Results tagged “blackjails”

Today's Links: "Black" jails, typhoon relief efforts and lead poisoning protests

Today's Links: "Black" jails, typhoon relief efforts and lead poisoning protests

  • Rape and beatings in a Beijing “black jail” hotel [Black and White Cat] "Last week’s edition of Southern Weekly (Aug. 6) carried an extraordinarily rare article on a subject that is usually off-limits for the mainstream media in China: the “black jails” that operate outside of the law in Beijing, detaining people who have committed no crime and have simply come to the capital to exercise their legal right to petition the central government. The report avoids the term “black jail” and does not discuss the widespread use of these illegal places of detention. Nevertheless, it gives a graphic account of life inside one of them. The spark for this article was the rape of a girl from Anhui province in the middle of the night, six hours after she arrived, by one of the thugs employed by a Henan local official to guard the petitioners in storeroom in the Juyuan Hotel near Beijing South Station."
  • U.S. Helicopters to Join Taiwan Typhoon Relief Effort [Bloomberg] "Four U.S. helicopters that can airlift earth-moving equipment may help with relief efforts from tomorrow in Taiwan, where hundreds of people are believed buried under mudslides caused by Typhoon Morakot. A U.S. team is due in Taiwan today with two CH53 heavy-lift helicopters and two SH60 medium-lift models en route, said Chris Kavanagh, a spokesman for the American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto U.S. embassy in Taipei."
  • China Halts Steel-Firm Sale Amid Worker Protest [WSJ] " Protesting steelworkers in China have forced the government to abandon privatization plans for the second time in a month, in a sign of increasing labor activism. Officials in Henan province on Sunday called off the sale of state-owned Linzhou Iron & Steel Co. after some 3,000 workers, demonstrating since Tuesday, briefly blocked a government mediator from leaving the plant, according to the state-controlled Xinhua news agency."

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By Elaine Chow in on August 17, 2009 8:00 PM

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Today's Links: CCTV fire sparks protest, ethnic tension quelling stickers, and black jails

Today's Links: CCTV fire sparks protest, ethnic tension quelling stickers, and black jails

  • Protest at China TV tower [The Straits Times] "Demonstrators gathered outside a fire-gutted tower near the new China Central Television (CCTV) headquarters in Beijing on Tuesday, protesting against what they called forced eviction, state press said. About 30 residents accused the state-run television station of trying to get them to move from the area to make way for the massive and nearly completed construction project, Xinhua news agency said. After about an hour, police persuaded the protesters to put away their banners and leave, the report said. "
  • China Backs Off Latest Rio Tinto Claims [WSJ] "Chinese officials distanced the government from allegations on a state-backed Web site that employees of mining giant Rio Tinto PLC had used years of "deceit" to obtain state secrets that cost China's steel industry more than $100 billion — spotlighting the murky and often confusing way China handles such secrecy cases. The allegations, published over the weekend, had quickly gained widespread attention, as they appeared to represent the government ratcheting up pressure over the case of four Rio Tinto employees, including an Australian citizen, who were detained last month by the Shanghai State Security Bureau on vague accusations of using bribery to obtain secrets that harmed China's national interests."
  • Another suspect dies in Kunming police custody [GoKunming] "A man being held in detention in Kunming died in a hospital on Saturday with no clear cause of death, according to a Xinhua report. According to a police spokesperson speaking to reporters on Sunday, 43-year-old Wang Shukun (王树坤) had been held in the Guandu District Detention Center since July 19 before being checked into a hospital by police on August 6. After undergoing emergency procedures to save his life, Wang died early Saturday, the spokesperson said."

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By Shanghaiist in on August 11, 2009 7:00 PM

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