Masanjia Labor Camp (马三家劳教所) is in Masanjia Town in Yuhong district in the Liaoning province of China. It also is called the Ideology Education School of Liaoning Province and was opened under China's re-education through labor, or 'laojiao' policy. Dr. Veron Mei-ying Hung reported to the United States Congressional Executive Commission on China in 2002 that:
China has not disclosed the exact number of Falun Gong followers held in re-education through labor camps. But it confirmed in January 2001 that at least 470 followers were held at the Masanjia Education-Through-Labour Education Institution in Liaoning Province and the official media reported in August 2001 that “th camp has also succeeded in `re-educating’ more than 90 per cent of the 1,000 female Falun Gong members housed there.”
Falun Gong practitioners abroad claim that many members have been tortured at Masanjia. According to the Chinese website Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch, as of 2010, there are four teams in the camp, with each team having 200-300 prisoners. Witnesses in the camp claim that approximately 80% of the prisoners are Falun Gong, the rest being petitioners with general grievances against the government.
On December 23, 2012, the Oregonian reported that an American woman found a letter, written in English, stuffed into a Halloween decoration set she had purchased at a Kmart. The letter, whose authenticity has not been verified, said that the set was assembled in unit 8, department 2 of Masanjia forced labor camp. It went on to describe forced labor conditions in the camp, and noted that many of the detainees held there were Falun Gong practitioners held without trial. Under U.S. law, it is illegal to import items manufactured through forced labor. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is reportedly looking into the allegations contained in the letter.
Famous quotes containing the words labor and/or camp:
“But labor of the hands, even when pursued to the verge of drudgery, is perhaps never the worst form of idleness. It has a constant and imperishable moral, and to the scholar it yields a classic result.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... the Ovarian Theory of Literature, or, rather, its complement, the Testicular Theory. A recent camp follower ... of this explicit theory is ... Norman Mailer, who has attributed his own gift, and the literary gift in general, solely and directly to the possession of a specific pair of organs. One writes with these organs, Mailer has said ... and I have always wondered with what shade of ink he manages to do it.”
—Cynthia Ozick (b. 1928)