Black Jail Inmates Freed

Authorities in the Chinese capital have taken the rare step of closing down a privately run detention center, or "black jail," after inmates reported their incarceration to the police.

According to a recent report in Beijing's Xinjing News, police in Beijing's Changping county moved in on the 300-square-meter (3,230-square feet) facility run by a private security firm in Beiqijia township in July, releasing 13 inmates.

The eldest of those who were being illegally detained at the facility was 81, while the youngest was an infant, the paper said.

The security firm had been contracted to round up ordinary Chinese with grievances against the ruling Communist Party, it said.

Chinese authorities raised security measures to unprecedented levels in the capital following recent protests in the Middle East, rounding up and beating people trying to lodge complaints against officials during key politicial anniversaries this summer.

Thousands of petitioners come to Beijing each year to seek redress for complaints against their local governments.

They are frequently held in "black jails," which stand outside the criminal justice system, and are escorted back to their hometowns by local governments, which run representative offices in the capital for the purpose.

A Chongqing petitioner surnamed Li said she had suffered a similar fate when she traveled to Beijing in December 2008, only to be incarcerated in a similar detention center in Beijing's Tongzhou county.

"It was in Tongzhou, which back then was miles from anywhere," Li said. "It was a former warehouse that no-one was leasing, so the black jail took it over."

"I was locked up in there, and no-one outside the center knew anything about it," she said. "There was no sign outside the center, and you couldn't see the people inside."

Privately hired

Li said the jail was run by privately hired security personnel. "If anyone was taken there they were hidden inside a van, so the local people wouldn't usually be able to see them," she said.

She said the detention center she went to was run by the representative office of the Chongqing municipal government in Beijing. "They would get paid 200 yuan (31 dollars) by the local government per person per night," Li said. "They would also get paid for picking up [petitioners]."

"If there was a work unit involved, they would charge the work unit."

Last year, the Guangzhou-based Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper reported that the Beijing Anyuanding Security Company had set up a "black jail" in Beijing, specializing in the detention and incarceration of petitioners.

The report led to an official investigation and the arrest of the company bosses.

Activists are becoming increasingly vocal about China’s “black jails,” which they say function as detention centers holding protesters without due process or right to appeal.

Last year, petitioners in the northern Chinese province of Shaanxi who were held in a “law study center” after they pursued complaints against local officials weren’t given enough food in detention, with one death reported from starvation, according to relatives and former inmates.

One petitioner in eastern China’s Jiangsu province reported being summoned to a study group in late 2008, where she said she was beaten, humiliated, and sexually abused during her eight-day detention.

Reported by Lin Ping for RFA's Mandarin service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.