Group Accuses China of Abuses in Secret Jails - NYTimes.com

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By KEITH BRADSHER

HONG KONG —China’s national government tolerates an extensive network of secret jails in Beijing operated by provincial and municipal governments to prevent their citizens from complaining to national officials, according to a report released here Thursday by Human Rights Watch.

The report was based on interviews with 38 former detainees who had gone to Beijing to complain after suffering what they described as corruption or other abuses of power at lower levels of government. It said that guards at the so-called black jails beat, sexually abused, intimidated and robbed men, women and teenagers.

Provincial and municipal officials in China are subject to a national civil service evaluation system in which they are penalized based on the number of complaints received in Beijing about their management. So local and provincial officials have a strong incentive to prevent petitioners from reaching the central government.

Sophie Richardson, the advocacy director for Asia at Human Rights Watch, said that abuses were widespread in China’s prison system, which operates under some judicial supervision, but that they were worse in unofficial jails.

“We’re talking about a country with torture in formal detention centers, and the black jails are 10 floors down” in terms of the treatment of detainees, she said.

Jeffrey Bader, the National Security Council director for East Asian affairs, said in a conference call with reporters on Monday that President Obama planned to raise a series of human rights issues with President Hu Jintao when they meet next week in Beijing. While Mr. Bader did not mention the unofficial jails, he did say that President Obama would discuss “rule of law,” an amorphous phrase that would cover a wide range of extrajudicial practices in China.

The jails have been the subject of news reports inside and outside China, but the new report offers many details of abuses within their confines. Central government officials continue to deny their existence.

“There are no black jails in China,” Qin Gang, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said at a regular news conference in Beijing on Thursday. “If citizens have complaints and suggestions about government work, they can convey them to the relevant authorities through legitimate and normal channels.”

A call to the press office of the Ministry of Public Security in Beijing on Thursday was transferred repeatedly by officials who said that the subject was not in their area of responsibility. The call was finally transferred to a spokesman who declined to give his name and said that he was not aware of any black jails.

China has taken some steps in recent months to safeguard the legal rights of those who run afoul of the authorities. New regulations drafted by the Ministry of Public Security and released on Monday by the State Council, or cabinet, bar forced labor at government-authorized detention centers, where people accused of crimes are held before trial.

The new rules also ban officials at detention centers from charging detainees for expenses like food, which must now be paid for by the government.

But Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong researcher for Human Rights Watch, said that the new rules did nothing to help detainees at unofficial jails, because they applied only to people within the judicial system.

Government-approved detention centers were at the center of a series of scandals earlier this year. Li Qiaoming, 24, died at one of these centers in Yunnan Province last February. Local authorities initially blamed an accident during a game of hide and seek; public criticism prompted an investigation by the central government that determined that Mr. Li was beaten to death.

But the unofficial jails have captured more attention in recent months.

According to Chinese media, a guard at an unofficial jail in an inexpensive guesthouse pleaded guilty on Nov. 4 to raping a 21-year-old woman from Anhui Province who had come to Beijing to complain about harassment at her university. Nearly a dozen people reportedly witnessed the rape, and about 50 detainees, including the young woman, managed to escape jail when the guard fled after the assault.

The court dismissed charges against the guesthouse and two provincial liaison officials, according to the official China Daily newspaper.