Controversial labor camp system to be abolished
Print Edition
China will abolish the labor camp system as part of its efforts to protect human rights, a Communist Party of China document said yesterday.
The decision, approved at the Party’s third plenary session on Tuesday, was seen as a detailed reform plan for China in the coming decades.
The controversial program, commonly known as “laojiao,” began in the 1950s. The program usually takes in minor offenders whose offence is not severe enough to take them to court.
Currently, a laojiao committee consists of government departments such as police, civil affairs and education departments. It can detain people for up to four years without an open trial.
Wang Gongyi, a former senior researcher with the Ministry of Justice, said that in practice there are no rigid procedures to regulate how the committee should decide the criminal facts and the application of punishment.
“It is not good for human rights protection if a citizen is deprived of his personal freedom without a court proceeding,” Wang said.
The labor camp system has caused several highly controversial incidents in the last few years.
Village official Ren Jianyu in Chongqing City was detained in a labor camp on a two-year term for “spreading negative information and inciting the subversion of state power” in 2011.
His case drew nationwide attention and the local committee later revoked his sentence and released him in November last year after he had served half of the sentence.
Another widely known case is Tang Hui, a 40-year-old mother who sent to a labor camp in central China’s Hunan Province for petitioning for harsher punishments for those found guilty of raping her daughter and then forcing her into prostitution. In July, a high court in Hunan ruled in favor of her when she sued the local labor camp authority for infringing on her personal freedom and causing psychological damage.
Under China’s Criminal Law, the lightest penalty is three months to two years of home arrest under surveillance. And the second lightest is one to six months in a police detention facility. “This means, sometimes the program can be harsher than a penalty imposed by a court,” said Professor Chen Weidong of the Renmin University of China. “That’s why some minor offenders would rather be prosecuted.”
China will also reduce the number of crimes subject to the death penalty “step by step.” It will also work to ban extorting confessions through torture and physical abuse.
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