The terrible secrets of Beijing’s ‘black jails’

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. ‘Let us out!’ they sobbed. ‘This is a prison!’ They showed us one ragged woman. ‘Look at this. She was beaten!’ They carried another elderly woman towards the bars who appeared to be paralysed. Guarding the inmates were young men in black jumpsuits. I knew they would stop us filming any second now, but at first the guards reacted slowly. ‘Those are the thugs that beat us!’ yelled one of the inmates, pointing. ‘They strangled and beat me!’

‘I’ve been held here for 14 days!’ an old man hobbling on a walking stick said to me. ‘In one room there are about 20 to 30 people.