China using 'black jails' to prevent dissent
Updated
China's ruling Communist Party will wind up the National People's Congress tomorrow, amid clear signs that social unrest is looming as a serious challenge.
The financial crisis is creating major dislocations, yet Chinese citizens with complaints and grievances have few ways to make themselves heard.
Presenter: Matthew Abud
Speakers: Wang Songlian from Chinese Defenders of Human Rights; Roseanne Rife, Amnesty's Deputy Program Director for the Asia-Pacific region; David Goodman, Professor of Chinese politics at Sydney University; Song Lian, Chinese Defenders of Human Rights
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ABUD: During the National People's Congress this past week, thousands of Chinese citizens have travelled to Beijing to lodge complaints with the country's top officials and politicians. But instead of finding solutions to their problems, they risk winding up in illegal, invisible jails instead. That's according to reports of a network of 'black jails' established in many parts of the country over recent years. The right of individual citizens to petition the country's top leaders to solve their grievances dates back centuries in China. It's included in the Constitution under the current regime.
But petitioners complaining about injustice turn up the heat on their own local officials - and those officials are often keen to stop complaints reaching their superiors. According to human rights groups, that's fuelled a growing industry. This includes clandestine detention centres, and hired so-called 'interceptors' who abduct petitioners, and hold them against their will. Amnesty International says these activities spiked around last year's Beijing Olympics, which drew many protestors. It's increased again with the recent Congress. But Roseanne Rife, Amnesty's Deputy Program Director for the Asia-Pacific region, says it's hard to find out exactly how big the problem is.
RIFE: It's actually incredibly difficult. These illegal detention centres are usually referred to as black jails or black houses, and that's simply because they are not part of the official system. So they are not documented, the petitioners are not counted, it's usually they themselves or their family members who report their detention in the first place.
ABUD: Black jails can be as simple as a room in a hostel or a warehouse space, and according to some commentators, officials from local provinces may run their own setups in Beijing. China's government is famously immense, and grappling with enormous challenges. David Goodman, Professor of Chinese politics at Sydney University says illegal detention isn't caused by deliberate repression from top officials.
GOODMAN: I don't think it would be right to suggest that there is any state or government or even party strategy driving the use of measures to stop people making petitions. What happens in local situations is that on one level the heavy word is put on people not to make a fuss, and if that doesn't work then sometimes local officials, particularly those that are being petitioned against, might use the power of their position or the power of the state to act against the petitioner.
ABUD: But Reif at Amnesty says central authorities are also to blame.
RIFE: I think the central authorities certainly encourage it by helping the local authorities round up their petitioners. Of course the local authorities often hire these individuals to go to Bejing and round up people and bring them back and there have been certain reported incidents where the national offices in Beijing, the petitioning offices, have given a heads-up to different local authorities and to these other hired hands to assist them in rounding them up so there's definitely some collusion involved there, absolutely.
ABUD: China's government denies that any black jails exist. At a quadrennial United Nations review of China's human rights situation last month, a senior official from the state prosecutor's office said there was no such thing in the country, and that it was against national laws.
But rights group CDHR, or Chinese Defenders of Human Rights, interviewed over three thousand petitioners for a report on the issue.
Song Lian from CDHR says illegal arrests have been taking place during this week's Congress - and captives are usually only released once they pose no risk.
LIAN: They are usually then forcefully sent back to their home town, and then at their home town they would be released or continue to be detained in local black jails.
ABUD: China's leaders are keenly aware of the potential threat posed by social instability, especially as the financial crisis deepens. Premier Wen Jiabao has urged the petition system to be used as a way to resolve disputes. As times get tough, the risk of protest is focusing minds.
But Song believes petitioners themselves are changing tack.
LIAN: Right now I think petitioners are getting bolder in their actions, petitioners are doing other things apart from just trying to get their petitions registered. They are doing things like spreading leaflets detailing their abuses in Tiananmen or outside the American Embassy. So I think maybe we will see more intensified confrontation maybe between petitioners and interceptors.
