Penal Labor

31 Oct 2012

Imprisoning people for months and even years without trial clearly goes against the grain of the rule of law that the mainland is striving to attain. When the detention is in the name of "re-...

1:51PM

Projects hint at reform of mainland's re-education through labour policy

4 Sep 2012

Pilot projects in four mainland cities could foreshadow a scaling back of re-education through labour, the five-decade-old punishment widely criticised as unconstitutional and frequently abused....

3:19AM

Break the link

10 Aug 2012

'Social order,' said William Ellery Channing, 'is better preserved by liberty, than by restraint.' Although the rights of the individual are legally recognised in mainland China, real progress...

11:23PM

Peasant leader given two years in labour camp

18 Jan 2008

Re-education for activist who fought to recover seized farmland

4:51PM

Pro-democracy activist detained in Beijing

13 Oct 2007

Police in Beijing have detained an organiser of a massive open letter urging democratic reforms as tension rises ahead of the Communist Party's 17th National Congress next week.

7:48AM

Lawyers win role for people facing labour-camp cases

4 Apr 2007

Chongqing has begun allowing lawyers to represent people facing detention in re-education-through-labour camps - an unprecedented move to shed light on the system's notoriously secret...

12:39AM

Opinion

Alex Lo

A dangerous demagogue in our midst

4:18AM

Jake Van Der Kamp

Ferry subsidies to push rents up further

4:27AM

Doubts on labour camp law revamp

Rights groups are uncertain if it will help political and religious dissidents

8:06PM

Kinder face for notorious re-education camps

The mainland plans to reform its laojiao, or re-education through labour, system, turning it into a special education programme for young offenders, a legal expert said.

6:55PM

Henan economic miracle labours under ugly truths

Local legend has it that German wig makers first came to Xuchang almost 100 years ago to collect the queues of Chinese republican revolutionaries who had emancipated themselves from the Manchu...

10:07PM

Banks buy into jail-labour firm

Six financial giants among top shareholders of China's largest wig manufacturer which uses prisoners to make its products

10:07PM

Asking the wrong questions

It is understandable, but unfortunate, that the media should focus on the question of guilt or innocence when district council member Alex Ho Wai-to held his first news conference after six months...

12:41AM

Labour reforms offer hope of decent prisons

Whether helping build roads, working in quarries, or making shoes, prison labour has long been a controversial - and yet fundamental - part of the mainland's penal system.

5:19AM