The Los Angeles Times tells the story of petitioner Shi Yaping and others like her who have been held in “black jails”:
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.
