Sunday, November 15, 2009

Black Jails in China?!

This is from the Google Site of one of my classmate in Asian Studies class. I just think this article would bring up some disccusion about the "Big Brothers" and censorship.

Since 2003, many Chinese citizens have been held in black jails, secretive and unlawful facilities, which violate their rights with impunity. Most of the citizens being held are petitioners from rural areas that go to Beijing to seek redress for many abuses like government corruption and police torture. As if the abuses aren’t enough already, the inhumane abductors violently detained them and abused them furthermore. Those abuses include physical violence, intimidation, threats, deprivation of food, sleep, medical care, and so forth. The petitioners are only in Beijing to bring justice back to themselves and not have to suffer furthermore. However, instead of being humane and help deal with the problem, government officials, security forces, and their agents abduct the people off the streets, take away their possessions, and imprison them in black jails. Where are the rights of these people? The Chinese government made the law that permits arbitrary detention for vagrants and non-residents illegal, but that doesn’t stop people from detaining these petitioners. In fact, many more are being detained in these black jails for no reason and these detainees have no idea of how long they will be detained for. People can’t just be detained for a reason that the abductors don’t even know and for a however long period of time the abductors feel like detaining them. In addition, even if the Chinese government in June 2009 stated, “there are no black jails in the country”, they should not pay cash payments of 150 yuan to 200 yuan for each person they detained. This will cause many more abductors craving for money to employ for this kind of job. If the Chinese government wants to insist that there are no black jails in China, they should completely get rid of such things; not encourage people to abduct even more people by providing a fair and easy income for them.

Why do you think that even though the government abolishes the law that permits absolute detention for non-residents, black jails are still emerging? (the classmate's question)

video: http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/11/02/china-secret-black-jails-hide-severe-rights-abuses

3 comments:

  1. Nice immigrant English by your classmate.

    Petitions are for liberal-reformist wussies. If they want change they can make their own revolution. Until then, the government can insist whatever it wants to insist.

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  2. Just because the government reinstates a law, the law still has "pores" and people still try to get around stuff. This is a classic example of Alcohol Prohibition. It was illegal to drink alcohol but many still did so back then.

    And by the way the County Magistrate electrions are coming up in a few weeks. Some want to keep the skies blue. Other want to keep the fields green.

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  3. lol. please reveal author's name since he is not from the VOR blog.

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