Lawyers “Surround and Watch” Black Jails: On May 13, 11 rights defense lawyers were detained and beaten for attempting to visit a black jail in Ziyang, Sichuan Province. Since then, the weibo accounts of several public intellectuals have been shuttered, including writer Murong Xuecun‘s.

• Ziyang black jail (资阳黑监狱)
• surround and watch+black jails (围观+黑监狱)
• rights defense lawyers (维权律师)

Other:
• Wang Bu (王补): The former Beijing Public Security Bureau Chief of Scientific Research, who passed away in 1997. On the “Wuxi Economy” TV program, Zhu Ling’s father recently disclosed that Mr. Wang gave his notes on Zhu Ling’s case to Zhu’s parents before his death.
• red bandits (赤匪)
• red bandits (红匪)
• gong bandits (Gong匪): Alternate writing of 共匪 gōng fēi, i.e. communist bandits (共产党匪).
• gongfei

All Chinese-language words are tested using simplified characters. The same terms in traditional characters occasionally return different results.

Browse all of CDT’s collected sensitive words in this bilingual Google spreadsheet.

CDT Chinese runs a project that crowd-sources filtered keywords on Sina Weibo search. CDT independently tests the keywords before posting them, but some searches later become accessible again. We welcome readers to contribute to this project so that we can include the most up-to-date information. To add words, check out the form at the bottom of CDT Chinese’s latest sensitive words post.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: black jails, censorship, Internet censorship, Ministry of Truth, rights defense, Sensitive Words Series, weibo, Zhu Ling
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The recent Spring Festival holiday was the gloomiest ever for 70-year-old Yuzhou villager Wang Yuzhu. At a time when most Chinese return home for family reunions, his son, Wang Gaowei, was sent to jail by the Chaoyang district court on February 5, just five days before the start of Spring Festival.

Song Xuefang said she appeared at Wang’s trial last November, and “remembers clearly Wang admitted to the judge that a man named Bai Zhongxing hired him.”

This matches Wang’s father’s words, who recalled his son was hired by a man surnamed Bai. Bai Zhongxing, the official from Yuzhou Bureau of Letters and Calls who hired Wang Gaowei, is a well-known figure to Yuzhou petitioners as many of them know of Bai’s connections to the black jail.

That liaison officials and local letters and calls bureaus are profiting through illegal detention centers has become an open secret now. According to Yu Jianrong, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, there are two major modes of cooperation between letters and calls bureaus and black jails.

Read more about black jails, via CDT.

© Melissa M. Chan for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: black jails, illegal dententions, petitioners
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Wang Gaowei and his other nine accomplices, natives of Yuzhou City in central China’s Henan Province, imprisoned the 10 petitioners, also from Henan, in April 2012.

They were falsely imprisoned at two courtyards in Wangsiying Township in Beijing’s Chaoyang District for several days, according to the Beijing Chaoyang District People’s Court.

The court ruled that Wang and the other nine respondents had infringed the personal rights of the 10 petitioners, which constituted the crime of false imprisonment.

The case had previously surfaced in December, when premature reports of the sentences appeared in state media but were quickly dismissed as “fake news” by the court. Its resolution revives hopes that change may be afoot for the petitioners who flock to Beijing to air their grievances, but promising signs in the past have not brought an end to the illegal detentions, and uncertainty remains. From Josh Chin at China Real Time Report:

“If it’s the start of a sincere effort to curb the use of black jails and punish those involved, it’s quite significant,” said Joshua Rosenzweig, a human rights researcher at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “But I’d be reluctant to draw too many conclusions from just one case when it’s a problem that’s been so widespread for so many years.”

Nicholas Bequelin, senior Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch, described the court’s decision as one of a several signals the city has recently sent to local governments on the petitioner question. “Beijing’s message to the local officials has been: one, we don’t want your petitioners in Beijing, but two, we don’t want to know how you do that, and three, if something goes awry we won’t necessarily cover up for you,” said Mr. Bequelin.

See also a sympathetic Economic Observer profile of two Beijing-based interceptors and Yu Jianrong’s recent critique of the “rigid stability” machinery of which they are a part, via CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Beijing, black jails, Henan, human rights watch, illegal detentions, petitioners
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“Intercepting petitioners” refers to local officials using various measures to intercept people attempting to petition at the [provincial] or central offices and forcibly taking them back to their hometowns. In China’s current political climate, the intercepting of petitioners has long been an open secret, an “unwritten rule” of petition office stability management work, an uncivilized but tacitly accepted rule for government work, and an important part of the job of those who “greet petitioners.” Whenever the two congresses or National Day or some other “sensitive” time rolls around, many additional ‘petitioner interception’ workers come to Beijing to intercept petitioners from their local area to prevent petitioners from staying in Beijing and increasing the number of complaints about their locale on the record.

[…] Meeting petitioners’ and ‘intercepting petitioners’ are both important reflections of the variation in today’s national petitioning system. Petition officers and officials, local governments, and the central government all participate, using the system as a platform for a kind of game in which they attempt to maximize their own interests. But because of this they have fallen into problems [like the three Yu just listed and those below], this can be called the ‘petitioning paradox.’

[…] The result is that as local governments use even more severe methods to deal with petitioners, the complaints of petitioners become more extreme, creating a vicious cycle.Because of this, the petitioning system has gone from useless to harmful; from reducing pressure to actively increasing it.

Yu was ranked 54th in Foreign Policy magazine’s 100 Top Global Thinkers of 2012 for his ten-year plan for political reform in China.

Ten interceptors were said to have been jailed by a Beijing court early this month for illegally detaining petitioners. The court dismissed this as “fake news”, however, and demanded an apology from Beijing Youth Daily, which first published the story. Petitioners were a key target of the security operation surrounding the recent 18th Party Congress, with some 10,000 detained. Read more about petitioners via CDT, including John Garnaut and Sanghee Liu’s recent account of a former “stability preservation” official’s experience as a petitioner, and Economic Observer’s sympathetic profile of two Beijing-based interceptors.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Beijing, black jails, Charlie Custer, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, local government, National Day, petitioners, petitions, stability maintenance, stability preservation, Yu Jianrong
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The news of the release was first reported online by Chengdu-based Tianwang Human Rights Centre , which said it was informed by a petitioner who had been set free.

Shen Zhihua, a native of eastern Zhejiang province, told the Post in a phone interview that she petitioned in front of state television CCTV on Tuesday morning. The police arrested her and sent her to a detention centre in Beijing’s Jiujing village. She was freed about 7.30pm yesterday evening.

“I estimated the number to be 70,000,” she said, referring to the number of fellow prisoners released last night.

Tianwang Human Rights Centre, run by veteran activist Huang Qi, quoted a Zhejiang petitioner and eyewitness as saying that the number of prisoners released could be 40,000 to 50,000.

The numbers were quickly questioned, and Tianwang subsequently issued an apology for its erroneous report:

李蔚：12.4久敬庄没有七万访民 黄琦：天网真诚接受各界监督，随时改正错误，感谢大家关心 64tianwang.com/bencandy.php?f…

— 中国天网人权事务中心 (@64tianwang) December 5, 2012

Li Wei: Jiujingzhuan doesn’t have 70,000 petitioners. Huang Qi [head of Tianwang]: Tianwang sincerely accepts supervision, and has corrected our error. Thank you everyone for your concern.

On Wednesday, Peter Ford of the Christian Science Monitor visited the Jiujingzhuan Relief Service Center and found that the center experienced nothing more than a routine release of up to 300 people who had been held there.

“Black jails” are routinely used to detain people who travel to Beijing from other cities to petition the central government over their grievances. Another recent report in the Chinese media claimed that a Beijing court sentenced officials to jail for holding citizens in black jails, but the reports were quickly denied by the government and were retracted. Read more about “black jails” via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: black jails, huang qi, illegal detention
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Those convicted were hired by authorities from Changge city in central Henan province to stop petitioners airing their grievances in Beijing, the People’s Daily said on its website, citing a Beijing newspaper.

They held them in rented houses in a Beijing suburb where the petitioners said they were beaten, the report said.

The men wore badges identifying them as employees of the Beijing representative office of the Changge government, it added.

Petitioning officials has deep roots in China, where courts are seen as beyond the reach of ordinary people, who often try to take local disputes ranging from land grabs to corruption to higher levels in the country’s capital Beijing.

Although this sentencing would be a rare judiciary handling of interceptors, the report could not be confirmed, from AP:

Beijing’s Chaoyang District Court sentenced one defendant to a year and a half in prison on Nov. 28 and gave months-long sentences to nine others, according to state media reports. The plaintiffs were not identified and calls to the court rang unanswered.

The report could not immediately be confirmed and it wasn’t clear when the sentences were handed down. The official China Daily newspaper briefly ran a story on its website saying the sentences had not yet been handed down, but later removed the report.

The official Guangmingwang website said the men had detained a number of people from central Henan province who had traveled to the capital hoping to have their complaints settled by the central government. Such petitioners are frequently intercepted by local government agents and detained illegally in shabby hostels commonly known as “black jails.”

The government has recently begun acknowledging the existence of black jails as part of modest attempts to stamp out the most glaring abuses of power, but has met with only middling success. A central government order to close representative offices maintained in Beijing by local governments for the purpose of blocking complaints and lobbying for projects and funding has been mostly ignored.

According to the Global Times, the report circulated about the sentencing was fake:

A Beijing court Sunday denied a report that 10 people who had intercepted and detained petitioners coming to Beijing were sentenced for illegal detention on November 28.

“The court did not pass sentence on a case like that on that day and we are investigating to what extent the story was untrue,” said Huang Shuo, spokesman for Beijing’s Chaoyang District People’s Court, telling the Global Times that the widely circulated report was fake.

A report by Beijing Youth Daily said that 10 suspects, including three minors, from Changge, Central China’s Henan Province, had detained a number of petitioners travelling from Henan to Beijing to petition higher authorities.

Huang admitted the existence of the case but said a sentence has not yet been passed.

Moreover, the court is asking for an apology from the Beijing Youth Daily, AFP adds:

 A Chinese court has asked for an apology from a newspaper which said it jailed 10 “interceptors” who illegally held petitioners attempting to lodge complaints with the government, state media reported on Sunday.

But a court spokeswoman branded the report, which was carried by most major Chinese news websites and widely spread on Chinese social networking websites, as “fake news”, another state-run newspaper, the China Daily, reported.

The spokeswoman, who was not named, “confirmed a case involving city officials from Henan had been heard”, but “denied judges had handed down any verdict”, the paper said.

Beijing’s Chaoyang District Court, which reportedly handed down the verdict, is “in negotiations with Beijing Youth Daily over the printing of an apology and explanation”, the paper said.

See also Inside China’s ‘Black Jails,’ via CDT.

© Melissa M. Chan for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Beijing youth daily, black jails, illegal detentions, petitioners
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At the end of December, on the day of the Laba Rice Congee Festival, when Chinese families typically eat congee, a type of rice porridge, Mr. Song wanted to deliver some congee to the petitioners. I told him that if he distributed it in the evening, I could go with him. But he said that in accordance with Northern custom, the congee should be eaten at lunchtime and so Mr. Song did it on his own. On his way, he was stopped by the police, and the porridge was confiscated. On the day of the Lantern Festival, which marked the end of the annual Chinese New Year holiday, Mr. Song was detained once again, because he gave the petitioners glutinous rice dumplings.

[...] After the coldest months of the winter had passed, I contacted Mr. Song and learned that he’d turned his focus toward rescuing petitioners who were being illegally detained in the infamous black jails, ad hoc detention centers that were set up in hotels to hold “troublemakers” from outside of Beijing until they could be returned forcibly to their hometowns.

[...] After the escape of the blind, barefoot lawyer Chen Guangcheng from his farmhouse in Shandong Province, where he’d been under illegal house arrest, Mr. Song took an even more dangerous risk. He drove to Dongshigu, Mr. Chen’s village, and helped the wife of Mr. Chen’s nephew, who had also been arrested, to escape to Beijing, where she went into hiding to avoid being abused by the local government.

Song's lawyer Liang Xiaojun gives a detailed account of their meeting in a detention center before Song's disapperance. From Yaxue Cao at Seeing Red in China:

I asked how he had been taken to custody and what the interrogation had been like. He spoke fast and clear: He was seized by policemen in the morning of May 4th while waiting in Beijing South Railway Station for a petitioner who had called and asked for his help in what now looked like a premeditated trap. He was then interrogated by policemen from Fengtai District Public Security Bureau and Beijing Headquarters respectively from the afternoon to early next morning. And as Xu Zhiyong predicted, it was about his visit to the black jail in Beijing set up by Chenzhou municipality, Hunan (湖南郴州) and his rescue of petitioners there, but also his online posts to help the petitioners. He was also asked his relationship with Xu Zhiyong—how he met him and how he became a volunteer for Citizen. On May 5, he was charged with “provoking disturbances” (寻衅滋事罪) and transferred to the Fengtai detention center.

[...] After that I was taken up by other obligations. I felt that Song Ze would be released soon, because, legally I couldn’t think of anything that he could possibly be convicted with. His detention was based on charges of “provoking disturbances” (寻衅滋事) as defined by Article 293 of China’s Criminal Law. They refer to the followings: beating another person at will; chasing, intercepting or hurling insults to another person; forcibly taking or demanding, willfully damaging, destroying or occupying public or private property; creating disturbances in a public place. As far as I could see, Song Ze had simply done what a citizen should have done, and he displayed no behaviors punishable by law.

Looking back now, I was too optimistic.

[...] On June 12 I went to Fengtai District detention center again. The officer in charge of the case told me that Song Ze had been switched to residing under surveillance and taken away by people from Beijing PSB a few days ago. He said he didn’t know which department of the PSB they were from, nor did he know where they had taken Song Ze. All he could tell me was that Fengtai District was no long on the case anymore.

Xu Zhiyong also expresses his concern about Song Ze's plight and explains the operation of black jails and surveillance in China. Translation by Hannah at Seeing Red in China:

Black prisons are places where local governments illegally detain petitioners. If the petitioners try to go to the Prime Minister’s house or foreign embassies near Dongjiaominxiang (东交民巷), Wangfujing Street (王府井大街) or other places where they are not supposed to petition, they could be taken away by police. During the so-called sensitive time of Two Meetings each year, they could be apprehended just passing through Chang’an Street (长安街) and being found carrying petitioning materials. All these are labeled “irregular petitioning” and the petitioners who have been rounded up are sent to Jiu Jing Zhuang (久敬庄), the detention and deportation center run by the State Bureau of Letters and Calls. Jiu Jing Zhuang would order local governments’ Beijing offices to take away petitioners from their jurisdictions on the same day they arrive in Jiu Jing Zhuang. However, most petitioners cannot be dispatched back to their homes that same day. They must wait to be sent home, perhaps needing a few days or a few weeks, and this turns into a profiteering opportunity for some people.

People running the black prisons are those who have connections with officials in the State Bureau of Letters and Calls or local governments’ Beijing offices. They rent hotel basements, hire thugs, forcibly take the petitioners from Jiu Jing Zhuang, illegally detain them, and then order the local governments to come to get the petitioners and pay a fee for the latters’ stay. They fetch 80 to 200 RMB per petitioner per day.

[...] In reality, residing under surveillance is more formidable than imprisonment. According to the new Criminal Procedure Law, the authority may designate the location for residing under surveillance, but it shall notify their relatives. But China being China, Song Ze’s family has not received any notification. He can still meet with his lawyer when detained in the detention center, but it’s been more than 40 days since he was put under residential surveillance, no one has been able to see Song Ze; and the PSB has refused to answer any questions on his whereabouts.

See more on China's criminal procedure law and black jails via CDT.

© Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: activists, black jails, civil society, criminal procedure law, illegal detentions, lawyers, surveillance, Xu Zhiyong
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“A lot of journalists have done black jail stories,” she said, but hers “was probably the first” to get coverage on TV [Chan refers here to a 2009 report, not, as the story implies, one from March this year]. “It’s also the first time that we got a government official to respond to a question about the existence of black jails.” The official denied the black jails existed, “but it was on the record, Chan said, “so that was useful for human rights groups. And that could be one reason why there’s the perception that I’m a go-getter ….”

But Chan said she doesn’t consider herself the most hard-hitting reporter in China. She admires the many journalists who covered last year’s pro-democracy protests in China, and those who sneaked across the border when Tibetans set themselves ablaze in resistance — both stories she did not pursue. For all of April, she was stuck in Hong Kong, unable to report on the breaking story of blind dissident Chen Guangcheng ….

“I have to face the reality, which is I’m not going back to China any time in the near future, not the way that this has played out,” she said. “And I’m sure I’ll be back in China someday. It’s just a question of when.”

Chan wrote about her reporting and expulsion from China in a blog post at Al Jazeera English last Friday. China’s Foreign Ministry tried to present its own side of the story at a press conference earlier in the week, but has still not offered a clear explanation for the decision.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: black jails, Chen Guangcheng, foreign media, foreign media regulations, journalism, journalists conditions, journalists in china, news media, self-immolations
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While Chan’s report paints a dark picture of the reality facing a number of unknown prisoners in China, a China Daily piece on Monday claims that the draft amendment to the Criminal Procedure Law, which was submitted late last week for a vote at China’s National People’s Congress, will give suspects greater protection. Caixin Online has more on the details of the draft law:

The draft law, which includes 99 items, covers human rights protections, standards for witness testimony and evidence-gathering. The law was approved by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress on March 10, with 168 votes in favor, one abstention and one dissenting vote. Another vote by the National People’s Congress is scheduled to be held on March 14 and the law is expected to be implemented in 2013.

The amendments provoked criticism from several quarters of China’s legal profession, with much of the scrutiny falling on the substance of Article 73 of the draft law.

Under the “residential surveillance” provision, law enforcement agencies will be permitted to detain individuals away from home for an unspecified amount of time. Article 73 of the draft law confers the government the right to detain individuals if they are suspected of involvement in cases related to national security, terrorism or corruption.

Netizens were ablaze with chatter over the new law. One wrote, “These stand as mere slogans on human rights but are ultimately a means to expand police powers,” said a netizen.

Over the weekend, Seeing Red in China’s Yaxue Cao translated and posted a number of Sina Weibo comments in response to the proposed law:

Mar. 9 03:49 Sina Weibo  Repost(4504) Comment(1080)

• 天勇律师江 /Lawyer Jiang Tianyong/(renowned human rights lawyer)/:  Last year, a friend of mine disappeared for two months. Family and friends looked for him everywhere, reported to the police, but didn’t find him. Two months later he returned, his wife received a dozen or so photographs of him with women in bed. The couple fought and filed for divorce. His younger brother was fired from his job for no particular reasons. He told me later that, over the two months, he was repeatedly beaten and 14 times he lost consciousness. Sometimes he was given only one piece of bread to eat in three days. Other times, he was forced to be in bed with a woman and embrace her….What kind of country is this?

Mar. 9 04:41 Sina Weibo  Repost(1333) Comment(427)

• 文涛‏@wentommy/(former reporter with Global Times English edition, fired for reporting on a protest led by Ai Weiwei against forced demolition of an art area in Beijing by unidentified thugs in 2010 ) /: I once had a respectable job, [my history ] was rather clearly defined, and I was lawful in both my private and public life. But even I was detained for 83 days for I don’t know whatever reason. Not a single organization, nobody, not even Taliban, has claimed responsibility for my detention. When endorsing the new revisions to the Criminal Procedure Law, legislators believe they are fighting against the enemies of the state, but pretty soon, they will find the enemies are none other than themselves. The worst time is when no one feels safe. And don’t laugh—we’re all in it.

See also this week’s cartoon for Hexie Farm‘s CDT series, which responds to the proposed changes in the Criminal Procedure Law.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: black jails, criminal procedure law, detention, National People's Congress, Politburo Standing Committee, state security
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Reuters reported last week that, faced with intransigent officials and empty guarantees of safe passage in Linyi, some of Chen’s would-be visitors have taken their complaints to Beijing:

Some of the supporters were beaten by dozens of men in plain clothes while trying to visit Chen on Sunday, and their complaints were later ignored by the local police, said Mao Hengfeng, a petitioner from Shanghai.

She said the petitioners then went to Beijing’s Ministry of Public Security, but it was not clear whether officials accepted their petition expressing concerns about Chen’s treatment.

“We were roughed up and pushed around, and some of us were hurt, but the police didn’t lift a finger and ignored our complaints,” Mao told Reuters about the weekend incident in Linyi.

“Now we want the Ministry of Public Security to do something about Linyi — it’s a place without any law or rights.”

But Jerome Cohen, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed based on his Nov. 1 testimony to the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China, wrote that the image of the Linyi government as a rogue, independent actor is a misconception. While limited aspects of the story may indeed be cases of local-vs-national government, he argues, the situation as a whole is part of a broader program in which Beijing is entirely complicit.

There are three myths about Mr. Chen’s plight that must be dispelled. One is that such cases of persecution and abuse of lawyers and legal activists are rare in China, and only occur when a few heroic dissidents openly invoke the law to confront injustice rather than rely less confrontational methods ….

A second myth is that Mr. Chen’s recent suffering is merely another example of local government run amok, neither approved nor condoned by the central government. Many attacks on lawyers are indeed local in origin, and Mr. Chen’s case started out that way in 2005 when local authorities first sent thugs to illegally confine him and his family at home. However, the case soon came to the attention of national leaders. After representatives of the Ministry of Public Security reportedly met with local officials to discuss the situation, the authorities launched a criminal prosecution against Mr. Chen, a more conventional type of repression.

A third myth is that there must be some purported legal justification for the suffering that the Chen household has endured since his release from prison last year. Governments, even the Chinese government, normally like to maintain some veneer of plausible legitimacy for their misconduct, however thin it might be. Yet no such justification has come to my knowledge in this case, which seems to have exceeded the bounds of police ingenuity.

See also Andy Yee’s post on Chen’s house arrest as a facet of China’s stability maintenance machinery at Global Voices Online, a slightly different adaptation of Cohen’s testimony at The New York Review of Books, and Human Rights in China Executive Director Sharon Hom’s testimony to the same Congressional-Executive Commission:

It is important to note that Chen Guangcheng’s situation reflects the fate of countless other human rights defenders in China subject to extra-legal measures, including being restrained under constant surveillance within closed premises – in their homes, temporary residences such as boarding houses or hotels (also known as “black jails”), or other undisclosed locations – where they are not permitted to leave. As distinguished from formal sentences of imprisonment, in which authorities officially charge and detain individuals pursuant to cited criminal laws and procedures, Chinese government officials have articulated no specific legal basis for these detentions. As a result, extra-judicially detained rights defenders are left entirely outside the protection of the law, without any recourse to procedures to challenge their detention, under circumstances that could permit serious rights violations – including the use of torture or other ill-treatment.

The commission’s chairman, Representative Chris Smith, announced his intention to visit Chen if possible, and to pursue other avenues if not. From the AFP:

“Enough is enough. The cruelty and extreme violence against Chen and his family brings dishonor to the government of China and must end,” said Representative Chris Smith, chairman of the Congressional Executive Commission on China.

Smith, a Republican from New Jersey who is active on human rights issues, said he would shortly ask China to allow a US congressional delegation to travel to Chen’s village of Dongshigu in eastern Shandong province.

“I am trying to put together a trip to go there and go to his house. We’re already checking flights,” Smith told AFP after the hearing, saying that the lawmakers “desperately hope” that Chen is still alive.

Even if China does not allow the trip, Smith said that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or the US ambassador to China, Gary Locke, should raise the case at the highest levels.

Locke told GlobalPost last Friday that he had actually already expressed his concerns:

“We are very concerned about his treatment and, for instance, the reports his daughter was not allowed to go to school. Although he’s been freed, he is still under severe restrictions on his movements,” Locke told GlobalPost in a private interview Friday. He said the Chinese government has not yet responded to the letter he sent in September ….

Since Locke sent the letter, Chen’s 6-year-old daughter has been allowed to leave her home to attend school, under guard.

The ambassador, who arrived in Beijing in August, added his voice to the chorus calling for China to ease its extreme treatment of the self-taught lawyer, who is known for exposing forced abortions in his hometown in Shandong province.

A new report from the Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers, ‘Legal Advocacy and the 2011 Crackdown in China: Adversity, Repression, and Resilience‘ (PDF) describes earlier interference with efforts to help Chen (pp. 9-10):

On February 16, 2011, a group of activists and lawyers gathered over lunch to strategize about how to come to the aid of Chen Guangcheng, a blind, self-taught legal activist facing an extraordinary level of government abuse. A week earlier, on February 9, Chen and his wife Yuan Weijing publicly released a series of videos describing the 24-hour surveillance and house imprisonment he and his family had been subjected to since his release from prison on September 9, 2010. There was absolutely no legal basis for these measures or the ongoing deprivation of liberty of Chen and his family. The following day, Chen and his wife were beaten in their home in retribution for releasing the videos online. (For more details on Chen’s case, see Box B. [p. 23])

Authorities barred seven individuals from leaving their homes to attend the February 16 meeting, including Li Xiongbing, Li Heping, and Xu Zhiyong, three lawyers whom authorities would proceed to illegally detain at various times in the following months. Another person prevented from attending the meeting, Internet activist and rights defender Wang Lihong, was detained sometime before March 26 and has since been convicted for “assembling a crowd to disturb social order” and sentenced to nine months imprisonment. The February 16 meeting mirrored other gatherings held during the period of Chen’s pre-trial detention in 2006, making Chen’s case notable because it inspired lawyers, human rights defenders, and activists to coalesce as a community in his support.

Enforced disappearance is defined under international law as the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty of a person either by state agents or with official support, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the detention or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person. Chinese authorities proceeded to employ this illegal measure against many of the lawyers who managed to attend the meeting. Police seized lawyers Jiang Tianyong and Tang Jitian that afternoon. Tang was disappeared for three weeks, while Jiang was interrogated and beaten before being released in the evening, only to be disappeared for 2 months from February 19 to April 19. Beijing-based rights lawyer and university lecturer Teng Biao was disappeared for 69 days between February 19 and April 29.

The Economist cited Chen’s would-be visitors as a key demonstration of the Internet’s potential for coordinating activism in China:

The use of the internet to mobilise people to visit Mr Chen has rattled officials far beyond Shandong province. It is the first time in China that activists have made such a persistent effort to show up in solidarity with someone under house arrest. It also coincides with attempts to use weibo, or microblogs, to gain support for independent candidates in elections to low-level “people’s congresses” that have been taking place around the country. Though the congresses have little power, and it is very difficult for truly independent candidates to stand, the polls still make the Communist Party nervous.

Activists know they have little chance of meeting Mr Chen, whose house is floodlit at night and cut off from mobile-phone networks. But there have been numerous quixotic forays. On October 14th a number of disabled men and women from neighbouring Anhui province were turned away. On October 30th, says Human Rights in China, an NGO based in New York, a group of 37 people who made the attempt to get through was attacked by around 100 thugs.

The Globe and Mail’s Mark MacKinnon sees Chen’s predicament as akin to the death of Yueyue and the authorities’ pursuit of Ai Weiwei in reflecting an underbelly sometimes concealed by the bright plumage of China’s economic hi-scores and scientific leaps.

His neighbours stand aside and let it happen. “These people must have known Chen Guangcheng. They might have even been his student, friends, or relatives. But in this place, at this time, no one cared about what was happening to him. These villagers treated him as if he were a stranger, or an enemy. All these villagers had gotten together to gang up against one blind man,” writer Murong Xuecun wondered after he and four friends were roughed up and prevented from seeing Mr. Chen ….

The Communist Party’s supporters will say that dissidents like Mr. Ai and Mr. Chen don’t matter in the big scheme of things. The argument goes that the persecution of these few is a small price to pay for ensuring the stability that allows the People’s Republic to get wealthier, to build a space program, and to experiment – a little – with civil society.

Reading that half of the headlines, it’s hard to argue that progress isn’t being made. But as little Yueyue’s case illustrated so vividly, the costs of that stability – the institutionalized injustice and indifference – are still being tallied.

Italy’s Post Internazionale has interviewed “Crazy Crab”, the cartoonist behind ‘Hexie Farm‘ (which was included in CDT’s recent list of search terms blocked on Sina Weibo) and the ‘Dark Glasses. Portrait‘ project in support of Chen Guangcheng:

The CCP has a long history of using art as a powerful propaganda tool. However, artists can also use art to protest against the one party dictatorship and censorship. If an art work shocks the audience, give them a new perspective and let them think in a different way, then it can help to change the system gradually …. One month ago, I started ‘Dark glasses. Portrait’ campaign to support a blind lawyer, Mr. Chen Guangcheng, who is under house arrest in a village. I received hundreds of photos from unknown people already. Reading their emails I can feel their fear, even from people who are thousands kilometers away from China (in Europe or the US ). But the more I read from participants’ words is still courage and strength.

See more on the Crazy Crab interview via CDT.

Meanwhile, in the Relativity Media Linyi film shoot subplot, Relativity CEO Ryan Kavanaugh was due to appear at the Asia Society’s US-China Film Summit in Los Angeles last Tuesday. He cancelled at the last minute, however, possibly calculating that continued celebration of his firm’s valuable business relationships in China might be derailed by awkward questions about his partners’ other activities. The Washington Post, though, talked to a Linyi official whose enthusiasm for the city’s cinematic prospects remained undented:

In a telephone interview, Su Guiyou, director of the Linyi Propaganda Department’s Culture Industry Office, said that the district hoped to become a center for movie-making and that the American comedy “will be a good chance to publicize Linyi and will help make Linyi famous not only in China, but also the world.” The Hollywood team, he said, filmed for four days last week and shot a “dream scene” in a local quarry.

Asked about Chen and complaints about his treatment, Su said he had never heard of the activist and hung up.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, black jails, cartoonists, Chen Guangcheng, Christopher Smith, congress, congressional hearing, detention, Gary Locke, Hillary Clinton, house arrest, human rights in china, illegal detentions, Jerome cohen, lawyers, Li Heping, Li Xiongbing, linyi, local government, Mao Hengfeng, Murong Xuecun, petitioners, Shandong, Tang Jitian, Teng Biao, United States, Wang Lihong, Xu Zhiyong
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A woman surnamed Zhou from Jiangsu Province said she was suddenly pushed and crammed into a minibus by four unidentified men, who refused to tell her the reason, after she left a government building in Beijing on July 4, The Beijing News reported yesterday.

Zhou said she and two other women in the vehicle were deprived of mobile phones and handbags before they were driven to a residential building in Changping District and locked up. Zhou said she saw at least 50 people, including a white-haired elderly woman, who were held captive in the poorly furnished apartment.

“It was basically ‘black jail,’” Zhou said, adding that they were given inadequate food and hardly slept at night as there was no bed or pillow.

The woman reportedly said she and other detainees were beaten by the guards if they didn’t behave well.

After a four-day detention, Zhou was released due to her “good behavior.”

Read more about black jails via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: black jails, illegal detentions, petitioners
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So what exactly does An Yuan Ding（安元鼎）do for its business? The company is one of the most famous stability contractors responsible for intercepting petition visits in Beijing. According to Southern Metropolis Weekly’s latest investigative report on September 24 , the contractor’s business is to put the petitioners in jail or escort them back to their home county. The staffs of An Yuan Ding are called a “special security force” and they could act like police officers in arresting the petitioners. In fact, An Yuan Ding runs a large number of “black jails” in Beijing and invoices the local government for petitioners’ daily expenses and escort fees during detention. In 2007 the business’ annual turnover was RMB 8.6 million (about USD 1.2 million). The company was listed in the top ten security service brands by the Beijing city government and, in 2008, the business turnover reached RMB 21 million (USD 3 million).

The series of reports about An Yuan Ding has received a lot of echoes online. It quickly became the hottest topic in micro-blogs such as Sina on September 25. Under public pressure, the Beijing police decided to take action against the “illegal detention” and “black jail” business. However, at the same time, the police also raided the Financial Magazine and interrogated the editor about the report. In addition, the propaganda department decided to harmonize all the news related with An Yuan Ding on September 26. The political implications of the case can be aggregated through a Twitter search.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Anyuanding, black jails, petitioners
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According to the English-language China Daily, the company’s employees posed as police officers and dragooned petitioners into “black jails,” where they were held and sometimes beaten until they could be hauled back to their homes in other provinces.

The Chinese government has repeatedly denied that such extralegal detention centers exist. In testimony last year to the United Nations Human Rights Council, Li Baodong, the head of the Chinese mission, stated, “There are no black jails in the country.”

News about the company, Anyuanding Security Technology Service, was published by Caijing and Southern Metropolis Daily, two publications that often push beyond the boundaries that constrain much of China’s official media. According to their reports, the company, which earned $3.1 million in 2008, employs 3,000 “interceptors” whose job it is to ensnare petitioners before they can make it to the central government bureaus where grievances are filed.

According to Southern Metropolis Daily, the Beijing Public Security Bureau detained two of Anyuanding’s executives and charged them with “illegally detaining people and illegally operating a business.” The police did not immediately respond to calls for comment Monday. The company, whose Web site was taken down over the weekend, could not be reached.

See also a report from the official People’s Daily. Read more about black jails via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Anyuanding, black jails, local power, petitioners
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Shi arrived in Beijing months ago hoping officials would resolve her complaint that local police had illegally arrested her nephew. Instead she has found nothing but trouble.

Shi has been imprisoned twice, taken first by security forces to an isolated stockroom and held for days with 100 other people. She was eventually released with her ailing husband, and then was abducted last summer and held for several weeks at a shabby private home.

Jailers denied her requests for water and a piece of paper to swat away the maddening mosquitoes, Shi said.

Today she continues a petitioning process that dates to China’s feudal times.

Read more about black jails, via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: black jails, petitioners, police violence
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Zheng was being watched by a guard inside the locked room, who protested loudly at first to the interview but then walked away. Other guards earlier Saturday stopped Zheng’s wife from getting inside to see him.

Zheng said he and others were taken to Majialou, which Chinese Human Rights Defenders described as “a central ‘black jail’ for petitioners,” for processing before being taken to his current location, a dingy guesthouse with “Siyuan Hotel” spelled out in neon lights.

Zheng said he and three other people were being held there. A small tear in the plastic covering the door’s screen showed a flourescent-lit room with a water cooler.

At first, the guard behind the locked door said Zheng was not there, but Zheng then came to the door.

He said the guards hit his wife and pulled her hair when she tried to get inside to speak with him. Zheng’s wife, Cao Xiangzhen, said the same earlier Saturday.

Read more about “black jails” from CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: activists, black jails, petitioners, police violence, prison abuse
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