11/12/09 10:15am
There are speculations flying around that there are secret jails being operated in Beijing. This jails are supposedly being operated by provincial and municipal governments. This is occurring in efforts to prevent citizens from complaining to higher governments about issues with smaller and lower governments. Guards of these prisons are accused of beating, sexually abusing, and robbing men, women, and teenagers. Former detainees had gone to Beijing to submit petitions complaining about mistreatment, corruption, and abuse of power from lower governments. Provincial and municipal officials in China are subject to a national civil service evaluation based on the number of complaints they receive and are penalized based on these complaints. So it would benefit officials to make sure these citizens do not make it to the higher government. President Obama is said to raise some human rights questions with President Hu Jinto when he visits China next week. Foreign Ministry spokesperson stated that there are no "black jails" in China. Citizens have the right to complain or make suggestions to the correct officials when they need to. Unofficial jails continue to capture more attention in the news especially with the guilty plea of an correction officer who admitted to raping a women and then fleeing.
The situation to me sounds like these black jails could be highly likely. I mean having people detained to prevent them from reaching higher government officials sounds like something a corrupt government would do. Especially when lower governments would get penalized because of the complaints. I believe that the corruption, the abuse, and anything else going on in the lower governments is trying to be slide under the rug. It makes perfect sense to detainee the citizens that feel they have valid complaints in the situation
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/world/asia/13china.html?ref=world
2 comments:
All I could think about when I read this was the movie "Spy Games." But beyond that, this sounds pretty twisted. After talking about organ harvesting and how that is manipulated via scheduling and political/social climate in China, maltreatment of living prisoners doesn't seem too awfully farfetched. As far as keeping people from contacting those they need to in order to solve a problem, it reminds me a bit of any tech-support hotline. Not quite them same.
This article is no big surprise to me. I wouldn't put it past China to have these black jails, or anywhere in the world right now. I mean, even the U.S. had them a time ago. Everyday there is something new going on that should be a horrific event, but it doesn't seem all that bad because there are so many worse things occurring.
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