Aidan Hartley Aidan Hartley

The terrible secrets of Beijing’s ‘black jails’

The author’s arrest while investigating Chinese prisons

issue 13 October 2007

The author’s arrest while investigating Chinese prisons

A crowd of faeces-stained, starving figures with haunted eyes stared at us from behind the bars. Some looked cold and wet, as if they had been hosed down with water. Most of them were old, and some handicapped. They began wailing and pleading with us.

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