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

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

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