Chinese debate future of labour camps
MALCOLM MOORE
July 15, 2010
               
SHANGHAI: China is looking at closing its network of labour camps, allowing an unprecedented public debate over the controversial program.
Since the 1950s, China has used ''re-education through labour'' to imprison people without trial.
There are an estimated 300,000 prisoners undergoing re-education through labour in about 310 camps, according to China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong non-government organisation.
The camps were originally used in Chairman Mao's era to lock away so-called rightists, counter-revolutionaries and landlords.
While 5 to 10 per cent of the detainees today are political prisoners, the camps are now more commonly used to house drug addicts, street hawkers, prostitutes and pickpockets. Inmates can be imprisoned for up to four years.
The United Nations has called for the camps to be abolished a number of times and it appeared as if the Chinese government would close them in 2007, but they remained in force.
Camp inmates interviewed by China Human Rights Defenders, another non-government organisation in Hong Kong, said they had been shackled upside down, electrocuted and forced to work when sick.
''We worked between 14 and 15 hours every day, and aside from time for eating we did not stop until after 9pm,'' one prisoner told the group.
In another case, a prisoner was allegedly forced to work while suffering from a severe infection and died weighing just 35 kilograms.
The multiple abuses at the labour camps have led to an unprecedented open debate in the Beijing News, a government-owned newspaper, about whether they should be closed.
Yu Jianrong, a liberal legal scholar and a key adviser to the Chinese government, wrote in an editorial that it was important for China to ''advance with the times''.
''The system has already seen its day,'' he wrote.
From its establishment until before the Cultural Revolution, re-education through labour was 'a tool of political struggle'.
''After reform and opening, it became a 'method of social management'.
''But its fundamental nature has not changed.
''It is still a method of social control outside of judicial procedure.''
However, Mr Yu's views were opposed by Jiang Ming'an, a professor of law at Peking University, who said it was essential that China retain a system where small-time troublemakers could be punished without recourse to the courts.
Likening the labour camps to a bottle of medicine, he said that while the medicine could be changed, the bottle should be retained.
Telegraph, London
Link here:
http://www.smh.com.au/world/chin ... 20100714-10b65.html

Work is the right of the average person.  The state thrives best if the individual works hard to maintain the state.  Those who damaged the state should work off their debts to society in rebuilding what is needed by state.  People however are human and will make mistakes
in overlooking their own personal health, others fail to notice health issues.  

In the United States we have chain gangs to make prisoners who committed crimes do labor for the people.  These chain gangs work
many of the jobs for goods and services Americans need such as license plates, accounting and roadside cleaning as well
as prison industrial labor for furniture and other goods.  As article clearly notes criminals who have done harm to others and themselves
are working off their debts to society.

news on China from western medai has never been very accurate.


i myself have been to a few labour camps in China.
of course, not all are the same, some might be in very bad conditions.
but the ones i have been to... the prisoners chose to work long hours.
the longer they work, they better they behave and perform in their work, they earlier they get released.

in Dongguan factories, most civilian workers work 12hours a day for 6-7 days a week anyway.
it happened before that one company cut back on their overtime working hours, the workers went on strike, complaining the working hours are too little! They want at least 280 working hours a month!

I agree with Kaka...the western media has a sort of anti china stance when reporting, ie death penalty, where China is first, but America a close 2nd, its sounds like a sore loser.

I agree that some labour camps might have horrendous conditions but at least the inmates are repaying society and actually doing something, maybe even learning skills they can use when released. Contrast this to the western world, I lived in the UK and can only give them as an example, but inmates just sit around waiting to be released, some even complaining about the condition of the cells.

Recently, the UK has a problem where there is not enough space for inmates, and have to settle with people on police tages on their ankles, they have sex offenders running free and the whole system is a mess IMO.

Don't think that the western world havent thought about labour camps, theyre most worried about cheap labour in asia, but can't implement without seeming like hypocrites. If they can't have it themselves, no-one can.

Sorry for sounding anti-western world, I'm not (maybe a little anti-american), I lived in England for 17 years, but its just my views.

I'm sure every labour camp is different, and I can't really comment on conditions they are in since I haven't seen first hand what they look like and how the people there are treated.
However, from a purely conceptual point of view, I think it makes sense.
- you are contributing something back to society
- not strictly sucking resouces from society by doing nothing and being fed,
- from a sanity standpoint doing something is better than staring at a cell all day
- maybe learn a skill which would be helpful, if and when released
- better able to interact with people, again if and when released

i wonder why china would close it down.  the govt seems to ignore dissenters & do as they will.  There must be a reason why the about face of this policy.

It is a good idea where the inmate can at least do something productive. It may be many inmates without anything to do would actually be worse off mentally than when they went in.  People even inmates need something to occupy their time and be productive at whatever it is. It might be mindless work but perhaps wit effort o reviser of society it could be managed by switching up jobs etc.