Story of Women’s Labor Camp Abuse Unnerves Even China
Updated BEIJING — In September 2011, 62-year-old Wang Guilan walked out of the Masanjia re-education through labor camp in China’s northeastern Liaoning province with a rolled-up diary, written on waterproof material, hidden in her vagina. Guards had searched her before she left but had missed the document, by a fellow inmate called Liu Hua, recounting the torture taking place in the camp on a daily basis.
“After getting out, Ms. Wang broke into a cold sweat,” wrote Yuan Ling, an investigative journalist with Lens Magazine, a monthly Chinese magazine of photography, news and culture.
Published last week, the story has shocked even people here long familiar with tales of maltreatment, even torture, within the sprawling, police-run, camp system that exists outside the judicial system and has as many as 190,000 inmates at any one time, as my colleague Andrew Jacobs wrote. Exact figures are not available.
The article caused a sensation in China, with major and minor media seizing on it and reporting it – before censorship struck, shortly after publication, in the form of a directive issued on Tuesday by state propaganda authorities to stop all republication and reporting, according to the United States-based China Digital Times, a media site. (The site is supported by the Counter-Power Lab out of the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, it says.)
In response, the Liaoning provincial government has set up an investigation team, according to multiple Chinese media reports.
No longer available online on the Lens Web site, this link here will take you to what the U.S. web site says is a version of the originalChinese-language story.
But one article in particular appears to have – so far – evaded the censorship edict. Written by the China Women’s News, a publication of the All-China Women’s Federation, a Communist Party organization, it interviews the reporter who wrote the story,a man called Yuan Ling.
Traditional and new methods of torture were routine in the camp, said Mr. Yuan, adding that it isn’t just Masanjia where this was happening. Mr. Yuan said he had met women from camps, including in northern Heilongjiang province, who had identical tales.
What was happening inside the walls of the camps?
Physical punishment was common and women could be crippled by it, he said. For infractions of all kinds, including the long working hours – labor camps oblige inmates to labor, as their name suggests, at a profit to the camp management, the police and the state – these were three favorites (there are variations to these tortures):
“Hanging Up High” meant a woman was suspended by her stretched-out arms from a high place.
“Tiger Bench” meant a woman was seated awkwardly on a bench, tied around her waist with her hands and feet immobilized, her back bent, putting unbearable strain there. Other versions involving placing bricks under knees and lifting them until the knees are under unbearable pressure.
“Dead Person’s Bed” meant she was tied, four limbs spread, to a bed, and left there, often gagged. There might or might not be a hole through which she could defecate.
Beating, hogtying and other methods of punishment are common, as my colleague reported.
Mr. Yuan said he had spent five years meeting and interviewing victims. Some had been put into the camps for offenses such as theft; many were there for petitioning for justice over cases where they said they had not obtained it. Sex workers may often end up in the camps, too.
But it was only last year, as signs grew that the state may reform the highly unpopular system, that he thought he might have a chance to see his article published. As he said: “These years, there have been definite risks when having contact with people from labor camps.”
Details of the proposed reforms remain vague. At his first news conference after taking office last month, the Chinese Prime Minister, Li Keqiang, when asked for details, said only that the government was working on it and may have a road map in place by the end of the year.
At the National People’s Congress last month, some delegates issued strong calls for the system to be reformed or abolished, I reported then.
Masanjia has been in the news before. In December, Oregon Live, the Web site of The Oregonian newspaper, reported on what it said appeared to be a written plea for help from an inmate, hidden in a box of Halloween decorations bought at a Kmart in the state. There was also a debate about the letter’s authenticity.
In the letter, the writer said women were forced to labor 15 hours a day for just 10 yuan ($1.6) a month, without weekends or holiday, “otherwise they will suffer torturement, beat and rude remark,” according to the text of the handwritten letter on the newspaper’s Web site. The person wrote that many inmates were followers of Falungong, a banned spiritual group.
What did Mr. Yuan want to see change, asked the China Women’s News?
“Petitioning and reform-through-labor are filled with problems,” said Mr. Yuan. “Behind them is the issue that the legal system is not sound.”
Many here would agree with that. Then Mr. Yuan said something with far-reaching implications for China: even if it is slowly moving away from the abuses of the system of extra-judicial punishment, rooted in the Mao Zedong era, that’s not enough, he said. What China needs is truth-telling.
“We’re at a turning point,” he said.
“On any issue that moves forward through reform, we must tell the truth,” he said. “It’s not enough to say that we’re going to cover up what happened yesterday and move on to tomorrow. The women’s injuries still exist. Only by telling the truth can we sum up experience, and facing that, can we break away from yesterday and welcome the future.”
At the time of writing there was no information available about the investigation by Liaoning officials, who are believed to include representatives of the government, the police and the Party. We’ll update you if and when there is.
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