Just words on a Piece of Paper

In the United States, the First Amendment's Rights of
Freedom of speech and the Right to Petition the
Government for grievances are taken very seriously
by branches of government. In China, the constitution
also grants many rights, but that is sometimes where
the rights end according to the following article from
the New York Times

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November 27, 2009
A Rare Chinese Look at Secret Detentions
By ANDREW JACOBS
BEIJING — In a rare dose of candor that contradicts past
official statements, a state-run magazine has published an
article that details a secret network of detention centers
used to prevent aggrieved citizens from lodging complaints
against the Chinese government.

Liaowang, or Outlook, a dependably stodgy publication
aimed at Communist Party bureaucrats and policy makers,
ran an exposé on Tuesday laying out the Byzantine network
of interceptors, guards and holding pens used to put off
the petitioners who flock to Beijing in the hope that the
authorities will resolve longstanding grievances, many of
them involving official corruption in their hometowns.

According to the report, which was also published online
by the official Xinhua news agency, those grabbed off the
street often have their cellphones and identification
confiscated before being locked away in guesthouses
or dank basements. After being held for days or weeks,
inadequately fed and sometimes beaten, they are shipped
back to their home provinces with the admonition that
they stay away from the capital.

At peak times, the article said, as many as 10,000 retrievers
— those paid by local officials to keep petitioners from
successfully filing their complaints — roam Beijing in search
of quarry. The report counted 73 secret detention centers,
many of them run by regional governments, and laid out in
detail the lucrative business of retrieving, detaining and
sending home petitioners. The magazine described it as a
“chain of gray industry.”

Such a system of extralegal detention, sometimes called black jails,
“damages the legitimate rights of petitioners and seriously damages
the government’s image,” the article said.

Although the right to petition the authorities is enshrined
in the Constitution, that right is frequently swallowed up
by the reality of contemporary China’s system of governance:
local officials, facing pressure to maintain social stability,
are penalized for allowing too many complainants to
find their way to the offices of the central government.

The article in Outlook comes less than two weeks after
Human Rights Watch issued a report documenting China’s
network of secret jails — a report that prompted a Foreign
Ministry spokesman to deny their existence. “There are no
black jails in China,” Qin Gang, the spokesman, said when
asked about the report. “If citizens have complaints and
suggestions about government work, they can convey
them to the relevant authorities through legitimate and
normal channels.”

Given the government’s tight control of the media,
human rights advocates expressed guarded optimism
that the article might signal a shift away from official
tolerance for the jails, which are thought to have
existed since 2005.

“The fact that the report focuses on the issue in a
substantive and detailed way gives us hope that the
Chinese government might end its longtime denial of
the existence of black jails and move toward closing
them down, liberating the detainees and bringing
the perpetrators to justice,” said Phelim Kine, a
Hong Kong-based researcher with Human Rights Watch.

Zhang Jing contributed research.

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Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company