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| Editor's
note: Although the following report was published
in March of 2004, the facts remain the same. In
January 2011 the Canadian Broadcasting Company
exposed Canadian construction company Inland Screw
Piling in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada and a Laogai
forced labor prison camp in Henan Province, China.
This cheap
source of labor is being used to drive Western
Companies out of Business, while persecuting their
own people. |
| The
High Cost of China's Laogai |
| By
Riordan Galluccio - The Epoch Times |
| With
his teeth cracked and hands bleeding, Wan Guifu
struggled to split one more watermelon seed with
his teeth. For him working outside in the freezing
cold over 10 hours a day came with little
choice—it was either work to produce Hand-picked
Melon Seeds for the labor camp or be beaten until
unconscious. At 57 years old Wan worked until he
could no longer accomplish this brutal task, and
was beaten to death by his fellow inmates at the
Lanzhou No. 1 Detention Center in China. |
|
| The
seeds Wan was forced to produce, Zhenglin Hand-picked
Melon Seeds, are now currently exported throughout the
United States, Canada, Australia, Southeast Asia and
Taiwan. Through the use of this type of slave labor
Lanzhou Zhenglin Nongken Foods Ltd. has become the largest
producer of roasted nuts in China with sales reaching 460
million Yuan. (US $55 million) |
| Free
and Endless Supply of Workers... |
| China’s
booming economy continues to increase through its use of
slave labor or Laogai camps. Laogai means “reform
through labor.” It’s a system of prison factories and
detention centers set up by former Chinese leader Mao
Zedong during the 1950’s as a means to re-educate
through labor and increase economic gain for the
People’s Republic of China. As of 1979, there were
apparently only several thousand people being forced to
work in the Laogai system. Today it has become an enormous
source of free labor and financial profit for the Chinese
government. According to estimates from the Laogai
Research Foundation, there are 6.8 million people
incarcerated in China’s 1,100 labor institutions. |
| For
those incarcerated in these facilities, the reality they
face is long hours of brutal treatment with little sleep
or food to sustain themselves. Reports of 20-hour work
days and violent oppression force some detainees to choose
suicide instead of being beaten, starved, or worked to
death according to a paper by Stephen D. Marshall,
“Chinese Laogai: a hidden role in ‘Developing
Tibet.” Others mutilate or injure themselves in an
effort to avoid the work. Inmates who fall behind or
refuse to work are shocked with electric batons, beaten,
sexually assaulted, or thrown into solitary confinement.
Among those that make up the population in these labor
camps are criminals, political prisoners, and
practitioners of the spiritual practice Falun Gong, who
reportedly now make up to half of those detained in the
Laogai labor system. |
| Who
Uses Slave Labor? |
| Forced
labor has become both a form a torture and a source of
great profit for China. With the enormous amount of free
labor that comes from Laogai, China has lured many
overseas businesses into its profit-through-slave-labor
system. With ridiculously cheap wholesale labor costs many
cannot resist the bait and unknowingly come to support
this illegal practice. |
| Common
everyday products ranging from artificial Christmas trees,
Christmas tree lights, bracelets, tools and foodstuffs, et
cetera are among some of the products manufactured and
exported from these facilities. According to a 1998 House
Committee on International Relations report, companies who
reportedly have or had products made in China’s Laogai
are Midas, Staples, Chrysler, and Nestle′. A recent
report from one detainee in the Changji Labor Camp in
Xinjiang states the Tianshan Wooltex Stock Corporation
Ltd., a contractor to Changji Labor Camp, makes products
for overseas companies such as Banana Republic, Neiman
Marcus, Bon Genie, Holt Renfrew, French Connection and
others. Orders from Banana Republic number between 200,000
and 280,000 pieces a year. |
| The
products made in these facilities are produced by people
who are forced to work in unsafe and unhealthy conditions.
Detainees in Laogai have said that because of
malnutrition, sleep deprivation and stress they often
contract lice, scabies, hepatitis, tuberculosis, and other
ailments. Sick detainees are still forced to work. Many
are not allowed to take showers for long periods of time,
allowing all manner of bodily substances to come into
contact with the items they manufacture. These products
are then shipped all over the world. |
| Stopping
Laogai Products... |
| Laws
on the books that outlaw slave labor products have not
been able to stop the tide of illegally and inhumanely
manufactured merchandise from being shipped and traded
worldwide. For example, since 1983 it has been illegal to
import goods into the United States made through using
slave labor. According to the Laogai Research Foundation
China’s government publicly guaranteed to stop the
export of slave labor products in October 1991. |
| In
1992, China and the United States signed a Memorandum of
Understanding (MOU) in an effort to enable the US access
to information it needed to control its import ban on
prison labor products. According to this MOU the Chinese
government had committed itself to investigating all
claims of slave labor. |
| The
agreement proved to be worth little in real results, given
the profits China stood to lose from its free source of
labor the Laogai system provides. Brushing aside requests
from the US for answers on the issue, China provides
“sanitized” camps for inspectors. Other tactics used
to ensure production continues include false holding
companies, changing addresses, and mixing labor camp
output and non-prison businesses together. |
| “Thus,
the commercial exploitation of slaves in China’s
labor camps is effectively an open secret in the
world of commerce,” says Harry Wu, founder of
the Laogai Research Foundation. |
| This
“open secret” Wu speaks of has become more and
more difficult to conceal. Survivors of the Laogai
system continue to publicly speak out about the
forced labor and torture they have experienced. In
addition, organizations such as the Laogai
Research Foundation and the World Organization to
Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong continue
to investigate the Chinese government’s use of
slave labor as a source for economic growth and to
expose the products manufactured in Laogai. |
| Although
China continues to currently benefit from its
“prison economy,” it may ultimately be the
world’s consumers who control the fate of the
Laogai. As the world comes to realize the blood,
sweat and tears going into the products they buy
it might not be so easy to purchase them no matter
how low the price. |
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