China’s hugely controversial “re-education through labor” camps are set to be abolished this year, state media yesterday quoted a senior legal official as saying.
It is another signal that the widely criticized system — where people can be sentenced to up to four years’ “re-education” by a police panel, without an open trial — is coming to an end.
The comments come after the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) new leader, Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping (習近平), said the party recognized as a “pressing problem” that it was “out of touch with the people.”
About 60,000 people are detained in the camps, officials say, most of whom serve sentences from six months to a year.
Opponents say the camps are used to silence government critics and would-be petitioners who seek to bring their complaints against officials to higher authorities.
Earlier this month, reports emerged briefly that the system — known as laojiao (勞教) — would be abolished. However, they were swiftly deleted and replaced with predictions of reforms, with few details and no timetable.
Chen Jiping (陳冀平), deputy director of the China Law Society, was quoted by the China Daily as saying that a key meeting had agreed to limit use of the system until it could be scrapped by China’s rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress.
“Ending the system requires the approval of the top legislature which originally endorsed laojiao in 1957,” the paper said.
The annual session of the congress is due to be held in March.
Currently, people sentenced are forced to perform manual labor, such as farm or factory work, but do not receive a criminal conviction.
Authorities will need to replace it with alternative punishments for those accused of petty offenses, the paper added.
“Chen’s remarks suggest offenders are likely instead to get a court hearing, short-term detention or a fine,” the newspaper said, citing “experts.”
The scheme has faced growing criticism for being open to abuse and widespread public anger has erupted over sentences deemed too harsh.
In a case that shocked the nation, Tang Hui (唐慧), a mother whose 11-year-old daughter was abducted, raped and forced into prostitution, was sentenced to 18 months of laojiao after she demanded death penalties for seven men convicted in the case.
The 40-year-old also accused two police officers in her home city of Yongzhou, Hunan Province, of being complicit in the crime.
She was released within a week following public outrage.
Party officials visited Tang on Friday as part of an investigation into the decision to punish her.
She is claiming compensation for her ordeal.
Earlier this month, the official microblog of the CCTV state news channel quoted Meng Jianzhu (孟建柱), a member of the powerful 25-strong Politburo who oversees politics and legal affairs, as saying that China would stop using the system.
The reports were quickly removed, but the following day, the China Daily said the government “will push reforms.”
LIFE GOES ON: After a strict lockdown that left millions on the brink of starvation, Indians embrace work to avoid starvation and get ready for several major festivals India is on course to top the world in COVID-19 cases, but from Maharashtra’s whirring factories to Kolkata’s thronging markets, people are back at work — and eager to forget the pandemic for festival season. After a strict lockdown in March that left millions on the brink of starvation, the government and people of the world’s second-most populous country decided life must go on. Sonali Dange, for instance, has two young daughters and an elderly mother-in-law to look after. She was hospitalized this year in excruciating pain after catching the novel coronavirus. However, after the lockdown exhausted the family’s savings, the 29-year-old had
A COVID-19 outbreak among hundreds of Russian and Ukrainian fishers flown to New Zealand to bolster its struggling deep-sea fishing industry has prompted that country’s largest daily increase in infections in months, authorities said yesterday. More than 230 fishers were flown in from Moscow last week, with 18 of the crew members then testing positive for COVID-19 while in quarantine, New Zealand Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said. The Pacific nation has almost eliminated local transmission of the virus, but regularly records small numbers of new cases in returned travelers. The fishing cluster pushed the daily tally of new infections to 25,
From monitoring vital signs to filtering filthy air and even translating speech into other languages, the COVID-19-fueled boom in mask-wearing has spawned an unusual range of high-tech face coverings. As masks become the norm worldwide, tech companies and researchers are rolling out weird and wonderful models to guard against infection and cash in on a growing trend. One of the wackiest comes from Japan, where start-up Donut Robotics has created a face covering that helps users adhere to social distancing and also acts as a translator. The “C-Face” mask works by transmitting a wearer’s speech to a smartphone via an app, and allows
JAPAN Deer-edible bags invented The deer that roam Nara no longer face discomfort — or far worse — after local firms developed a safe alternative to the plastic packaging discarded by tourists that often ended up in the animals’ stomachs. Last year, several of the 1,300 deer that wander around the ancient capital’s central park were found dead after swallowing plastic bags and food wrappers. Firms collaborated to develop bags that pass safely through the animals’ complex digestive system. The bags are made with recycled pulp from milk cartons and rice bran, one of the main ingredients of the shika senbei savory
RSS