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 to the Haidian District People’s Congress.If you’re wondering why there’s no action in the photos at the top and bottom of this page, that’s because they were taken by me about a week after Xu Zhiyong’s first two posts. Once you’ve read his account, I think you might understand why I had no great desire to attract more any more attention than necessary while I was taking the pictures.
Read the rest. And while you’re at it, read Oiwan Lam’s translation of a first person account by a member of a group petitioning for the recovery of their kidnapped children.
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