TNAG-2604-FCO40-3792-Detention-of-Hong-Kong-residents-in-China-1992 — Page 98

5,300 inmates por comp?

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their sentence theoretically as ordinary workers, although they are not allowed to leave and their pay is less than half of that of a normal worker. This system started in 1954 and before about 19809 almost 90% of those in the camps had been "resettled" in this way.

The numbers had fallen off since then but in 1983 it was still decreed that those who had served sentences of 5 or more years for counter revolutionary crimes and those who had served sentences of 10 or more years for criminal offences would still be subject to this compulsory programme. Part of the reason for this change might have been the changing nature of the camp population over the years.

In the 1950s around 90% of the inmates were classed as "counter revolutionaries", but by the 1980s the vast majority were ordinary criminals and only about 10% were counter revolutionaries. This meant that many offenders came from better family backgrounds, even from Communist backgrounds, and there was thus pressure from the families to get them back after release from the camps.

Wu estimated that, taking all three groups into account, there was a camp population of about 12 to 16 million at the moment in some 3,000 camps. He said he had been able to document 990 camps himself, despite an official Chinese claim that there were only 680.

4. Camps in China were known by two names. The first was the internal name, for use within the system itself only, and this was quite straightforward: Shanxi No 1 Prison, Qinghai No 13 labour Reform Detachment and so on. In addition, there was the public name for use with outsiders, and the one that tended to be displayed on the organisation board outside. Occasionally the two names could be seen side by side, and he showed numerous examples of this (eg the Peking Qinghe Farm is in reality the Peking No 1 Labour Reform Detachment a sub unit of this, the Qinghe Shrimp

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In the Farm is run as a joint venture with a Hong Kong company). towns especially, the street facade of many of the camps is made to look like an innocuous factory, but round the back the watchtowers and barbed wire are very obvious. The camps can be extremely large. The Qinghe Farm is about 20 kilometres across and houses 50-80,000 inmates. He also showed several photographs of Qinghai province where he estimated that between 20 and 25 per cent of the population were inmates, former inmates or their families. In the 1950s he had been told that one of the main streets in the provincial capital of Xining had been openly lined with camps (the nandajie), and he showed pictures of the Nansanjie in Xining that was still clearly a street of camp factories. One picture showed a flag pole on one of the watch towers which he later learnt was a signalling system in case of riot in the camp. Such disturbances were not uncommon and because of the unreliability of the electricity supply each camp in Xining had this more primitive way of summoning help, run up the red flag and the police arrive. also showed slides of prisoners working in the fields with big red banners planted here and there. They marked off boundaries which prisoners might not cross under pain of being shot). In the 1980s, around 1983, a dual responsibility system had been introduced in the camps.

The camp management was to responsible on the one hand for reform of the inmates (no escapes, no crime no suicides etc), and on the other for production. Labour reform camps were now treated very much as enterprises ("special state run enterprises") and needed to show earnings on which the salaries of the guards and even their benefits, such as children's education, depended. this meant that, as Lau Shan-ching commented, prisoners were being made to work much longer hours than before. The prison system turns

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