Op-Ed: "Shattering the China Dream: Unlawful Detentions Undermine Respect for Beijing"

Today the Washington Post published an op-ed by Rebecca MacKinnon, Berkman fellow and co-founder of Global Voices, about the detention of Hao Wu, a Global Voices regional editor and contributor, by China's state authorities.  To learn more, please visit Rebecca's blog or here.

"On Feb. 16, Hu Jia, a Chinese AIDS activist, was asked to get in a car with men he didn't recognize. They put a black hood over his head and pushed him down so he couldn't see where he was being taken. Then they locked him in the inner room of a hotel suite and interrogated him for 41 days. He was given no access to a lawyer, and his family was given no information about his whereabouts. Then, on day 41, his captors once more put a black hood on him, drove him to a shopping center and dropped him off roughly an hour's walk from his home.

Hu's ordeal involved no courts, arrest warrants, official paperwork, police stations or jails. While his captors work for China's State Security Bureau, what happened can only be described as a kidnapping. He plans to sue the police for unlawful behavior, but he admits he's not optimistic about winning.

Hu's abduction was one of a growing number of such "cases." Their extralegality and the lack of official records make it impossible to count them. Human rights organizations try to keep count, but the outside world generally hears about only those victims whose friends and family manage to overcome police pressure to stay quiet and who are also well-connected or savvy enough to get the story out somehow...."

To continue reading, please visit WashingtonPost.com.