Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Friday, March 02, 2007

laojiao and laogai

The BBC alerted me to a proposed change in China's "re-education" system.

According to China's official ideology, people are not inherently bad and can be reformed. The implementation of that idea has been questionable in many places and on many levels.

During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, some people were "sent down" to learn from the peasants, others faced public humiliation or torture. Political, social, religious, and other "deviants" have been subjected to "re-education" without recourse to legal process or appeal. Local authorities have used their powers for any number of purposes, often to reinforce their own positions of authority.

What follows are:

an excerpt from the BBC report
an excerpt from The Peoples Daily about reforming laojiao
and
a report from The Guardian (UK) about another form of "re-education" through labor, this time in Iran.

Further research by your students will uncover more details if you want them to use this as part of a case study about the rule of law. To facilitate that, I've included a list of articles about the proposals presented to the National Peoples Congress. Research might begin with entries from this blog about the rule of law.

China reviews 're-education' law

"China's parliament is to consider reforming a controversial law allowing police to send crime suspects to labour camps without trial, [China Daily] said...

"The system, known as laojiao, allows police to send mainly petty criminals to jail for up to four years...

"In an editorial, the China Daily welcomed the proposed changes, saying the current law is 'increasingly out of step with the country's progress in protecting human rights'...

"There are also no plans to change another labour camp system called 'reform through labour', or laogai, under which political activists have also been detained..."

The Peoples Daily reported
New law to abolish laojiao system

"China is taking a fresh look at abolishing the long-disputed re-education-through-labor system, or laojiao, by proposing a new law which is more lenient and protective of the legal rights of minor offenders...

"Listed in NPC's annual legislative plan since 2005, the draft law was put aside for two years because of disagreements...

"Laojiao, an administrative measure adopted in 1957, empowers the police to sentence a person guilty of such minor offenses as petty theft and prostitution, to a maximum of four years' incarceration.

"Under the practice, a judicial review by a court can only take place after punishment is imposed...

"Despite the arguments, Wang Gongyi, vice-director of the Institute of Justice Research, said the new law is more correction-oriented and lenient.

"According to it, the current 're-education centers' will be renamed as 'correctional centers', with all bars and gates removed and made more school-like.

"The incarceration period will also be shortened to less than 18 months, depending on the offense.

"Figures from the justice ministry show that about 400,000 people have served their terms in 310 laojiao institutions..."

And speaking of extra-judicial punishments, the Guardian (UK) reported (1 March) on another case that could make for a comparative study:

Iranian youth activists face boot camp

"Students involved in an angry protest against the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have been expelled and earmarked for compulsory military service, in an apparent act of official retribution.

"Authorities at Tehran's Amir Kabir University, a traditional hotbed of student protest, have ended the studies of 54 students... most of the students singled out are political activists who took part in December's demonstration at the university at which president Ahmadinejad was greeted with chants of 'death to the dictator'...

"Several protesters later went into hiding, fearing for their lives after being threatened by the president's supporters.

"Mr Ahmadinejad later announced that the dissenting students should go unpunished...

"The university chancellor, Ali Reza Rahai, an ally of Mr Ahmadinejad, accompanied the expulsion orders by signing eligibility notices allowing the students to be enlisted into the armed forces.

"That effectively makes good a threat by Mr Ahmadinejad that he would arrange for students with three stars under the university's disciplinary code to be enrolled as army sergeants. This system has been extensively used to punish those involved in political activities on campus..."

See also