COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,
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I am honoured to be here to share my views on the forced labour camp system of China. Everyone knows that every tyrannical system requires a suppression machine to maintain power. Hitler needed the concentration camps, Stalin needed the Gulag. Communist China's prison system has its own special name: the Laogai camps. "Laogai" means "forced labour" and "forced to reform". "Laogai" is a popular word in China. Almost everyone in China is familiar with it, and has either been personally detained, or has had family members or friends who were detained.
According to the Communist ideology, the state is a machine of violence enabling one class to rule another. This machine of violence is made up of the army, police, courts, prisons and other compulsory facilities. The Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong, while integrating Marxism-Leninism with the practice of the Chinese revolution, clearly expressed this issue: "Army, police, courts, prison and other parts of the state machinery are tools for one class to oppress another. For oppressed classes, they are tools of suppression. They are violence, by no means something merciful". (Mao Zedong: Selected Works, Vol. 4, p. 1431). This means that the Laogai facilities are one of the violent components on this state machinery. The People's Republic of China is a socialist state. A socialist state's Laogai facilities are an important component of the people's democratic dictatorship. Laogai facilities are established at all levels - prisons, Laogai (i.e. "reform through labour") camps, Laojiao (i.e. "re-education through labour") camps and juvenile criminal camps, all of them tools representing the interests of the Communist regime and exercising dictatorship over a minority of hostile elements originating from the so- called exploiting classes.
Le me quote from the Chinese government document "Criminal Reform Handbook" (approved by the Laogai Bureau, Ministry of Justice in 1988): "The nature of the prison as a tool of the dictatorship of cases is determined by the nature of state power. The nature of our Laogai facilities, which are a tool of the people's democratic dictatorship for punishing and reforming criminals, is inevitably determined by the nature of our socialist state which exercises the people's democratic dictatorship. The fundamental task of our Laogai facilities is punishing and reforming criminals. To define their functions concretely, they fulfill tasks in the following three fields:
The Chinese Communist policy explains why it is necessary to force Chinese prisoners to labour: "Our economic theory holds that the human being is the most fundamental productive force. Except for those who must be exterminated physically out of political considerations, 'human beings' must be utilized as 'productive forces' with submissiveness as a prerequisite. The Laogai system's fundamental policy is 'Forced Labour is a means, while Thought Reform is our basic aim'. Our Laogai facilities force prisoners to labour. It is determined by the nature of criminal punishment in our country, by the dictatorial functions of our facilities and their aim of reforming prisoners into new, socialist people".
The Chinese have a thought reform policy of mentally and psychologically crushing people. Hitler used gas chambers to physically destroy people. The Communist Chinese are more clever. They know how to control human beings, not so much with the power of guns, but by "replacing", as it were, their brains, and reducing them to mere robots. All prisoners, including penal and political prisoners, are subject to hard labour and forcible brainwashing. Brainwashing is meant to destroy you spiritually and mentally. You have to forget that you are a human being.
The Laogai is not simply a prison system, it is a political tool for maintaining the Communist Party's totalitarian rule.
The core of the human rights question in China today is that there exists a fundamental machinery for crushing human beings physically, psychologically and spiritually, called the Laogai, of which we have identified 1,100 camps. It is also an integral part of the national economy. Its importance is illustrated by such facts that one third of China's tea is produced by Laogai camps; 60% of China's rubber vulcanizing chemicals are produced in a single Laogai camp in Shenyang, the first and second chain hoist works in the country to receive direct export authority are Laogai camps in Zhijiang Province; one of the largest and earliest exporters of hand tools is a camp in Changhai; an unknown but significant amount of China's cotton crop is grown by prisoners; one of the largest steel pipe works in the country is a Laogai camp, and I could go on and on and on. The reach of the Laogai business was recently brought to light again when it was revealed that auto components from the Beijing Laogai were being used at the Beijing Jeep joint venture involving Chrysler.
According to the Chinese government itself, 200 different kinds of Laogai products are exported to the international market. Since 1991, the US Customs Service has issued 27 detention orders against the illegal importation of Chinese products manufactured in the Laogai.
In 1949, the vast and inhuman Laogai system was set up in China with the assistance of Stalin's gulag experts. We estimate that since 1949, around 50 million people have been through this system, many of them tortured, executed, worked to death, or who simply disappeared. Even today, the name Laogai strikes fear in the hearts of most Chinese.
The Chinese government has said that today, there are "only" 1.4 million Laogai prisoners and 1.68 million Laojiao prisoners. But these figures do not include prisoners in the detention centres, in the juvenile camps, and the so-called "forced job placement" personnel. Consequently, the real number today is 6.8 million people.
I know that obtaining the release of individual prisoners is important work, but it is not sufficient. The regime releases one inmate, but imprisons six other persons. The goal should not simply be to free a few prisoners known in the West, but to end the Laogai, to destroy it forever. There is an idiom in China and other countries: "One cannot see the forest for the trees". I am focusing on the forest - the system - the Laogai itself.
In 1994, the Chinese leaders decided to twist the law again. They declared that from then on, this vast forced labour system will no longer be called "Laogai", but rather "Jianyu", which means prison. They wished to stop using the term "Laogai", because it was equivalent to the infamous "Gulag", and hence bad for their international image, in particular with respect to human rights. However, they clearly stated: the function of "reform through labour" remains the same.
Sometimes people ask me what I am fighting for. My answer is simple. I want to see the word "LAOGAI" in every dictionary in every language in the world. I want to see the Laogai ended. Before 1974, the world "Gulag" did not appear in any dictionary. This single word conveys the meaning of Soviet political violence and its labour camp system.
I understand that it is difficult to discuss the Chinese Laogai. Imagine if we could turn back the clock 60 years to the year 1937: if someone talked about Nazi concentration camps, how many people would be interested in hearing about them? Who would be able to find the information about the Nazi camps? From 1933 to l937, Germany's economy grew by 73%, faster than today's China. The majority of Germans agreed with Hitler's policies. The West cooperated with German companies. There was no boycott of the l936 Olympic Games in Berlin. Very few people believed the harrowing testimonies of persons who had escaped the concentration camps. The International Red Cross visited some concentration camps, but did not see or discuss the entire horror within. It was only after the end of World War Two, when people saw the evidence and the Nazi regime's own documents, that they truly believed the existence and horror of those camps.
Today, the blood, tears and lost lives of millions of Chinese tell you the truth of the Laogai.
Hitler's ideology divided people by race. The Communist ideology of Stalin and Mao divided people according to class. Both types of regime set up labour camp systems to destroy human beings. All three men were criminals. Once I visited an infamous Nazi camp. I saw the sign above the entrance, which read "Arbeit macht frei", "Labour makes free". I know from personal experience, having spent 19 years in the Laogai, that the Chinese Communist signs read "Labour makes a new life". These signs are still over there.
The West has condemned the Holocaust. The West has condemned the Soviet gulag. But the West still ignores the Laogai. I hope you will help correct this injustice.
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