Seeking Justice, Chinese Land in Secret Jails

Posted by Justin Bresolin

China faces extensive protest and human rights controversy over its “black houses,” secret jails hidden throughout residential and city areas designed to hold protestors and malcontents. As Beijing hosts its National People’s Congress, thousands of citizens rush to lodge formal complaints using the government’s petition system, while others go to more extreme public demonstrations of their discontentment. The state media calculates and estimated 10 million petitions lodged for such injustices as illegal searches and seizures and unpaid wages, in addition to the aforementioned imprisonments. In retaliation, the Chinese government uses the black houses to round off and contain aggravated citizens in an effort to lessen these complaints and deter citizens from causing embarrassment to the centralized government.
Human rights groups describe the process of plainclothes police and other armed muscle grabbing citizens off the streets and holding them for indefinite periods of time in the secret prisons, frequently beaten and mistreated during their stay, sometimes fatally. Human rights advocates also accuse the country’s police of ignoring these injustices, and the Chinese government of maintaining flippant indifference toward efforts to undermine established channels of protest communication. Some accuse China of fostering these prisons in response to pressure placed on local governments to prevent protesters from reaching the capital.
Prime Minister Wen Jiabo continued to argue for the use of the China’s petition system to resolve social conflict, and express public concern through “legal channels.” Authority representatives denied the existence of these prisons during testimony to the United Nations Rights council, in spite of growing evidence gathered by rights groups and citizen protestors. As protestors continue to grow in number, and outside journalists begin to investigate the accusations, it seems to be only a matter of time before this latest injustice is added to the mound of international criticism and scrutiny China has continued to endure from the international community.