HUMAN RIGHTS activists may have issues with China’s “re-education through labour” system, which allows police to jail everyone from political dissidents to drug addicts for up to four years without going through the courts, but the ministry of justice website is keen to highlight the positive side of the labour camp.
The ministry's website has recordings of re-education through labour songs, with another link to the re-education through labour homepage. The songs contain such stirring lyrics as: "Yesterday we made a mistake, because of our ignorance and absurdity. Today we must distinguish ourselves. One, two, three, four, go forward, go forward, a fault confessed is half redressed" (from Song of the Drug Rehabilitation Centre).
These songs encourage those held in the system to “no longer disappoint relatives’ expectations”.
“We are determined to be new people, to contribute our strength to society,” runs another, adding that the laojiao camp is “the battlefield where we reforge our souls . . . Boys who took false steps are no longer wondering. Firmly learning, purifying thought, purifying thought.
“Go forward, go forward. The motherland is calling, mothers are expecting. Go forward, forward, forward, forward. Our future is still brilliant.”
The system gives police the power to sentence a person, without trial, to up to four years in jail for minor offences such as petty theft or prostitution. There are more than 200 re-education centres around the country and hundreds of thousands have been held in them since the rules were introduced, according to the government. Rights groups believe the figure is higher.
Sentences are typically between one and two years, and detainees are required to carry out penal labour. The police say it is a useful way of controlling petty crime and rehabilitating drug addicts, and it also simplifies the process of investigative detention.
Critics in China say the system undermines the rule of law, although some commentators have said dissidents are much less harshly treated in the re-education through labour centres than in full prisons and the sentences are generally shorter.
There is periodic debate about abolishing re-education through labour, although the state does also have the option of a labour camp system known as “reform through labour”, or laogai, where political activists have also been imprisoned.
Reform plans would rename the re-education centres as correctional centres, and take away bars and gates to make them more like schools.
The maximum incarceration period would be shortened to less than 18 months.