CIPFG: Torture Outside the Olympic Village: A Guide to China’s Labor Camps

[Reprinted from the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (CIPFG)]

Foreword by by Clive Ansley

As spectators and reporters travel to China in August to attend the Olympic Games, they will witness the world’s top athletes compete. What they will not witness are the hundreds of thousands of Chinese people languishing in labor camps nearby, many detained for exercising the same fundamental rights we take for granted every day.

Some of those traveling to Beijing may have heard stories of these Chinese gulags, but where are they located? Who is detained there? And what goes on inside?

These are some of the questions this guide seeks to answer, drawing particular attention to the plight of adherents of the Falun Gong, peaceful religious believers who for nine years have suffered one of the largest, most brutal campaigns of persecution that the Chinese people have seen in decades.

Since the first allegations of harrowing torture methods and deaths in custody emerged in 1999 through to more recent evidence of organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience, CIPFG members have repeatedly requested permission to enter China and investigate claims of abuse. Yet, on an equal number of occasions, these requests have been denied.

And that is partially the importance of this guide—for it provides an opportunity for journalists traveling to China to take this rare opportunity of greater access to the country to conduct an investigation of their own.

At the same time, while we realize the possibility of reporters being able to enter these camps is slim, their ability to remember and give voice to innocent Falun Gong adherents and other civil rights defenders who suffer torture and death only miles from where athletes celebrate victory is not. For giving them a voice is not only our duty as responsible global citizens, it is also the true realization of the Olympic spirit.

–Clive Ansley, July 30, 2008

CLIVE ANSLEY is North American President of CIPFG. He is a lawyer and former Canadian professor of Chinese History and Law, Mr. Ansley practiced and taught law in China where he is Advising Professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University and was appointed Visiting Professor at Silicone Lake University in 2003. Mr. Ansley has litigated more than 300 cases in China. He is now China Country Monitor for Lawyers’ Rights Watch, Canada.

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