Human rights activist Liu Dejun looks through a room in a “black jail” in Beijing in this Aug. 4 photo. Activists said more than a dozen illegal detention centers exist in Beijing.

Bejing ? The 20-year-old student spoke softly but firmly as she described how a dispute over grades led to her rape at an unofficial jail.

She had been expelled from college because of poor exam scores, so she went to the capital city to petition the Chinese government to reinstate her. Thousands of Chinese travel to Beijing every year to air complaints ignored by local authorities, ranging from real estate scams to wrongful death cases.

But shortly after the student arrived, she was picked up by police. She was delivered to a run-down hotel and dumped in a locked room filled with other detainees. There, a guard raped her.

The student’s case has put a spotlight on China’s “black jails,” where rights groups say growing numbers of people seeking justice from the government end up. Rights groups say these petitioners are routinely chased by provincial officials or thugs for hire who round them up before they can reach the central government. The officials fear the complaints may cost them a promotion or a job or trigger investigations.

Protesters held in a hotel

The former college student arrived in Beijing on July 31 after a 10-hour train journey from Jieshou city in southeastern Anhui province. She came to complain that her college expelled her and refused to let her switch to another major.

She was picked up by police Aug. 3 near Tiananmen Square and taken to an assistance center on the south side of the city. There, she was handed over to men who said they would give her a place to stay, then take her back to her hometown.

They delivered her to the Juyuan Guesthouse, a four-story hotel offering basic rooms rented hourly or for the night. But she wasn’t given a room.

At the end of a hallway on the ground floor of the hotel is a filthy storeroom crammed with metal-framed bunk beds and old blankets. There are no mattresses or pillows. Garbage litters the floor and bare bulbs hang from the crumbling ceiling. There is a small squat toilet in the corner and a bolted door made of plywood that opens onto the hotel’s parking lot.

The student said she arrived in the evening, after the other detainees had finished dinner.

“I asked another petitioner what I could eat and they said: ‘Here you will eat like a pig and sleep like a dog,'” she said.

Later that night, one of the guards flirted with her. When she refused his advances, the man forced his way on to her bed, an upper bunk, and raped her, she said.

Liu Dejun, a Beijing human rights and democracy activist, said at least 11 people witnessed the attack, and he has interviewed three of them on videotape.

The guard fled after the rape, witnesses said. About 50 detainees, including the student, broke through the wooden door and ran away Tuesday morning, taking two bloody sheets with them as evidence of the assault.

Official response

Juyuan staff, including the guest house manager, who would only give his surname, Zhang, denied the storeroom ever housed petitioners. They say the space was once a set for a television drama and hasn’t been used since.

In a statement faxed to the AP, the Beijing Public Security Bureau’s spokesman’s office said an investigation into the rape allegations had been opened and a suspect identified.

“No effort is being spared in making an arrest,” the statement said.

It did not respond to questions about the current whereabouts of the student or whether black jails are allowed under Chinese law.

Liu held out little hope of a crackdown on black jails unless there were wider reforms of the legal and bureaucratic system.

“President Hu Jintao is always talking about stability and harmony,” he said. “Preserving stability now means suppressing these petitioners because our legal system is not independent and there is no democratic oversight.”