December 11, 2002

(Clearwisdom.net)

ANCHORS: BOB EDWARDS
REPORTERS: ROB GIFFORD

BOB EDWARDS, host:

In China, there's growing debate about a program responsible for widespread human rights abuses. The re-education through labor system has been in place since the 1950s. It's different from the labor camps where people convicted
of crimes in the judicial system are sent. Re-education through labor is outside the judicial system. Any Chinese citizen can be detained for up to three years with no charge and no trial, and human rights groups say the system is used for suppressing political dissent. NPR Beijing correspondent Rob Gifford paid a rare visit inside a re-education through labor camp.

ROB GIFFORD reporting:

On October 1st, last year, a 31-year-old teacher, Wong Ie(ph), went to Tiananmen Square in the center of Beijing with a large banner hidden in her bag. Wong was a [practitioner] of the forbidden spiritual group Falun Gong, and she planned to unveil the banner demanding the group be allowed to practice freely. As she did so, she was grabbed by the police and led away. She was given a year and a half re-education through labor. (Soundbite of a sliding gate)

GIFFORD: The heavy iron front gate of the Beijing women's re-education through labor camp grates open. This is where Wong Ie was assigned. She's not considered a criminal because she's not been through China's judicial system. Wong is one of about 700 inmates here and roughly 310,000 around China who are part of a punishment system run almost entirely by the law enforcement agencies with no judicial oversight. It's been called the waste bin of Chinese society. Foreigners, let alone foreign reporters, are rarely, if ever, allowed inside these institutions. But after repeated requests to the Ministry of Justice, NPR was given a tour by the head of the camp.

Unidentified Woman #1: (Chinese spoken)

GIFFORD: The camp is clean and freshly painted. The official, a stern-looking policewoman, called Xu Sha Lee(ph), says all the buildings are pink because the warm color has a positive effect on the inmates. There are several classrooms where inmates are taught to use computers. And the guards say there's little heavy manual labor here.

Unidentified Woman #2: (Chinese spoken)

GIFFORD: A sign outside one of the bright pink buildings announces ominously that this block is called remold-the-person building.

(Soundbite of a conversation between a man and a woman)

GIFFORD: The Falun Gong member Wong Ie is led into the interview room dressed in prison fatigues. She has a slightly doleful expression and sits opposite the foreign guests surrounded by about 10 camp officials.

Ms. WONG IE: (Chinese spoken)

GIFFORD: Wong says how sorry she is about committing her crime and how the re-education has helped her understand how wrong Falun Gong is. With 10 officials sitting around her, it's impossible to know if she means what she says. Human rights groups say hundreds of Falun Gong members have been tortured in police custody and in the re-education camps. They say dozens have died. It emerges that Wong Ie was an English teacher at a university in
Beijing and that she speaks fluent English.

[...]

GIFFORD: That's the whole aim of re-education, to take people who, as the guards put it, disturb social order help them see the error of their ways and then return them to society without a criminal record. Wong Ie says her university will offer her job back when she's released early next year. It's presented as a humane and helpful way to keep anti-social elements off the streets. But the system leaves it up to the police to decide what an anti-social element is. This camp shown to NPR is light years away from the reality described by most inmates who've undergone re-education. Unwilling to speak on the record, several have told NPR that most camp regimes involve back-breaking labor, brutal treatment by police guards and a complete lack of judicial oversight or accountability. Inmates in some re-education camps are even forced to produce toys or other products for export.

(Soundbite of singing in Chinese)

GIFFORD: At this camp, though, the guards go out of their way to show that the inmates are happy. Twenty women, mostly prostitutes and drug pushers, sing a song they've been taught.

(Soundbite of singing in Chinese)

[...]

GIFFORD: China has entered the World Trade Organization. It's hosting the 2008 Olympics and it generally wants to take a more prominent place in the international community. So there's now a quiet discussion among Chinese legal scholars and the more progressive members of the Chinese government about whether the re-education system should be scrapped altogether. Off the record, many will say that the system has to at least be changed. But the government is being tugged in several different directions. Beijing has signed the UN covenant on civil and political rights but has not yet ratified it, one reason being that the re-education through labor system does not conform to international legal standards. But at the same time, as Chinese society changes and controls on the general public are loosened, the
government is concerned about increasing threats to social order. In the last five years, the number of people given re-education through labor has increased by 50 percent. [...]

GIFFORD: Human rights groups reject any justification for the system. They say it is not used just to reform prostitutes, drug abusers and vagrants. Dominique Muller, a researcher on China at Amnesty International in Hong Kong, says the system must be abolished.

Ms. DOMINIQUE MULLER (Amnesty International): The re-education through labor is administered by the Public Security bureau. So the scope for abuse is very wide. Amnesty has monitored many cases of dissidents being assigned to long terms of re-education through labor simply for peacefully exercising their right to freedom of expression, for example, human rights defenders, labor activists and also Falun Gong [practitioners].