New first-person reporting on Beijing’s “Black Jails”:

With the abolition of custody and repatriation (C&R) system in 2003, it seems the Chinese petitioners no longer have to worry about being detained as illegal residents when they leave for a strange city to petition a higher governmental institution. However, according to blogger Xu Zhiyong, a young professor of law and strong advocate for human rights, those supplicants are actually still being intercepted by the local officials from the way to the State Bureau for Letters and Calls, the Supreme People’s Court or other departments, and forcedly taken to some makeshift house of detention, being lock up without any legal process. As the places which confined the petitioners are always hidden among the ordinary buildings, people call them “Black Jails”.

In cooperation with citizen reporter Zhou Shuguang (Zola) and other two journalists Chen Er (Doubleaf) and Guo Jiannong, Xu Zhiyong, who firstly blogged Beijing’s black jails in the end of September, went to visit one of the unlawful prisons again on Monday, attacked by a group of thugs who were allegedly hired by the authorities…

Severe Chinese reactions to dissident Hu Jia’s Nobel nomination:

Now in 2008 that Hu Jia is rumored to be a top contender for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, the news was at least reported, although quickly harmonized away, leaving just those which bear Liu Jianchao’s harmonious talking point that a Nobel Peace Prize for Hu will without doubt hurt the feelings of the Chinese people, and just the rumor of it already has…