People generally think that the system started in 1957 to handle those who "idled about and disliked working, who committed offences, or who did not engage in a socially acceptable occupation but were capable of working." The primary targets of this system were those whose offences did not merit arrest and sentencing but were not deemed suitable for regular employment. It was thought that if these people were allowed into regular society, they would increase the unemployment figures. But in reality, the reeducation-through-labor system mainly targeted the "rightists" that were active nationwide at that time.
By about 1958, over one hundred labor camps had been established across China, and similar camps were also run by counties, communes, and even production brigades. Soon afterward, nearly one million people had been sent to such camps. From books such as My Experience as a Rightist, people can read how cruel and inhumane the so-called reeducation system was. In 1961, the Ministry of Public Security admitted: "[We] had widened the scope of admission and wrongly admitted a batch of people who should not have been detained. In management, they were treated like criminals, and overly intensive labor was imposed in everyday management and production, which resulted in the unnatural deaths of many people who were subjected to reeducation."
From July 1999 onward, an overwhelming number of Falun Gong practitioners were sent to these forced labor camps to be persecuted. Nearly every day, coercive "transformation" methods are used on practitioners, and incidents of police torturing people to the point of disability and death are still occurring.
The forced labor system violates China's own Constitution, its Law-making Law, and the Law on Administrative Penalty. It also goes against international conventions of human rights that the Communist regime has signed as a signatory state. Within the forced labor system as it now stands, there is no clear time limit established as to how long a person can be detained in a labor camp, and many people have been detained repeatedly; the longest detention recorded is over 20 years. Likewise, there is no clear criterion that defines who should be subjected to forced labor, and the system has been used as the primary means by which the regime deals with dissidents and restricts their freedom. Because the forced labor system has many loopholes in the administration of its jurisdiction, in many circumstances, the courts refuse to accept such cases due to their sensitive subject matter.
At the end of 2007, 69 Chinese scholars and people engaged in the legal profession, including economist Mao Yushi, human rights lawyer Li Fangping, and scholar Hu Xingdou, published a jointly-signed open letter, calling for the abolishment of the forced labor system.
However, as this system is one of the methods that the CCP regime uses to maintain its existence, it cannot allow the system to be abolished, as it has become a necessary means of maintaining its dictatorship. Or, as others have suggested, the CCP will maintain the system but in a disguised form (for example, by changing the name from a labor camp to a school). The CCP will not allow its base of power to be touched; the use of violence and terror to subjugate the people has become a tool of the state. The forced labor system is a miniature of the Communists' extreme autocratic rule.
1. The absolute power of a team leader in a forced labor camp
Everyone who is sent to a labor camp must first learn to lower his or her head and they must not look around at will. Then they will be registered and body-searched. The team leader puts on a heavy overcoat and a mouth cover, and then he/she carefully searches every single seam of the newcomer's clothes, even down to their underwear. All personal belongings, letters, and money are confiscated. When a newcomer arrives, he/she must learn the rules in the labor camp. When they wish to be allowed to eat, walk, or even use the toilet, they have to report to the team leader and say, "Detainee so-and-so begs to go and fetch food or begs to pass by, or begs to go to the toilet. Thank you, leader!" At roll call, the detainees must squat down and put their arms around their knees. They must not talk unless asked. The rule says that the team leader must not smile at the detainees. So no leader smiles at any detainee. Just like the regime authorities never smile at the Chinese people.
The team leader can punish anyone at any time for any reason. The usual punishment is to force someone to stand in one position for a long time. The victim is not allowed to move; no shopping, no TV watching, no visiting--even going to the toilet is forbidden. The labor camp has a set of rules that newcomers must learn, and this information is treated as "internal material" and is forbidden to be divulged outside the camp. For example, there is a system of "personnel cangues," which means four to eight inmates could be designated to supervise one Falun Gong practitioner, depending on how steadfastly the practitioner holds to his beliefs. There are also rules about how many days a detainee can have his term reduced by doing what. There are also the so-called "four grades of prevention" against escape. In short, the absolute authority of the team leader is all based on violence and the regime's "law."
In Part 1 of the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, it points out that the Chinese Communist Party is a Leninist-style political party. When the CCP was first established, it set out three major lines as guidance for the Party's construction, namely the political line, the ideological line, and the organizational line. The ideological line is the Communist Party's philosophical foundation; the political line is its goal, and the organizational line is used to achieve its goal through strict organizational means. The absolute requirement of any Party member or the people in a communist society is total submission to the Party; this is all that the organizational line upholds.
2. The system of maintaining a public storeroom aims to deprive and control all personal property
After one is admitted to a labor camp, apart from the uniform, one is only allowed a bed, a blanket, and a pillow case. Money has to be deposited into an account, and writing paper, pens, food, and ration certificates must be put in the public storeroom. The storeroom opens twice a week at most, in order for toilet paper or some food to be taken out. Permission to take anything more is entirely up to the team leader and one has to show deep gratitude for team leader's "kindness." The number of days that the storeroom is kept closed is also used as a form of punishment. Such is the system practiced in the labor camps. One can hear a class head shouting, "Put it in the storeroom! Open the storeroom!" or, "The team leader said [you] could take three." Such a system has completely deprived detainees of their personal belongings that they are entitled to have. In other words, the CCP controls what you eat and drink and what you can have. Because the labor camps focus on persecuting Falun Gong practitioners, reducing their food (sometimes they have very little to eat to start with, and the food is frequently too dirty to eat) means that many practitioners are very weak. But they are still forced to do extremely long hours of labor every day.
In the economic system of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (1851-1864), there was a very important state storehouse system, based on egalitarianism, which was referred to by scholars as "Utopia," or a religious public ownership system. It stipulated that, "Anyone who hides over five taels of silver and fails to hand them in to the public storehouse will be punished by law." (From History of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom) This concept of public ownership was used by the CCP to the extreme during the "Three Big Reforms."
3. An absence of culture
In order to "transform" the minds of those who hold any beliefs that are different than those of the Chinese Communist Party, the labor camps have adopted the most evil means. Detainees are only allowed to read brainwashing books and are deprived of the freedom to read what everyone should be free to read. Noble and righteous words and films can show people a moral way to live, and things that depict truthfulness, kindness, and beauty are just and righteous and are therefore exactly what the CCP is most afraid of. The regime squelches people's natural inclination to learn, so as to create an environment that upholds their policy of keeping people in ignorance.
The CCP claims that it represents advanced culture, and yet it has created an absence of culture during its rule. The films made during the "Cultural Revolution" are said to be very confusing, and the true intellectuals produced hardly anything during that period of time. We do not deny that there are some very talented and accomplished people in today's China; however, under the control of Party Culture, works produced by the Chinese Writers Association and the Chinese Film Association can hardly satisfy people's spiritual needs. "Lack of belief" has become a common saying among people today in China.
In the book Past Events Did Not Disappear Like Mists, it it state, "Truckloads of ancient books were sent to the paper mill; the city wall, ornate roofs and ornamental archways......" were demolished, "For some leaders, they did not have a yesterday and they do not need yesterday either", "If [they] do not set out to destroy the old, then they cannot talk about the new." Having destroyed traditional Chinese culture and wiped out the writings of those learned scholars, then what exactly is this "New China" that they have established? This cultural void has resulted in Chinese people living in a tightly sealed mental enclosure, which has made the Chinese people no longer be able to think independently. They can only mouth the Party words. Furthermore, for no reason they are hostile toward the West's political democracy and the concept of the value of human rights.
4. The poison of ideological remolding
The CCP claims that they re-molded China's last emperor, Pu Yi, as well as high-ranking officials of the National Party, such as Du Yuming.
The CCP's attempt to "re-mold" Falun Gong practitioners is a complete failure. Usually, there are several "transformation" methods employed: one is to "damage the Fa with the Fa." This is, in fact, a distortion and destruction of Dafa's principles. The second is to distort the teachings of Buddhism. This method is just as evil as the first one. And the third one is to force practitioners to admit fault and plead guilty, referring to the rules and laws arbitrarily made by the CCP. Along with these fallacies, the most commonly used means of persecution include coercive brainwashing, beatings, long-term sleep deprivation, being shocked with electric batons, kept shackled to a bed board with handcuffs, put in solitary confinement without any sound, or locked in cells while subjected to unbearably piercing and loud noises. Sometimes practitioners are also taken out and left chained in the wilderness, and subjected to other brutal means to break their will.
The CCP is also brainwashing the minds of the entire Chinese nation by distorting the ancient classics, criticizing the essence of China's traditional, divinely-imparted culture, and using Marxist atheism to control people's ideology. However, in the labor camps, the police don't talk much about Marxism. It seems that they themselves know that the Marxist theories no longer have any validity and the Chinese people have become confused in their ideological recognition. To the rest of the world, those whose thoughts and statements are filled with Marxism seem ridiculous and are no longer viewed as normal human beings.
5. Maximum exploitation of the detainees in labor camps
The Minghui website (Chinese version of Clearwisdom) has reported that according to reliable sources, the No. 2 Labor Camp of Shandong Province, which has been especially engaged in the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners, has long used the factory known as the "Shandong 83 Silicon Carbide Heating Elements" (CNSD83) as a front to unscrupulously produce products made by forced labor. The detainees are forced to work 12-18 hours a day, and if they fail to finish their daily quota, they are forced to work even longer hours. The labor camp boasted on its own website that they produce "700,000 silicon carbide rods, 700 tons of ceramic products, with a net income of 6.6 million yuan, and 1.15 million yuan in silicon tax."
The labor camps engage in tasks and production of a variety items made by slave labor, such as making eyelashes (cosmetic), gluing colored glass bottles, winding wires, stringing bracelets, gluing book covers, making toys, packing chopsticks, packing towels, cutting off odd pieces of thread from pants, and other jobs. The hygienic conditions are extremely bad, and people are forced to work at least ten hours per day. The World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG) has published a report about Falun Gong practitioners being forced to engage in slave labor production. Forced labor not only violates the fundamental human rights of the detainees, but also brings in lucrative profits to the labor camps. The Communist regime has offered many favorable policies to labor camps and prisons to encourage them to attract foreign investment and promote export.
Let us take a look at China's society under CCP rule: The CCP claims that it is the "vanguard of the working class," and says that workers and peasants are the masters of the country. However, as a result of continuous exploitation by the CCP, workers, in fact, have very low wages, and the peasants are very poor; workers have been laid off, and peasants have lost their land; their houses have been forcibly demolished with very little or no compensation, and peasant workers imported from the countryside are suffering miserably. There is no social security to help with the difficulties of old age, unemployment, medical treatment, and housing. The commercialized education has led to greatly lowered national education standards, and high housing prices have put an unbearable strain on the masses. Economic development is achieved at the expense of sacrificing the environment for future generations, due to the reckless high consumption of natural resources and energy.
6. Unscrupulous persecution - the murderous nature of the CCP
"Ruin their reputation, bankrupt them financially and destroy them physically" is the policy that the Communist regime has instituted against Falun Gong. In the nine years that the persecution has been carried out, by conservative estimates, more than three thousand innocent people have died, from an eight-month old baby to the elderly in their 70s. The labor camps have always followed this persecution policy. In order to achieve a high "transformation rate," they shock practitioners with electric batons for extended periods of time. This was the method used on a man in his 50s, who was tortured to death by the Assault Team of the 2nd Division of a labor camp in Beijing. Every single labor camp in China is awash in heavy blood debts, whether by force-feeding, beating, indescribably cruel torture, or outright killing. Many people have died from serious injuries and illnesses sustained as a result of being tortured. Yet, those lawless agents responsible for these deaths remain free of legal repercussion! The regime provides protection and sustains its labor camps. In return the labor camps help sustain the regime through terror.
The CCP has repeatedly carried out horrendous massacres throughout the course of its history, and launched one political movement after another. These have included "The Purge of the AB Clique," the "Suppression of Counter-Revolutionaries," the "Land Reform," the "Three Anti's Campaign" and "Five Anti's Campaign," the "Great Famine," the "Cultural Revolution," the massacre of students at Tiananmen Square, the suppression of the Tibetan people, and many others repressive movements. Part 7 of the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party describes point by point the murderous history of the CCP, the methods it uses to suppress various groups and the results of such methods. The inherently bloodthirsty nature of the CCP determines that it will continue to use killing to maintain its bloody rule of terror.
The anger growing in the Chinese people will erupt like a volcano! The CCP has always put itself on the opposite side of the people and has maximally robbed people of their wealth and resources. In order to achieve maximum economic profit, it has now resorted to deception and the production of toxic food. Throughout its entire existence, the regime has never, for one day, stopped killing people. The information blockade, intense political pressure and the nationwide apparatus of violence are the only means that the regime has to maintain its illegitimate rule.
In actuality, these evil crimes committed inside the forced labor system are widely known throughout the world. The forced labor system is a unique institution created under the rule of the CCP. The Communist regime's ruling system is the fertile soil for the growth of the forced labor system. When abolition of the forced labor system no longer be just empty words? There is only one way, and that is for the Chinese people to quit the Party and its associated organizations, and let the CCP collapse upon its rotten base!
In present Chinese society under Communist rule, thieves and robbers run rampant and prostitutes and drug abusers flaunt themselves everywhere. The regime adopts an alleged "censorship policy" for the Party and its newspapers, which in reality only serves to silence differing opinions, thus effectively insuring that the Chinese people have no possibility of the right to freedom of speech, association, assembly, or appeal. Under the CCP's thumb, they are living a life of imprisonment and are silently, helplessly suffering in pain and fear.
However, kindhearted people will not give in. The Nine Commentaries have effectively exposed the true nature of the Communist Party and is offering people a means to reflect upon the Party, to break away from the regime's specter, and to return China to a normal society. The evil Party's systems, thoughts, and influence will be eliminated by history soon, as the people are awakening.
October 3, 2008