Word: blacking
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They found me on an average stroll through Urban Outfitters. With no luck in the clothing department, I began mindlessly thumbing through the racks of neon sunglasses. One pair in particular beckoned me, though it was the plainest of the bunch: they were faux reading glasses with black frames and clear lenses. I pulled them on like armor. My metamorphosis had finally arrived. I was no longer the airhead, I was the coveted, feared, admired intellectual. I immediately bought them...
...experts caution that China still needs a wholesale examination of how its legal system handles detainees. A report released Nov. 12 by New York-based Human Rights Watch describes a system of "black jails" in Beijing and provincial capitals that operate outside the law, though with the implicit approval of police and judicial officials...
...According to the report, the black jails are generally used to detain people who travel to Beijing and other cities to petition the government for redress of injustices faced in the countryside. The control of court systems by local officials means that they can't find justice at home. They often come to bigger cities with stories of official corruption, illegal land seizures or workplace inequities. The petition system, a remnant of the Qing Dynasty-era letters-and-visits system, is wildly ineffective, with just 3 out of 2,000 cases resolved, according to one study. Still, for poor Chinese...
...having citizens complain to your superiors is not good for the careers of Chinese officials. Local and regional governments arrange teams of "retrievers" who round up petitioners before they can put their complaints before higher authorities. The petitioners are held in black jails - which could be anything from a hotel to an empty school - for weeks or even months before being sent home. Human Rights Watch interviewed 38 former black-jail detainees who described beatings, sleep deprivation and lack of food and medical care. A black-jail guard went on trial in Beijing this month for allegedly raping...
...difficulty in improving the treatment of people in black jails is that the government has so far refused to acknowledge that they exist. In a periodic review before the U.N. Human Rights Council in June, the Chinese government said there were no black jails in the country. "The very sinister aspect of black jails is that they are completely off the books," says Phelim Kine, an Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch. "These are unlawful, secret detention facilities that are not under any due legal process. The detainees don't have access to lawyers. They are stripped of their mobile...