Chinese labor camp inmate tells of true horror of Halloween 'SOS'

W.G.Ewald

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Tree leaves were turning yellow and red in Damascus, Oregon, in late October. Competing with fall foliage for attention were Halloween decorations, which adorned almost every house in this sleepy middle-class suburb of Portland on America's Pacific West Coast.

A few pumpkins sat on the steps leading to Julie Keith's house, while three fake tombstones greeted visitors in the front porch -- as they did last year.

"I feel obligated to use them every year now because I feel they need to have some worth," said Keith, 43, who lives here with her husband and their two young children. "I am sad for the people who have to endure torture to make these silly decorations."

The decorations came in a $29 "Totally Ghoul" toy set that Keith purchased in a local Kmart store in 2011. When she opened the package before Halloween last year, a letter fell out.

In broken English mixed with Chinese, the author cried for help: "If you occasionally (sic) buy this product, please kindly resend this letter to the World Human Right Organization. Thousands people here... will thank and remember you
Chinese labor camp inmate tells of true horror of Halloween 'SOS' - CNN.com
 

CCTV

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There is not english mistake in the letter , but a Chinese mistake....
The last line first word: Masanjia , he wrote Mashanjia.
 
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W.G.Ewald

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I suspect the letter for two reasons: 1) the handwriting does not seem from a people who received English education in China. It is my first impression.
2) This letter is related to someone in the Falun Gong spiritual movement.
Does the forced labor camp cited in the letter exist?
 

nimo_cn

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dont tell me this letter was revealed this Halloween, i have read the same story almost one years ago!

is cnn running out of creativity?

Sent from my HUAWEI T8951 using Tapatalk 2
 
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W.G.Ewald

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dont tell me this letter was revealed this Halloween, i have read the same story almost one years ago!

is cnn running out of creativity?

Sent from my HUAWEI T8951 using Tapatalk 2
The article says it happened in 2011. The story reappears because CNN claims it found the writer of the letter. CNN is following up on the story with new information.

By all accounts, Masanjia is but one of hundreds of labor camps in China borne under the laojiao -- or "re-education through labor" -- scheme.

Set up in 1957, the system allows the police to detain petty offenders -- such as thieves, prostitutes and drug addicts -- in labor camps for up to four years without a trial. China's judicial process itself is already controlled by the ruling Communists in a one-party regime. In a 2009 report to a United Nations human rights forum, the Chinese government acknowledged 320 such facilities nationwide holding 190,000 people. Other estimates have put the number of inmates much higher.

Critics have long accused of the authorities of misusing the camps to silence so-called trouble makers, including political dissidents, rights activists and Falun Gong members.

"The continued existence of laojiao signifies China remains a police state," said Pu Zhiqiang, a prominent Beijing-based lawyer known for defending government critics in court and a vocal opponent of the labor camp system. "It's against China's own constitution and laws, as well as international conventions it has signed.
I have yet to see a post in this thread which addresses China's forced labor camps.
 

Ray

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I have yet to see a post in this thread which addresses China's forced labor camps.
Here it is and check the Thread - Unseen China.

The Laogai is famous for using free labour to produce products for export.

Once an isolationist communist state, over the last 20 years China has become the world's biggest exporter of consumer goods. But behind this apparent success story is a dark secret - millions of men and women locked up in prisons and forced into intensive manual labour.

China has the biggest penal colony in the world - a top secret network of more than 1,000 slave labour prisons and camps known collectively as "The Laogai". And the use of the inmates of these prisons - in what some experts call "state sponsored slavery" - has been credited with contributing to the country's economic boom.

In this episode, former inmates, many of whom were imprisoned for political or religious dissidence without trial, recount their daily struggles and suffering in the "dark and bitter" factories where sleep was a privilege.

Charles Lee spent three years imprisoned for religious dissidence. He says: "For a year they tried to brainwash me, trying to force me to give up my practice of Falun Gong. They figured me out ... so they changed their strategy to force me to feel like a criminal ... because, according to their theory, a prisoner should be reformed through labour .... So they forced me to do slave labour."
"We were not paid at all, we were forced. If anyone refused to work, they would be beaten, some people were beaten to death."

Charles Lee, former prison inmate
Both from Prison slaves - Slavery: A 21st Century Evil - Al Jazeera English

Those who have some time at hand, may see this Al Jazeera documentary.

 
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W.G.Ewald

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China's forced labor camps: One woman's fight for justice - CNN.com

A large white poster dominates Liu Xiuzhi's simple room.

In black Chinese script she has written the story of her decade-long struggle for justice. A story of how a simple legal dispute ended years later with Liu being branded a prostitute and thrown into solitary confinement.

"A day in that place felt like a year," she says. "Ordinary people wouldn't be able to understand."

Liu's story begins, like many legal battles in China, over a property dispute with a powerful neighbor.

She says that when she won a civil case against the neighbor, he sent thugs to beat her up. They left her unconscious, several teeth knocked out of her lower jaw. At first, complaints to the local police were met with indifference, she says. Then anger.
 

W.G.Ewald

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Behind Cry for Help From China Labor Camp
The letter drew international news media coverage and widespread attention to China's opaque system of "re-education through labor," a collection of penal colonies where petty criminals, religious offenders and critics of the government can be given up to four-year sentences by the police without trial.

But the letter writer remained a mystery, the subject of speculation over whether he or she was a real inmate or a creative activist simply trying to draw attention to the issue.

Last month, though, during an interview to discuss China's labor camps, a 47-year-old former inmate at the Masanjia camp said he was the letter's author. The man, a Beijing resident and adherent of Falun Gong, the outlawed spiritual practice, said it was one of 20 such letters he secretly wrote over the course of two years. He then stashed them inside products whose English-language packaging, he said, made it likely they were destined for the West.

"For a long time I would fantasize about some of the letters being discovered overseas, but over time I just gave up hope and forgot about them," said the man, who asked that only his surname, Zhang, be published for fear of reprisal.

He knew well the practices of the camp in question, which was corroborated by other inmates, and he spoke as other inmates did of their work preparing mock tombstones. His handwriting and modest knowledge of English matched those of the letter, although it was impossible to know for sure whether there were perhaps other letter writers, one of whose messages might have reached Oregon.
 

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Workers reveal hellish conditions in Chinese labour camp where man hid letter pleading for help | Mail Online
'The smell of burning flesh filled the room': Workers reveal hellish conditions in Chinese labour camp where man hid letter pleading for help that was found U.S. store's decorations box

American woman found plea for help in Halloween decorations she bought
Letter came from Chinese labour camp worker who has now come forward
He wrote workers were suffering 'torturement, beat and rude remark'
Inmates at the labour camp work seven days a week, for 15 hours a day
 

W.G.Ewald

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Chinese Think Tank Criticizes Labor Camps as Outdated - WSJ.com

An influential Chinese government-run think tank is the latest to decry the country's controversial system of gulag-like "re-education-through-labor" camps, with a newly published report describing the system as outdated and in violation of judicial principles.

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, as part of a wider report on political developments in China published on Monday, said abuses in the system had become increasingly apparent and had given rise to widespread public opposition.

Police have used the system in the decades since it was implemented under Chairman Mao Zedong to send thousands of Chinese—ranging from prostitutes and drugs addicts to political opponents—to harsh labor camps without trial or conviction by the judiciary.

The statements by CASS are the latest signal that new leaders under President Xi Jinping are considering reforming or abolishing entirely a system that has long served as a key mechanism of police power. China's Ministry of Public Security didn't respond to a request to comment.

The system of re-education through labor, known as laojiao in Chinese, lets police incarcerate political activists, petitioners and others in camps without trial or conviction for up to four years.
It just goes on and on and on. Members of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences could be sent themselves to forced labor camps I imagine.
 

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US-China Relations: Human Rights vs. Cooperation?

evangelicalsforsocialaction.org/us-china-relations-human-rights-v-cooperation/
 

W.G.Ewald

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US-China Relations: Human Rights vs. Cooperation?

evangelicalsforsocialaction.org/us-china-relations-human-rights-v-cooperation/
From the link:

China's repressive policies toward Tibetan calls for more autonomy are among a long list of China's human rights violations. (State of the World 2011 | Amnesty International USA) China is number one in the world in state executions, by far. China also engages in widespread police torture of detainees and prisoners. Women, girls, and several minority groups, including some religious groups, are oppressed. Millions of Chinese citizens have little or no access to effective and fair judicial institutions. It is no wonder international and human rights organizations first asked Clinton to make human rights a prominent part of her message and then decried her visit when she didn't. (For a look at a major human rights charter drafted and recently promulgated by Chinese citizens and how China's government responded to it, click here. (China’s Charter 08 | The New York Review of Books)
 

Ray

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I thought only simple minded US [edited] will fall for this clumsy Falung fraud, but looks like I over estimate some members of DFI
So the Laogai is a matter of fiction?

What about the Al Jazeera documentary?

If it were a fraud, then why did China expel the Al Jazeera correspondent?

One cannot be too steeped in Communist propaganda and sell his mind to the State, can one?



The Double Think that you are doing is most entertaining.
 
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W.G.Ewald

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So the Laogai is a matter of fiction?

What about the Al Jazeera documentary?

If it were a fraud, then why did China expel the Al Jazeera correspondent?

One cannot be too steeped in Communist propaganda and sell his mind to the State, can one?



The Double Think that you are doing is most entertaining.
redragon, et al. have no coherent argument, so they must use ugly epithets.

Now where is t_co to give his lesson to redragon here on proper debate etiquette?
 

bennedose

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Those who have some time at hand, may see this Al Jazeera documentary.
Excellent video. I am currently reading a book about Nixon and Kissinger at the time of the Bangladesh liberation war (The Blood Telegram). Nixon reacts to humans rights abuses in Pakistan by taking the attitude. "We don't care how they treat their people. It's about how they work with us". No one really gives a damn.

However those of us who have a conscience and the freedom to do what we can most take not and make it known. Now I know why I can order a product from Dx.com that costs US $ 9 (with shipping) while the cost for the same product in India is five times higher.
 
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