The Hidden Clothing Sweatshop in the Liaoning Province Second Women’s Prison

(Minghui.org) The Liaoning Province Second Women’s Prison has a building named “Arts and Craft Building.” Unlike its name, the building is in fact a massive sweatshop where the guards take advantage of the prisoners’ free labor to manufacture clothes.

The clothes produced in the prison are shipped to all over China and exported to Japan, South Korea, Canada and other countries. To cover up the fact that they are made by forced labor, the labels always indicated that the clothes were manufactured in specific factories located somewhere else, other than the prison.

The new building has five stories and two elevators that only carry materials – not workers. The fabric is cropped on the first floor and the semi-finished material is sent to the 2nd through 5th floors to be assembled into the final products. The final goods are packaged and stored on the first floor. 

Two days after the building was put to use, both elevators broke down. The prisoners had to carry nearly a ton of materials up and down the stairs. They were exhausted before the day even began. The elevators took weeks to be repaired before they broke down again. Manually carrying the goods upstairs became routine for the prisoners. 

If they could not finish the required piecework quota, the prisoners would face punishment including not being allowed to wash themselves after a day of hard work. Some prisoners were denied wash-ups for days, up to a week, including on hot summer days. During the hot summer days when the shop was full of prisoners, with over a hundred machines running non-stop, the needles and bobbin caps were burning hot and the prisoners were soaked in sweat. 

Falun Gong practitioners imprisoned for upholding their faith face even worse abuses. Some were denied wash-ups for months and had to live with bad hygiene and walk around with a foul smell, simply because they refused to renounce their faith or sign a statement to admit to the so-called crime of practicing Falun Gong. 

There are also other forms of physical abuse, such as being forced to stand still for hours, or having to copy down the prison rules numerous times. The prisoners had to work 11 hours every day, and they were physically exhausted after finishing the daily quota. Many, in order to finish their work, chose to skip meals. Others chose not to drink water all day so as to avoid bathroom breaks. 

Bombarded with hunger, thirst and physical exhaustion, many could not stay focused when they sewed. Often there were accidents when sewing needles went through prisoners’ fingers. Occasionally the needle broke inside the prisoner’s finger, and she had to pull it out with her teeth, put machine grease on it, wrap it with tissue paper, and continue working, as the guards wouldn’t reduce their workload even if they were injured.

Not only did the prisoners have to work for the prison for no pay, they had to lie about the work conditions during official inspections. Before the supervising agents came, the guards would order everyone to say that they worked eight hours a day and took a hot shower every week. The guards would not even blush with shame knowing that everyone worked at least 11 hours a day and took a hot shower no more than twice a year. 

During the two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the guards arranged a prisoner to record the temperatures of all of the prisoners every day, but never really took their temperatures. When someone indeed had a fever, no one cared to isolate her or provide treatment, and she still had to finish the same amount of work as everyone else. 

Newly admitted prisoners were only given a day or two to familiarize themselves with the environment before they were forced to start working. Most wouldn’t be able to finish the daily quota in the beginning, and so would not be allowed to wash themselves and were forced to stand still for hours or copy the prison rules. As they weren’t allowed to purchase daily necessities or borrow things from other prisoners, they had no toothpaste or shampoo to use and sometimes had to pick up used toilet paper from the trashcan if they had to.

Every month, each prisoner was allowed to make a three-minute phone call to their family. Yet they weren’t allowed to talk about the abuses taking place there, and had to say things like “The work is easy, I have plenty to eat and everything I need, and no one is mean to me.” If someone complained about what was truly happening, the guards would deny them from making phone calls or being visited by their families in the future. 

There was supposed to an hour break at noon, but the guards took it away, basically squeezing the prisoners dry. The guards told the prisoners to lean over on their tables to pretend that they were resting, and took a short video to document it and show that the prisoners were given time to rest. A minute break was all the prisoners got at noontime.