Re-education through Labor Abuses Continue Unabated: Overhaul Long Overdue
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Re-education through Labor Abuses Continue Unabated: Overhaul Long Overdue
A report by Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD)
ContentContents
Introduction …………………………. 3
Overview of the Re-education through Labor system ………………………….4
The evolution of the Re-education through Labor system…………………………. 5
What is wrong with the Re-education through Labor system? ………………………….7
The RTL system and practice violate both international and Chinese laws …………………………. 7
Police are vested with the extra-judicial and extra-legal power to send individuals to RTL …………………………. 8
Severity of punishment…………………………. 9
Lack of effective legal remedies………………………….10
Abject conditions in camp…………………………. 13
The use of RTL to punish human rights defenders, petitioners and Falun Gong practitioners 17
Reforming the Re-education through Labor system…………………………. 20
Numerous calls for abolition of RTL………………………….20
Alternative forms of punishment for minor crimes …………………………. 21
Recommendations to the Chinese government………………………….22
Appendix I: Cases informing this report of individuals sent to RTL between July 1, 2007 and
January 1, 2009 ………………………….24
Appendix II: Selected interviews with former RTL detainees …………………………. 32s
Introduction
In stark contrast to China’s claim that thirty years of Reform and Opening have resulted in “remarkable progress in the improvement of its legal system,” Chinese authorities continue to operate one of the world’s largest and most notorious arbitrary detention systems – the Re-education through Labor camps. Without charge or trial, hundreds of thousands of Chinese are held in forced labor camps every year. As China’s records will be scrutinized by the UN Human Rights Council during its “Universal Periodic Review” on February 9 and 11, CHRD calls on its members to urge China to abolish the Re-education through Labor (RTL) system.
With RTL, police are able to send an individual to up to four years of detention for what they consider “minor offenses,” which include drug addiction, prostitution, petitioning, advocating for human rights, or being a member of an “illegal” religion such as a Christian house church or Falun Gong. In this report, CHRD traces the evolution of the system and investigates how the Chinese police became vested with the authority to bypass the judiciary and sweep individuals into these camps with ease and efficiency. We find that the police control the entire process of sending an individual to an RTL camp and their power is neither constrained nor supervised by an external and independent government agency. We are also alarmed at the absence of genuinely independent mechanisms through which RTL detainees may seek recourse. Although legal remedies for detainees technically exist, in practice these remedies are marred with flaws and rarely effective.
The RTL system blatantly violates the rights of Chinese citizens, in particular their right to be protected from arbitrary deprivation of personal freedom and their right to a fair trial. RTL is also inconsistent with a number of China’s own laws and its Constitution.
CHRD’s research and interviews with former RTL detainees also reveal an extremely disturbing and grim picture of life in the labor camps—frequent beatings and torture inflicted by fellow detainees as instructed by camp staff; heavy, coerced and unpaid labor in hazardous working conditions; poor diet and unsanitary living conditions; extortion by camp administration; little to no exercise; being barred from family visits; and extremely limited medical care. The conditions are so poor that they constitute a gross violation of the right not to be tortured or subjected to other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.
In the past twenty years, members of China’s intellectual establishment and its growing civil society have been calling for the abolition of RTL. Although there are signs that the Chinese government has been contemplating changes to the system, no concrete details have emerged.
CHRD calls on China to abolish the RTL system without delay. CHRD proposes the government replace it with an alternative system that punishes minor crimes and is consistent with international human rights standards. Individuals suspected of committing minor crimes should be given simplified ligation proceedings that provide adequate procedural guarantees such as fair trials, access to legal counsel and the right to appeal. The abolition of RTL is one major step that the Chinese government can take if it is sincere about bringing concrete “advancement in…the Chinese people’s enjoyment of all human rights”.
This report is produced by CHRD researchers, including China-based activists and legal experts who worked closely with former RTL detainees. They conducted the primary research and produced an initial report in Chinese, on which this report is based. Key source material includes a survey conducted in March 2007 of over 1,000 petitioners (many of whom were RTL detainees), thirteen interviews with former detainees, and the analyses of those who carried out the research.
