2aguy
Diamond Member
- Jul 19, 2014
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Here is a story about the current Chinese gulag system for political prisoners....those who love big, central government always end up with gulags....why is that....?
China s Slaves National Review Online
China s Slaves National Review Online
The camps are called “laogai,” a contraction of “láodòng gǎizào,” which means “reform through labor.” They were conceived under Mao; unlike Stalin’s gulags, they never closed — though the CCP has tried to abolish the name “laogai.” In the Nineties, it redesignated the camps “prisons.” The conditions, though, don’t seem to have changed.
Our picture of life in the laogai is murky, but here’s what has been reported: The prisoners are given uniforms and shoes. They have to purchase their own socks, underwear, and jackets. There are no showers, no baths, and no beds. Prisoners sleep on the floor, in spaces less than a foot wide. They work 15-hour days, followed by two hours of evening indoctrination; at night they’re not allowed to move from their sleeping-spots till 5:30 rolls around, when they’re woken for another day of hard labor. Fleas, bedbugs, and parasites are ubiquitous. The prisoners starve on meager supplies of bread, gruel, and vegetable soup. Once every two weeks they get a meal of pork broth.
The camps currently billet between 3 and 5 million convicts — real criminals along with thought criminals guilty of opposing Communism, promoting freedom, or practicing religion — though the process doesn’t wait on conviction; Chinese law permits the police to hold anyone for four yearsbefore judicial proceedings. At any given time — according to the Laogai Research Foundation — 500,000 Chinese citizens are in “arbitrary detention.” If a prisoner does get a hearing, he enters a legal system controlled, capriciously, by the Communist Party.