black jails

This is the front door of a “black jail”, where people who go to petition the authorities in Beijing often find themselves ending up. Black and White Cat explains: When Custody and Repatriation was abolished, the so-called black jails sprang up to replace them as makeshift detention centers for petitioners. Officially, they don’t exist. Below, is my translation of three blog posts about one of these places written by Xu Zhiyong, a young professor at the Beijing University of Post and Telecommunications. In 2003, he was elected as an independent deputy... [read full story]