(Clearwisdom.net)
Since its inception in 1957, China's Forced Labor Camp system has operated outside of the law, being used as a form of torture and punishment of innocent people. The validity of the forced labor camp system has been questioned and discussed extensively in the Chinese legal community in recent times, while for the last five years, forced labor camps have been utilized by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as its most potent tool of persecution against millions of innocent Falun Gong practitioners. Practitioners have been illegally detained and tortured in the camps, suffering from inhumane treatment and the severe violation of their human rights. Jiang Guobois is a Falun Dafa practitioner and a former deputy county level bureaucrat in Weifang City, Shandong Province. We have documented his experience in the forced labor camp below as evidence of the injustices of this system and to expose its true nature to the public.
1. Detailing the Facts
Mr. Jiang Guobo is 42 years old, and a former deputy county level bureaucrat from the Political and Judicial Committee of Weifang City, Shandong Province. Before practicing Falun Dafa, he suffered from a severe kidney illness, which could not be cured even after extensive medical treatments. Yet in 1995 he regained his health when he learned Falun Dafa.
The persecution against Falun Gong began in full force on July 20, 1999. Jiang believed that as a government officer, he had a responsibility to report to higher governmental levels the benefits of Falun Dafa that he was aware of. He therefore went to Beijing on July 22, 1999. On arrival he heard some rumors and decided that he could be more effective if he returned to Weifang City. On the morning of July 23, Zhang Aijun, the Deputy CCP Secretary of the Political and Judicial Committee, called Jiang into work and detained him at the office for 6 days and nights.
On December 14, 1999, Jiang Guobo went to Beijing a second time with the intention of appealing at the Beijing Appeals Office. At that time the Appeals Office was not an appeals office; it had become a police station where Falun Gong practitioners who appealed were interrogated, arrested and taken back home. Weifang City police officers tore Jiang Guobo's appeal letter into pieces, arrested him and took him to the Weifang City Liaison Office stationed in Beijing. Just one hour later, Jiang Guobo was sent back to Weifang, where he was detained at the Kuiwen District Detention Center for a month. At the detention center, police officers forced him to walk over icy ground in the courtyard and kept him in a steel cage to torture him. After 31 days of detention, his family was forced to pay 5,000 yuan for his release.
In late June 2000, Jiang Guobo appealed a third time at the Beijing National Appeals Office. Police officers arrested him again. Jiang saw many Falun Dafa practitioners detained there, but he escaped. After returning home he was forced to write a self-criticism article at a meeting organized by his work unit. By this time his rank had already been reduced. He said at the meeting, "Appealing is a citizen's fundamental human right granted under the Chinese Constitution. Why should I say I did anything wrong?" Jiang knew from experience that the right to appeal had been taken away from Falun Gong practitioners by Jiang Zemin's regime; therefore, he decided to protest on Tiananmen Square. On October 6, 2000, he arrived at Tiananmen Square and began to do the Falun Gong exercises. Only seconds later, police officers surrounded him, punched and kicked him, and knocked him to the ground.
Jiang was detained at Beijing's Miyun Detention Center. Several days later, he was taken to Beijing's Weifang Liaison Office, and then back to Weifang City the next day. In Weifang, he was detained at the Kuiwen Police Station for two days and one night, and then at a detention center for another month. After another 21 days of detention he was sentenced to three years of forced labor. Just before he was admitted to the Changle Forced Labor Camp, a police officer said to him, "If you renounce Falun Gong now, we will take you home immediately." Jiang Guobo refused. Inside the camp, four police officers pinched his neck and twisted his arms in an effort to have him sign the guarantee statement. They ended up prying his left hand open and pressing his finger onto the statement.
Jiang Guobo simply practiced his right, granted under the Chinese Constitution, to appeal. For that, he was arrested, detained, insulted, tortured, and sent to a forced labor camp without a fair trial. This clearly exposes that police officers, controlled by the CCP, cruelly treated a decent law-abiding citizen.
2. Torture and Abuse at the Forced Labor Camp
The following is what Jiang Guobo told us:
"After I arrived at the Forced Labor Camp, I was assigned to Group 1 of the 2nd Brigade. Group 1 staff first performed a body search, and then police officers ordered some criminal detainees to torture me for a long period of time. They forced me to sit on the ground with my legs out straight in front of me and pull my toes with my hands. When I refused, they punched and kicked me. Later, they taped my hands to my toes with one inch wide tape. Sometimes, the criminals sat on my head or shoulders, or two of them stood on my knees. This torture caused my right knee to swell; the swelling did not subside for half a year.
Once, they bound me on to a bench and inserted objects between my thighs and the bench. After a period of time my legs felt as if they were broken. The pain was excruciating. Once they knew for certain that I would not renounce the practice, they bound my hands to my feet and said, "Whenever you are ready to renounce Falun Dafa, we will release you." I suffered piercing pain and was close to fainting. The sweat soaked my shirt. They tortured me like this for an entire day. My fingers turned blue. At 5 p.m. I told them, "My fingers have turned blue. If my hands become disabled, you will have to take full responsibility." They released me. My right hand's pinky and index fingers were numb for a long time, and I drifted in and out of consciousness for a period of time.
It was winter and cold in the labor camp. Seven to eight people stripped off my clothes and carried me to the bathroom. They bound me up and dunked me into a big tub full of water. They pushed my head under the water and scratched my back with a dirty toilet brush. Mostly, they kept me on the ground, and poured the cold water onto my head and body. At the same time, two people would fill my mouth and nose with water through two hoses rendering me unable to breathe. If I resisted, three or four of the inmates would push me down. Sometimes two of them would stand on one of my legs. They would torture me like this and then throw me into a storage room, naked on the concrete floor, and they kept the windows open for a few hours, so I would freeze from the cold air. Each torture session would last for over half an hour, and they repeated it more than ten times.
One time late at night, over ten criminals pressed my head down, and using plastic tubes they forced pressurized water into my mouth and nose, while several others poured water over my head. This torture was applied for a very long time. My mind was clear and I felt that I was on the verge of death. I deeply experienced the horror of a torture-death. While I was struggling, one of them stood on my knees and another stood on my feet. I pulled my leg away from under them as forcefully as I could muster. A chunk of flesh from my right ankle was ripped off by the brick on the floor. The wound was bleeding profusely. They stopped at that point and asked if I would continue to practice? I responded, "Yes, yes, yes!" Therefore, they tortured me until I fainted. I don't know how long I had been out. When I woke up, I found myself on the floor of the storage room. I could hear one person say "Be sure not to leave any visible injuries on his body."
Another night, after I had been tortured and was frozen for several hours in the bathroom, they put me into the storage room taped to a bed board, naked on the floor. I heard one of the criminals ask, "Should I fill him with urine?" Another one answered, "No, use what we have here." Then they poured three big bottles of unknown fluid through a tube into my mouth. The fluid was cold, dirty and bitter. While on the verge of death, I asked them, "Why would you torture me to death?" They answered, "We know you are a good person. But if we do not reform you, the police officers will punish us." Another one said, "Think about it, we would not torture a person like you without orders from the police officers. How else would we dare treat you like this?"
Ever since I arrived in the camp, I was rarely allowed to go to sleep before midnight. Once they did not allow me to sleep for four consecutive nights. When not being physically tortured, I was forced to watch TV programs, or read materials that defamed and slandered Falun Dafa.
After all their torture methods to make me renounce Falun Dafa had failed, police officer Liu Jianguang talked with me. I told him how I had been tortured. He pretended to be surprised and said he would punish the culprits. But after that they tortured me even more brutally.
At the forced labor camp, the police officers selected the cruelest criminal detainees to be group leaders. They did this to have them torture kind-hearted Dafa practitioners. Almost all of the 70 practitioners detained in the camp suffered tortures. The criminal who tortured me was one of the cruelest.
I witnessed the torture of other practitioners. One was practitioner Mr. Wang Ping, a former worker from Gaomi City. He spoke up when Wu Dajun and I were inhumanly tortured. Therefore, criminal detainees took off his pants and forced him to lie face down on the ground and whipped him with a triangular-shaped belt all over his body. I saw numerous cuts bleeding on his legs after the torture.
Mr. Cao Kecheng is a 66-year-old peasant from Changle County. He used to be the CCP secretary in his village. Since he did not renounce Falun Dafa, the criminals made him sit on the ground and hold his toes with his legs out straight. If he was unable to do it, he was beaten, or the criminals would sit on his shoulders, which injured his back. Soon he could no longer stand or sit straight.
Other practitioners were, Mr. Wu Dajun, a retired teacher in his 60s from Changyi City; Mr. Zhang Xi, a peasant from Anqiu City, also in his 60s; and Mr. Wei Guoqing and Mr. Hu Xinming. All of them were tortured brutally.
On December 17, 2000, police officer Zhu Weile, deputy leader of the 2nd Brigade, had doctor Jiang (in his 30s) inject me with unknown fluids. After two days of infusion, I experienced many symptoms, including swollen eyes, kidney pains, confusion and inability to sleep, among others. Because of my strong resistance, they stopped the injections, but the torture damaged me physically and mentally. On December 24, 2000, I was released on bail for medical treatment."
3. Today's Forced Labor Camp System Is the Most Treacherous of China's Illegal Practices
In 1957 the Chinese State Council issued a document called "Decision about the Forced Labor Camp Issue." This document was the directive for the establishment of China's forced labor camps. In 1982, the Chinese Police Ministry issued another document, "Temporary Methods for the Founding of the Forced Labor Camp System." The above two documents were created 48 years and 23 years ago respectively. The execution of these directives has now been fully revealed to the public. Their illegality and brutality have caused disruption to the true purpose of the Chinese legal system and wrought tremendous suffering to the Chinese population. Many Chinese from various legal circles have written letters to the CCP, the National People's Congress and the State Council, asking them to abandon the system. But, the CCP leaders have disregarded the letters and continue to use the forced labor camps extensively. Why has this happened? What's the true intention of the CCP?
First of all, the forced labor camp system is unconstitutional. It disregards basic guarantees comprising China's legal system, and its existence has corrupted the legal system. In the Chinese Constitution, Article 37, it states, "A citizen's personal freedoms are not to be violated. No one can be arrested without permission from the court or the procurator, and the arrest must be executed by the police. Illegal detention or depriving citizen's freedoms in any way are prohibited." Yet, in the forced labor system, a citizen can be detained without legal proceedings and without the right of appeal. When the decision to detain a Chinese citizen in a forced labor camp for three years (which could be extended for one more year) appears to have been handed down by the Forced Labor Camp Committee, in reality it is CCP officers or police officers who have made the decision. Article 8 of the Legislative Law states: "No law exists to punish citizens by depriving them of their political rights or other personal freedoms." Article 9 of the Administrative Penalty Law states: "Any penalty that deprives personal freedom must be administered by the law," and Article 10 states, "Penalties that that do not deprive personal freedom can be administered outside the law via administrative rules." The aforementioned two documents are clear in their intent. The forced labor camp system, established by the State Council and the Police Ministry, operates under administrative rules and not laws. The twisted reasoning then says "it is impossible to deprive citizens of his/her personal freedom via forced labor camps."
The forced labor camp system is not included as a permitted penalty under the "Administrative Penalty Law." Yet, today's forced labor camp rules can deprive citizen's personal freedoms at will for three or four years. No appeals are allowed either. Extensive procedures are in place according to the law, but the actual decisions are made by a handful of CCP officers, and there are no appeals granted. The forced labor camp is thus cruel and operates above the law.
This corrupt system can be practiced only in China, nowhere else. Isn't it unconstitutional? Since its inception the forced labor system has expanded its targets and torture methods continuously. Over time it has grown more and more illegal and brutal.
The CCP in practice detains anyone it wishes, whether they fit within the following so-called criteria or not. Article 9 of the document, "Temporary Methods for Executing the Forced Labor System" states: "The forced labor camp system targets residents in middle or larger cities who are in need of forced labor reform." It also applies to those from the countryside who have moved to the cities, areas along the railroads, big factories or mines. Any person who falls into the following categories can be detained in a forced labor camp. 1) Anybody who expresses ideas against the CCP or against socialism, (whose behavior is not considered to be of criminal nature). 2) Members of gangs, murderers, criminals who rape or set fires, but whose crimes are not considered serious enough for criminal trials. 3) Repeat violators of stealing, prostitution, swindling, or those with other anti-social behavior that cannot be considered as a criminal offense. 4) Anyone who instigates group fights, causes public unrest or is harassing people, but whose crimes are not considered to be of criminal nature. 5) Those with jobs but do not actually work, not following rules and interfering with production or work morale. 6) Those that instigate others to commit crimes deemed not serious enough to warrant punitive action under criminal law. Article 28 states, "The most effective way to deal with forced laborers is through political and educational reform to change the person's thinking." Article 29 states, "Political and educational reform should be guided by the socialist ideology and moral standards, so as to educate them to be polite, civilized and virtuous." Even though terms such as "anti-revolutionary," no longer appear in writing in the Constitution, most detainees held today in the forced labor camp fit none of the above six categories. In addition, the methods used in the forced labor camp are far from being "political and educational." Today's methods are inhumane tortures and slave labor.
Reading Jiang Guobo's experience at the Changle Forced Labor Camp clearly illustrates that the forced labor camps condone even murder as punishment. There is no rule of law, only the illusion of the law under the control of the CCP's "kangaroo court." In reality the forced labor camp system exists solely to persecute anyone the CCP does not like. Among nearly one million Falun Dafa practitioners who are currently detained, or have been previously detained in forced labor camps, not one falls within any of the aforementioned 6 categories. One million Dafa practitioners have been detained! It has not stopped. It continues without any legal procedure, or allowing any recourse or redress. Falun Dafa practitioners are detained, tortured, and forced into slave labor at labor camps throughout China. They are detained because they believe in Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. They are kind and upright, and have simply dared to tell the truth. Why should they be sent to forced labor camps?
4. Letter to the Leaders of China by Professor Hu Xindou
On November 9, 2003, Professor Hu Xindou from the Beijing Science and Technology University wrote a public letter entitled, "A Letter to the CCP Central, National Congress and State Council, Suggesting the Elimination of the Forced Labor System." In the letter he wrote, "The forced labor camp system could be called the number one mistake by the Chinese government. As of date, and according to incomplete statistics, there have been over 3.5 million people detained in forced labor camps. Among the detainees are many who have been persecuted for their beliefs. Cannot the great suffering of these people make us change our minds?"
Recently, the central government publicly prohibited prolonged detentions. Therefore, many local officers have ordered sentences of three years of forced labor without sufficient evidence. Some local police officers arrest the wrong people. To cover up their mistakes, they simply send the wrongly arrested people to forced labor camps. Some local officers send a group of people to forced labor camps whenever the central government orders a tight control situation, like during the National Holiday. In some areas, children under 16 years old are detained in forced labor camps. Some areas send mentally or physically disabled patients or pregnant women to forced labor camps. Some places send people who fall within the 6 categories to the camps. The cruelest reason is when some local officers use the forced labor camps to take revenge. They will send people they dislike, or those who have criticized them or appealed to the camp.
The key issue and biggest problem is that such detentions only need approval from one police officer; no legal procedures need to be followed. Among the people who are sent to forced labor camps are those who have revealed local corruption or met with journalists and talked about local problems in public. Maybe they have written an article criticizing a local project or said something to uphold justice. Often people are arrested by mistake.
The following cases were all reported by the media: From 1959 to 1960, at the Jiabiangou Forced Labor Camp, Jiuquan City, Gansu Province, among over 3,000 "Anti-Revolutionists" about 2,000 died. Peasant Guo Yinguang from Hebei Province was sentenced to two years in a forced labor camp and charged with "defaming major provincial leaders." The same happened to Cheng Weigao. Shenyang citizen Zhou Wei was sent to a forced labor camp for two years because he reported the corruption of Ma Xiangdong and others. The person who reported a well known corrupt police officer, Mu Suixin, was also sent to a forced labor camp. Shandong reporter He was sent to a forced labor camp for three years because he reported corruption cases. At the Huludao Forced Labor Camp, detainee Zhang Bing was tortured and beaten to death.
In an article called, "How Long Will the Forced Labor System Continue?" Lu Bei reported what he witnessed, "A detainee was in serious condition and had not eaten anything for days. His feet were swollen, he urinated and defecated in his bed and he called out in a weak voice for help. Police officers claimed that he was faking illness. One day some detainees said that the person was dying. Only then did a doctor examine him. After touching the person's pulse, the doctor said, 'He is fine and just pretending to be sick.' Ten minutes later, that person died."
Many incidents have been made public. There is now ample proof that the forced labor camp system has become a tool for depraved officers to commit bad deeds. Many upright local officers have expressed their discontent with the system. One local police officer said: "Even when pressured to do it, I still will not send even one person to a forced labor camp because it is too cruel. It has resulted in too many inhumane and repulsive incidents." Isn't this evidence enough for the central government to eliminate the system?" He also said, "The government's actions against the constitution are polluting the country. If they do not respect the constitution, who will? The consequences of this are disastrous. Unrest and social instability is on the rise."
Professor Hu Xindou's words come from deep in his heart. "Appealing against injustice, reporting corruption, being innocently drawn into controversy, or mistakenly arrested at will; all these could result in citizens being sent to forced labor camps--more broken families, and untimely deaths. Such tragedies should stop now! Facts, reason, and conscience tell me that if such an erroneous system is not discarded, there will be no peace for the masses. If nobody speaks out, finally there will come a day when true disaster hits and there will be no more chances to speak!" The Professor has yet to receive a response from the CCP leaders.
In 50 years, the forced labor camp system has displayed its many problems. CCP leaders are fully aware of the problems. They could have eliminated this system long ago, but they have not. The root cause is that the CCP needs such a horrible system to retain power. It is through this system that they hold reign over and threaten the Chinese people, yet no one dares to say the CCP is wicked. The CCP's very nature attracts violence. It needs violence to maintain power and control. China's Constitution is just a window dressing. They show it to the world and say that China has laws, and that CCP dictators are okay. Since it is so much easier to manipulate the forced labor camp system with its corruption than a real legal system that upholds justice, the forced labor system acts as a firewall for the CCP to forcefully suppress any potential opposition at an early stage so they never have to even consider changing their ways. How could one expect the CCP to get rid of it? Over the past 50 years, the CCP has heard enough complaints about the inhumanity and illegality of the system, but it did not abolish it. In fact it is reinforcing it in its current persecution of Falun Dafa practitioners.
One way of understanding the CCP is to compare it to cancer, or a horrible tumor, attached to the Chinese people. How could you expect cancer to destroy itself? The CCP is expert in the ways of confusing people through misinterpretation of the concepts of "nation," "country," and the "Party." Each time when there is a new situation, the CCP cons the Chinese people with twisted logic, and forces them to accept it in order to sustain its semblance of legitimacy for itself.
Our only hope, I believe, is if all Chinese people can clearly recognize the evil nature of the CCP. This would naturally eliminate the forced labor system.