China’s labor camps come under scrutiny - The Washington Post
After decades of stonewalling, Chinese officials have begun to address public
concern over the camps, slowing their use and signaling that a parliamentary
meeting of China’s top leaders in Beijing this week could bring broader
changes.
That prospect has thrust the camps forward as an early litmus test for how
serious China’s new top leaders are in vowing to reform broken and corrupt parts
of the government. But it has also invited skepticism from human rights
activists and legal scholars who have long regarded China’s legal system as a
source of injustice.
The obstacles to reform have also become increasingly apparent in recent
weeks as government officials have backtracked from the initial idea of
abolishing the labor camps entirely, even though they operate outside the legal
system.
A big hurdle, legal experts say, is that authorities have grown dependent on
labor camps as an expedient way to silence critics. Police can send people to
the camps for up to four years with no judicial process. Citizens have been punished for crimes as trivial as writing an unflattering blog post about a
local official.
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