Laogai Museum

Click here to watch the “Prison Slaves” exposé!

At the end of 2011, the Chinese government refused to renew the journalist permit of English-language reporter Melissa Chan for Al Jazeera’s Beijing bureau, only allowing her to stay in China on a temporary visa. It has expired as of today but Beijing still refuses to extend her permit. Helpless, Ms. Chan was forced to return to the United States and Al-Jazeera had no choice but to close down its Beijing bureau.

According to reports, Beijing was unhappy with Al-Jazeera’s reporting on topics forbidden coverage in China, especially its November 2011 documentary, Slavery, A 21^st Century Evil: Prison Slaves. A large portion of the documentary was filmed inside China, as a detailed exposé of how China’s prisons force their prisoners to perform intense and unhealthy labor while exporting their products to the international market. Al-Jazeera extensively interviewed Laogai Research Foundation founder and director Harry Wu during production. The film has aroused strong reactions in the international community, once again making the Laogai - the darkest corner of human rights abuse in China - the focus of attention. In its embarrassment, the Chinese Communist government has unfortunately decided to retaliate against Al-Jazeera’s Beijing bureau, although Ms. Chan was not involved in the filming or production of the Prison Slaves documentary.

The Laogai is the Communist Party’s key to maintaining a single-party dictatorship; its suppression of the Chinese people and its greedy exploitation of prisoners combine to create a uniquely utilitarian political tool. The former provides a steady stream of unpaid labor, herded and locked in a thousand camps across the country, while the latter reaps in huge profits for the regime. Despite the nearly two-decade long ban on export of Laogai products, Chinese prison enterprises of all levels have continued to dump their forced-labor goods into international markets. The ban has only made them more subtle in their business dealings.

Forced labor is a serious violation of human rights. The Chinese government must stop perpetrating it, by abolishing its over half-century-old policy of “reform through labor”. The system is no secret within China; every Chinese person is a few degrees removed from a current or former Laogai prisoner. However, Beijing denies to the world that it sponsors these camps and their illegal business deals, even after being caught red-handed in documentaries such as Al-Jazeera. Their crimes are compounded by cover-up, leading China farther and farther down the path of human rights abuse in the eyes of the world.

Giving the cold shoulder to and ultimately expelling Al-Jazeera’s Beijing correspondent shows that protecting the global secrecy about the Laogai is still a core interest for the Chinese regime. The Chinese Communist Partyt is not weakening or softening the clamp-down that started in 1989, but rather intensified it in 2008, and redoubled efforts again after the Arab spring in 2011. The incident also shows that China’s press freedom continues to decline, not only in its control of domestic press, but also in its blatant interference in the mission of the foreign press.

The Laogai Research Foundation remembers the Chinese Communists’ expulsion of foreign journalists in 1998 during the reign of Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji. The Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao regime’s inability to perform anything but old tricks 14 years later, demonstrates the incorrigible anti-human rights nature of the People’s Republic of China.

The Laogai Research Foundation strongly protests the Chinese communist government’s attempts to cover up the evil of the labor camps, and their expulsion of the Al-Jazeera correspondent. We call upon the relevant agency to immediately grant Melissa Chan a visa extension, allow Al-Jazeera to continue its presence in Beijing, and earnestly respect the international media’s right to investigate and report the truth.

Laogai Research Foundation
May 8, 2012

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