be petitioners, whose worn shoes and sacks of paperwork make them easy prey.
Wu Lijuan, a seasoned petitioner from Hubei Province, said she helped coordinate more than 10,000 former bank employees who came to Beijing from across the nation last week. She said most of the petitioners, middle-aged women seeking greater compensation for their dismissals, were rounded up outside the main petition office and loaded onto buses.
Those who escape the dragnets are often betrayed by employees at the very offices designed to process petitions. Sun Lixiu, 51, a farmer from Sichuan Province, said a clerk at the State Council petition office asked for her ID card, handed back an application form and then tipped off retrievers, who took her to a black jail.
“No one can be trusted,” said Ms. Sun, who is seeking to free her husband from the local police station, where he has been held since July, after accusing town officials of embezzlement.
The financial rewards for apprehending petitioners can be irresistible. According to a directive obtained by Chinese Human Rights Defenders, the police in one Hunan Province county are authorized to spend nearly $300 for each successfully detained petitioner.
The money ends up in the pockets of the retrievers, corrupt petition clerks, and those who run the black jails. The organization said that officers in one Beijing police precinct demanded as much as $140 for each petitioner they turned over to provincial interceptors.
The story of Wu Bowen, 61, a retired shop clerk from Zhejiang Province, is typical. On Feb. 25 she came to the capital to file a petition seeking more compensation for the demolition of her home. The next day, as she sat on the curb, a policeman told her that as an out-of-towner, she had to register at the precinct.
Once there, however, the officer phoned the Zhejiang Province liaison office in Beijing. A short time later, a clutch of retrievers escorted her to a hotel not far from the city’s main tourist attractions.
After nine days of confinement, Ms. Wu stole back her cellphone and revealed the hotel’s address to her son, who called the offices of The New York Times.
When three men reluctantly opened the door to Room 208 at the Zhanle Hotel, Ms. Wu cried out for help. Confounded by the presence of foreign journalists, the men seemed unable to prevent Ms. Wu from escaping, although they begged her to stay, saying she could not leave until a local county official arrived with their reward money.
Out on the street, Ms. Wu was shaken but undeterred. Asked if she wanted to be taken to the train station so she could return home, she shook her head. “No,” she said. “I’m going to stay in Beijing until I get justice.”
(2010/01/08 - The New York Times) --Page 1丨2 |
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