The Sun Online has spoken to human rights activist Peter Dahlin who spent 23 days in a so-called black jail in 2016
14th March 2018, 5:56 pmUpdated: 14th March 2018, 5:56 pm
CHINA is turning into a Judge Dredd-style police state where citizens are thrown into secret prisons and tortured without a court process or access to lawyers, human rights activists have claimed.
Later this month, President Xi will introduce a new “corruption” law which will legalise the instant detention of any government worker who dares threaten his near-total authority.
The Sun Online has spoken to human rights activist Peter Dahlin, 36, who spent 23 agonising days in one of these hell-hole “black jails.”
The Swedish-born activist was jailed for his work exposing rights abuses in the increasingly totalitarian one-party dictatorship.
Peter claims that prisoners held in these secret prisons, usually for a six month period, are “beaten, deprived of sleep and force-fed drugs.”
He said: “I was treated fairly well because I was a foreign national, however, I was still interrogated every day for five to six hours and intentionally kept awake.
A protester is pictured being arrested in China. There is nothing to suggest this man was sent to a ‘black jail’ – but hundreds like him are every year
“They would also have these incredibly loud screeching noises coming from the floor or above me to make sure I couldn’t fall asleep.
“I was also woken one night to hear the sound of my Chinese colleague being beaten in the room beside me which was clearly done intentionally.”
Peter was eventually released and deported after agreeing to a televised “confession” where he apologised for harming the Chinese government and hurting “the feelings of the Chinese people.”
So-called ‘black jail’ detention, which China refers to as Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location (RSDL), involves purpose-built prisons which operate outside the country’s judicial process.
Peter claims China is rapidly turning into a police state with officers have “complete power” to lift people off the street and jail them without access to a lawyer.
He calls this “enforced disappearance” adding: “Your family are not told where you are, your case is not published in the government database.
“So you basically disappear off the street. No court order is needed.”
Once released, prisoners are kept under police supervision for at least one year.
Peter added: “Sometimes they are allowed to go back to their home in this probation period but often they are kept in a hotel against their will.”
This expansion of police power is no more evident in the Muslim-majority province of Xinjiang in west China which has more officers per capita than the terrifying Stasi-run East Germany did during the Cold War.
