China's Detention Centers, Hell on Earth

A China Daily newspaper exposé unveils the living hell on earth that China's thousands of pretrial detention centers really are, including the death of prisoners under very questionable circumstances and police rackets operating the facilities for huge profits.

Two handcuffed inmates talk to each other at a
detention center in Shenzhen , Southern China.
(EPA photo)

The article reports that since Feb. 8, eight inmates waiting for trial have died under custody, prompting their relatives to challenge the authorities' less than credible justifications.

The paper, which is distributed only to international audiences, also quotes sources alleging that the police units in charge run the detention centers as torture chambers for profit aiming at getting confessions as soon as possible to make room for other potential inmates. A source calls this racket "the most profitable piece of [the police forces'] territory."

The New York Times:

Detention centers drew widespread attention at home and abroad last month after an inmate in Yunnan Province, Li Qiaoming, 24, charged with illegal logging, died of brain injuries. Officials first said he had hit his head while playing a hide-and-seek game in which the seeker is blindfolded. An investigation revealed that he had been beaten to death by three other inmates, and six police officials at the center were dismissed or punished.

Since then, six other inmates have died in custody, including an 18-year-old from Hunan Province who local Communist Party officials said became unwell while being interrogated.

Police officials have said that three inmates died of illness. But in one of those cases, family members say, the body of a Hebei Province inmate said to have died of pneumonia had bruises and a broken tooth, evidence of beating. The other two cases remain in dispute.

During its meeting this month, the party-controlled legislature, the National People’s Congress, established a committee to investigate the centers. It recently conducted surprise inspections in Liaoyuan, a city in Jilin Province, the newspaper reported.

But in the article, the experts said the only way to sharply reduce abuses was to remove detention centers from local police control. “That has always been strongly resisted by police departments,” Hou Xinyi, deputy dean of the law school at Nankai University in Tianjin, was quoted as saying. The police “complain such a reform will not help their investigations and the crackdown on crime,” he said.

Amnesty International contended in a March 20 statement that the problems in the detention centers were symptoms of a larger lack of accountability and fairness in the justice system, in part because inmates often had little access to lawyers or even family visits. Amnesty urged the Chinese government to change its criminal procedure law to impose an explicit ban on the use of confessions obtained through torture or ill treatment.

Daily China also quotes legislators calling for urgent reforms to this shameful detention scheme.