The Chinese government has flatly denied the existence of black jails. In an April 2009 Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) press conference, a MOFA official responded to an Al Jazeera correspondent's query about black jails by stating categorically that, "Things like this do not exist in China." In June 2009, the Chinese government asserted in the Outcome Report of the United Nations Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review of China's human rights record that, "There are no black jails in the country."
Black jail guards routinely subject these detainees to abuses including physical violence, theft, extortion, threats, intimidation, and deprivation of food, sleep, and medical care.
A 46-year-old former detainee from Jiangsu province, who spent more than a month in a black jail, cried with fear and frustration as she recalled her abduction."[The abductors] are inhuman...two people dragged me by the hair and put me into the car. My two hands were tied up and I couldn't move. Then [after arriving back in Jiangsu] they put me inside a room where there were two women who stripped me of my clothes...[and] beat my head [and] used their feet to stomp my body," the former detainee said.
The majority of the former black jail detainees interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that they were abducted by individuals who provided no legal justification for detention or any information about detainees' eventual destination or possible length of detention. One 52-year-old petitioner from Liaoning province told Human Rights Watch: "I was detained by retrievers from [my home province of] Liaoning who were in plainclothes and never showed me any identification. I doubt they had any [official] identification. They never told me the reason why they detained me; they never even spoke to me and didn't tell me how long they were going to detain me for."
Black jail detainees are also subject to psychological abuse, including threats of sexual violence. A 42-year-old former detainee from Sichuan province was told by her black jail guards that if she attempted to escape they would "... take me to the male prison and let [the inmates] take turns raping [me]." Human Rights Watch also documented black jail guards' use of sleep and food deprivation and denial of needed medical care as a means of punishment or to control or elicit information from detainees. A 70-year-old former detainee from Hubei province resorted to a three-day hunger strike to compel her captors to allow her access to a doctor.
Minors under the age of 18 have been detained in black jails in blatant violation of China's commitments to the rights of children. One former detainee interviewed by Human Rights Watch was a 15-year-old girl, abducted from the streets of Beijing while petitioning on behalf of her crippled father, who was locked up in a nursing home in Gansu province for more than two months and subjected to severe beatings.
"To visit these kinds of abuses on citizens who have already been failed repeatedly by the legal system is the height of hypocrisy," said Richardson.
Black jails appear to have emerged since the Chinese government abolished laws permitting the arbitrary detention of non-residents and vagrants. While that decision was a welcome move to curb the police's powers of arbitrary detention, black jails now serve as extralegal detention centers for "undesirables" in cities. Black jails constitute an unlawful system to detain petitioners as a means to protect government officials at the county, municipal, and provincial levels from financial and career advancement penalties linked to limiting petitioning activities by citizens from their areas in major cities like Beijing. Unpublished local government documents describe penalties levied against local officials who fail to take decisive action when petitioners from their geographical area seek legal redress in provincial capitals and Beijing. In addition, the operators of black jails receive from those local-level governments daily cash payments of 150 yuan (US$22) to 200 yuan (US$29) per person, creating another incentive to employ forms of illegal detention.
The detention of petitioners is a violation of international law, which guarantees the freedom of expression, and of China's own Regulations on Letters and Visits, the law which regulates petitioning activities. Detaining anyone - even suspected offenders - without legal authority to do so and without giving the detained recourse to legal process is a serious violation of several international instruments as well as China's constitution and numerous domestic laws. Under international law, a state commits an enforced disappearance when its agents take a person into custody and it denies holding the person or fails to disclose the person's whereabouts.
"China has laws that set out how arrests and detentions should take place, but the government is blatantly ignoring those in the cases of black jails and those detained in them," said Richardson. "A failure to live up to its own legal standards - let alone international standards - is not the hallmark of a government aspiring to global respect."
Testimony from former detainees of China's black jails
"[The guards] entered without a word, grabbed me...kneed me in the chest and pounded my lower belly with their fists until I passed out. After it was over I was in pain, but they didn't leave a mark on my body."
- a former black jail detainee interviewed by Human Rights Watch
"I asked why they were detaining me, and as a group [the guards] came in and punched and kicked me and said they wanted to kill me. I loudly cried for help and they stopped, but from then on, I didn't dare [risk another beating]."
- a former black jail detainee interviewed by Human Rights Watch
"There was no medical treatment [in the black jail]. I'm not very healthy and combined with the disgusting conditions inside [the facility], I was sick every day, but they wouldn't give me medical treatment and wouldn't let me go to see a doctor. [A guard] said, ‘You don't want to die here because your life [to us] isn't worth one cent. [If] I want you dead, you can die [here] as easily as an ant.'"
- a former black jail detainee interviewed by Human Rights Watch
"Every day I could only sleep three hours and they would at any time wake me in order so that I couldn't run away. I was hungry every day, but couldn't get enough to eat. The second time I was detained for 37 days...I lost 20 kilograms."
- a former black jail detainee interviewed by Human Rights Watch
" Another good example would be Gitmo, or Guantanamo Bay "Guantanamo Bay is a highly controversial detainment facility located in Cuba. It has been the target of numerous protests and media attacks due to its allegedly unorthodox treatment of captives. The facility is operated by Joint Task Force Guantánamo of the United States government since 2002 in Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, which is on the shore of Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.[1]
The detainment areas consist of three camps: Camp Delta (which includes Camp Echo), Camp Iguana, and Camp X-Ray, the last of which has been closed. The facility is often referred to as Guantánamo, or Gitmo.[2][3] In 2001, President George W. Bush signed an executive order that stipulated that the US military could indefinitely detain any non-citizen who was believed to be involved in international terrorism. After the Justice Department advised that the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp could be considered outside US legal jurisdiction, prisoners captured in Afghanistan were moved there beginning in early 2002. After the Bush administration asserted that detainees were not entitled to any of the protections of the Geneva Conventions, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld on June 29, 2006 that they were entitled to the minimal protections listed under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.[4] Following this, on July 7, 2006, the Department of Defense issued an internal memo stating that prisoners would in the future be entitled to protection under Common Article 3.[5][6][7] The detainees currently held as of June 2008 have been classified by the United States as "enemy combatants".
On January 22, 2009 the White House announced that President Barack Obama had signed an order to suspend the proceedings of the Guantanamo military commission for 120 days and that the detention facility would be shut down within the year.[8][9] On January 29, 2009 a military judge at Guantanamo rejected the White House request in the case of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, creating an unexpected challenge for the administration as it reviews how America puts Guantanamo detainees on trial.[10]
On May 20, 2009, the United States Senate passed an amendment to the Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2009 (H.R. 2346) by a 90-6 vote to block funds needed for the transfer or release of prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.[11]
As of November 2009, 215 prisoners remain at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
Three British Muslim prisoners, now known in the media as the "Tipton Three", were released in 2004 without charge. The three have alleged ongoing torture, sexual degradation, forced drugging and religious persecution being committed by U.S. forces at Guantánamo Bay.[42] Former Guantánamo detainee Mehdi Ghezali was freed without charge on July 9, 2004, after two and one-half years internment. Ghezali has claimed that he was the victim of repeated torture. Omar Deghayes alleges he was blinded by pepper spray during his detention.[43] Juma Al Dossary claims he was interrogated hundreds of times, beaten, tortured with broken glass, barbed wire, burning cigarettes, and sexual assaults.[44] David Hicks also made allegations of torture and mistreatment in Guantánamo Bay, but as part of his plea bargain Hicks withdrew the allegations.
An Associated Press report claims that some detainees were turned over to the U.S. by Afghan tribesmen in return for cash bounties [45] The first Denbeaux study reproduces copies of several of leaflets, flyers and posters the U.S. Government distributed to advertise the bounty program; some of which offered bounties of "millions of dollars".[46]
Forced feeding accusations by hunger-striking detainees began in the fall of 2005: "Detainees said large feeding tubes were forcibly shoved up their noses and down into their stomachs, with guards using the same tubes from one patient to another. The detainees say no sedatives were provided during these procedures, which they allege took place in front of U.S. physicians, including the head of the prison hospital."[47][48] "A hunger striking detainee at Guantánamo Bay wants a judge to order the removal of his feeding tube so he can be allowed to die, one of his lawyers has said."[49] Within a few weeks, the Department of Defense "extended an invitation to United Nations Special Rapporteurs to visit detention facilities at Guantánamo Bay Naval Station".[50][51] This was rejected by the U.N. considering the restrictions "that [the] three human rights officials invited to Guantánamo Bay wouldn't be allowed to conduct private interviews" with prisoners.[52] Simultaneously, media reports ensued surrounding the question of prisoner treatment.[53][54][55] "District Court Judge Gladys Kessler also ordered the U.S. government to give medical records going back a week before such feedings take place."[56] In early November 2005, the U.S. suddenly accelerated, for unknown reasons, the rate of prisoner release, but this was unsustained.[57][58][59][60]
In 2005, it was reported that sexual methods were allegedly used by female interrogators to break Muslim prisoners.[61]"
There are some obvious violations of human rights reported in these articles. To your question about which rights should be protected in prisons: that is a debatable issue--one on which you would have to form an opinion based on your research. Once you have collated your findings, perhaps you will more easily come to your conclusion.
ReplyDeleteSo I should... do what? Should I highlight the human rights violated in the prisons I have researched, and then formulate an opinion on what I think SHOULD be protected??
ReplyDelete