People walk on the Bund promenade along the Huangpu River in Shanghai on Jan. 19, 2026. Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images
Chinese petitioners have been thrown into black jails by local authorities during the Chinese Communist Party’s provincial-level Two Sessions meetings—annual meetings of provincial rubber-stamp lawmakers and political representatives—in early February.
Shanghai petitioners Ding Juying and Zhang Huixian from Pudong, China, went to deliver a letter to National People’s Congress representatives through the official “People’s Letters” system on Feb. 5, the closing day of the Shanghai People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
After delivering the letter, they returned home. However, that evening, Ding was abducted by local police and taken to the “Fan Family Courtyard” farmhouse, a black jail on Chongming Island in Shanghai.
Ding, 79, told the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times: “I am currently in a black jail in Chongming. Four security guards are watching me. I estimate that I will be detained until the end of the central government’s Two Sessions. Last year, I was also detained in a black jail for nearly nine months, from Jan. 21 to March 12, and then from April 12 to Nov. 11.”
The Chinese Communist Party’s national Two Sessions are scheduled to be held from March 4 to March 5 in Beijing.
Black jails are sites used by the Chinese communist regime to illegally detain petitioners and activists.
Ding lost her house and farmland 24 years ago. In 2019, her only remaining private house was forcibly demolished by the local government, leaving her homeless.
After losing their home, Ding and her husband wandered from place to place, sleeping under bridges at night. She described herself as “a homeless person with Chinese characteristics,” a reference to the Chinese Communist Party’s ideology of “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”
They said that on their journey to protect their rights, they repeatedly encountered inhumane suppression.
On June 13, 2019, Ding and her husband sought help from an inspection team of the regime but were detained by the Pudong Branch of the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” and “committing a crime together.” On July 13, 2019, Ding was sentenced to two years in prison for “disrupting the work order of state organs.”
After spending most of last year in a black jail, she was detained again this year in a black jail by local authorities for “stability maintenance.”
Ding is one of several petitioners who have been abducted and detained in black jails in Shanghai around the time of the Two Sessions, according to rights website “Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch.”
Li Xi contributed to this report.
