A group of nearly 90 human rights lawyers in China issued a statement on Tuesday, voicing skepticism that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will genuinely do away with the re-education through labor (RTL) system, warning that other forms of detention might be substituted.
The lawyers warned that the highly publicized abolishment of RTL might manifest as a mere name change, while the abuses of administrative detention, extralegal detention, and forced labor would continue.
Currently, police may sentence a citizen to as many as four years of labor camp incarceration or seven years of drug rehabilitation with no court proceedings, using administrative detention procedures, which have been employed to quickly lock up political dissidents, repeat petitioners, and religious groups and the adherents of the spiritual practice Falun Gong.
“We also want to remind the public that there are still a lot of measures that look a lot like re-education through labor ... which involve illegal measures like extrajudicial detentions by the government,” Tang Jingling, a Guangzhou rights lawyer told Radio Free Asia (RFA).
A new Punishments and Corrections Act, expected soon, could legitimize existing unofficial detention centers, possibly the RTL camps, they warned.
“There is still the issue of the black jails and the ‘legal study centers,’” said Liu Weiguo, a rights lawyer from Shandong Province, speaking of unofficial and illegal detention facilities. Special hotels and apartments are currently used for long term brainwashing and detention of activists and petitioners.
Another lawyer, Beijing-based Chen Yongfu, explained “receiving education,” another administrative detention system that is used for shorter-term incarceration, has the potential to replace some RTL sentencing.
“The average sentence to ’receive education‘ in Beijing is currently six months,” he said. “It is aimed at prostitution, ” adding that under the anti-prostitution ’education' system, the police can impose a sentence of up to three years.
He said police also have the authority to impose administrative detentions of up to 15 days for minor offenses without trial.
The lawyers called for not only a complete halt to the RTL system, but also pointed out that past victims of the systems should be compensated.
“I hope that they will be able to right those wrongs as well, based on the abolition of the re-education through labor system,” said Liu Wiegou.
Voice of American reported that many human rights lawyers worry that the recently proposed “community corrections” system will function as a disguised means of re-education.
A CCP Central Committee Resolution, released on Nov. 12, enumerated major issues to be addressed in its reform efforts, mentioning the community corrections institutions in the context of the RTL reform, saying, “Abolish the re-education through labor system, perfect punishment and execution laws for unlawful and criminal acts, complete community correction institutions.”
