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Bo Gu/NBC News Beijing
Chinese blogger Fang Hong
BEIJING -- Westerners spreading Christmas cheer with their holiday lights last year probably didn’t realize that some of the warm glow came courtesy of a prison labor camp in China, and partially thanks to a former inmate named Fang Hong.
After serving a year making Christmas lights in grueling conditions, Fang Hong was released on April 24 from the Drug Rehabilitation and Re-Education-Through-Labor Center in China’s southwestern mega-city of Chongqing.
Fang’s crime? Before their fall, he criticized Wang Lijun and Bo Xilai, two formally powerful Chongqing officials, now with their own legal problems.
Wang is the ex-police chief of Chongqing, who fled to the American consulate in Chengdu for protection in February, allegedly after a fall-out with Bo.
Ed Flanagan / NBC News
A crowd gathers around Fang Hong in Chongqing to hear his story.
Bo is the former Party Secretary of Chongqing, who had been a hot contender for one of China’s most powerful political positions on the standing committee of the Communist Party's politburo, but is now under investigation for corruption. His current whereabouts are unknown.
Thin and energetic, 45-year-old Fang has never been shy about speaking out. Before his imprisonment, he worked at the Fuling District Forestry Bureau in Chongqing, but spent most of his spare time writing blogs that challenged wasteful public spending and criticizing government corruption.
It is unclear whether a post he wrote last April was the last straw. In it, he mocked a lawsuit that implicated Li Zhuang, a lawyer who defended a businessman during Bo’s controversial crackdown on gangs started in 2009. While defending the businessman, Li himself drew criticism and was accused of inciting perjury.
“Bo Xilai took a dump, and asked Wang Lijun to eat it,” Fang wrote. “Wang passed the dump to the public prosecutor, and public prosecutor passed it to the court. The court then passed it to Li Zhuang. Li’s lawyer said, Li is not hungry. Whoever took the dump can eat it.”
City divided by disgraced Communist leader's legacy
The mocking scatological references obviously irritated someone within the police force, who then summoned Fang on the same evening that the blog post was published.
The murder of an English business man and corruption scandal, involving one of the China's most powerful men, has gripped the country. NBC's Ian Williams reports.
Fang was told by police to delete his post. He did, but his ordeal had just begun.
The next day, Fang received a summons again from the Chongqing police. He refused to go, but soon found his home surrounded by more than 20 policemen and a fire truck. The standoff lasted a whole day.
Fang was detained, and four days later received a written decision without trial, sentencing him to one year in a labor re-education prison for “spreading rumors and disturbing social order.”
Fang’s son and his girlfriend were also forced to “take a vacation” to prevent them from talking to lawyers and journalists.
Fang told NBC News he had to work about 10 hours every day, including weekends. He said he was locked in the prison along with about 1,000 other inmates. He shared a room with 11 others, most of whom were serving sentences for petty crimes such as gambling, fighting, stealing a neighbor’s chicken, or taking lewd photos.
Fang said his job was to weld Christmas light bulbs for a Shenzhen-based company called Kingland Lighting, and also screw in wires for notebooks for another company, Chongqing Baogen. He also made straws for Fuling Taiji Group for its health drinks. Kingland’s website says it exports its Christmas lights to Europe.
Fang made 8 Yuan a month, about of $1.27. He told NBC News he was not allowed to eat meat and had no connections with anyone on the other side of the iron bars. A chain smoker, Fang said he eased his nicotine withdrawal thanks to a cellmate who smuggled in cigarettes for him. Chinese prisons allow inmates to smoke, but Fang had been stripped of this privilege.
In February, a lawyer who came to see Fang told him Wang and Bo were in trouble.
“The whole labor camp was in ecstasy,” said Fang. “Everyone was jubilant and saying, the oppressive official is now a traitor! The red song singer is a traitor!”
On April 24, Fang was finally released.
What did it feel like to regain his freedom? Fang simply shook his head and calmly said: “Nothing. I have no feeling. Nothing is too shocking in this country. Unfortunately, I was born in China.”
With the help of a few lawyers, Fang is now suing the Education-through-Labor Office of Chongqing, demanding that his conviction be overturned and asking for compensation.
Whether his case will be heard by the Chongqing's Third Intermediate Court is uncertain. Pu Zhiqiang, one of the lawyers fighting for Fang, told NBC News he’s optimistic.
“If the court rejects his case, it shows its cowardice to the whole world. It tells people the court cannot meet a citizen’s expectations,” Pu said.
Fang and his lawyers hope that by making his case known to the world, China will one day abolish the decades-long re-education through labor system.
“We should pursue the answer to one question: Is a labor camp legal?” said Pu. “Is it based on laws? It’s so brutal and completely up to some individual’s decision to arrest anyone, without trail and any legal procedure. Victims have no way to help themselves. It’s against the Chinese constitution and international laws. The labor camp system should be permanently abolished.”
(NBC News contacted Chongqing Third Intermediate Court on May 15. The court confirmed Fang's case will be heard but declined to give more comments at the moment.)
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Leave a Comment:
Did you know that many things in China were may in prison before this story? I did. It's just another reason why things from there are so cheap. Now to be fair, there are many, many "paying" factories. But just think how jobs here could bounce back if even a fraction of them were with out pay. So the next time you buy something made there, it just might have been made by a prisoner.
I think this man is a brave brave soul. To be released from unjust imprisonment and go on to sue over it.... balls the size of Montana. Brave man.
Why can't the U.S. do this? Gather all the lard butts buying soda and twinkies with their food stamps, put them in a factory during the day and have them make something. Can't work because you have 7 little kids and can't wait to pump out more? Drop them off at the factory day care on your way in. Lazy people sit around all day and watch soaps collecting welfare because our country lets them! There's a lot more that prisoners can make besides license plates and road clean up as well.
This country should have labor camps for criminals so they pay for the cost of their stay in prison and compensate their victems. however, the system should not just pick and choose. the problem is abuse of power.
My brother-in-law's close friends are now in charge of this city. They replaced the mayor and police chief. Now they have appointed him to run some of the businesses that they took away from the mafia/gangs.
China is a pigotry - government by pigs, for pigs, and of pigs.
So what—prisoners in the US make things too—maybe you think our legal system is fair.
Guilty till proven innocent is the real US system—our courts always side with the police unless you have cleaver attorneys
We have more people lock up than any country in the world—smoke another joint and come back and talk again..
I have a cleaver attorney. He works part-time as a butcher.
With Obama and Hillary in office it's nice to be able to see where the USA is headed with a communist and socialist in office . To see where people who think the way that they do treat the citizens of their countries . Forcing the citizens to have to buy special medical insurance, and then using terrorists to get rid of anyone whom they consider a threat, including even in the USA now.
totally ignorant post.
My Alcoa stock keeps going up - to bad the hats are made in China.
Gee Bill...aren`t you getting hysterical to the point of delusion? No wonder conservatives have so little use for truth...it gets in the way of their inanity.
to be conservative is to be ignorant
Bill: "With Obama and Hillary in office it's nice to be able to see where the USA is headed with a communist and socialist in office . To see where people who think the way that they do treat the citizens of their countries . Forcing the citizens to have to buy special medical insurance, and then using terrorists to get rid of anyone whom they consider a threat, including even in the USA now."
pittsburgh-2731485: "totally ignorant post?"
Naah! totally stupid! I'd be crying if I were American because it seems the conservative media ala Fox is making too many plain stupid. Perhaps, I should be crying because ultimately the inanities of the American system get exported one way or the other in the form of lives destroyed by senseless imperial wars supported by an incredibly credulous American mob.
Put your tin foil hat back on, Bill.
bill luepnitz, I give you credit for having the courage to display your ignorance publicly for all to see.
Xie-xie nin, Bo Gu, for bringing to the forefront for Americans the fact that Godless Communist China uses SLAVE LABOR to make CHRISTMAS LIGHTS for American Jesus freaks. People go all ape-shirt crazy every year and dump out more and more money to the Communist Chinese for decorations for a holiday the Chinese government is strictly AGAINST!
Why doesn't U.S. Customs stop the entry of these lights by companies like Walmart, Target, and others? Products of prison labor are prohibited importations, according to Title 19 of the Code of Federal Regulations. Why are Customs inspectors and officials turning their heads the other way on this?
Would be real nice to have some answers from the government hypocrites on this.... Y'all know where to reach me, guys. Let's hear it.
For more on how China takes advantage of its people AND ours, please visit http://justlooklikefrog.wordpress.com.
To be fair, I think the article said that the lights are being sold in Europe.. Thus not our fault. But I'm sure that other goods made through prison labor routinely make it through. Budget cuts initiated by Bush and now egged on by tea partiers have repeatedly slashed the amount of goods customs inspectors can check out.
This being said, I don't necessarily think that the prison conditions described by Fang are especially tortuous, and are probably in line with what the inmates of our own outsourced prison factories endure. I'm sure that China has worse. The real horror here is that somebody can get sent to these prisons by corrupt Chinese officials without a real trial and based solely on the expression of one's ideas.
Did you hear about the judge in PA sending teens to juvenile prisons without a trial because he was getting kick backs from the prison system? We are no better.
we ain't perfect - but something tells me that our system might be just a little bit better...
hehe kidsdoctor, more than a bit, I'd say.
That central power in Beijing can't keep on like that forever. It's becoming a defunct system. When they decided to go toward free market reform, that implied underlying changes in the whole system to make it run at least somewhat more democratically, and with an underlying basis of law.
So probably while China begins to see the light and make the necessary changes in their future, the U.S. will continue it's downhill slide into corruption and corporate lobbying that makes it run a lot like the 'old' China runs now.
After reading this, and having read much about life in China, both for Chinese and for foreigners, I cannot see why anyone would wish to live in such a corrupt place. The corruption there dwarfs all other corruption worldwide that I have ever in my life either read about or faced personally....it is even worse than Russia's, or Mexico's both quite notably exceptionally corrupt. China is one large corruption from top to bottom and The People have no rights at all....the Chinese government is shameful and devoid of caring for The People....seems China needs another Revolution to make things right again, just like we need a revolution to make things right here as well....it is my conviction that virtually ALL governments in this world are TOTALLY CORRUPT, and so must conclude that a worldwide revolution is necessary to destroy the Corruption in which we are all imprisoned by those greedy rapacious corrupt politicians, police, and gangsters and criminals who all work together to rape The People of this world. I have joined a group called the Global Occupation General Assembly on Face Book in order to resist all this corruption and to create a People's direct to People's Assembly open to all citizens of the world. It is a place where we can all work together to create a different sort of world, a kinder more rational world than this one filled with greed and other evilness that destroys The People of the World. Come join us...all are invited. It is our last hope, people......
The enthina and north korea are the most repressive nations in the world as we know it, with china leading the way.
Bothg of these nations governments are a boil on the rear end of the world and should be eliminated, or at least popped, so that the pus in them doesn't multiply and spread to other nations, something china is trying to do, perfect example would be Tibet, the way china has militarily taken it over and is spreaeding its poisonous pus in that once great nation.
Chinas Labor Camps are nothing more than prisons where they send people who disagree with anything the old bull commies think or say and for anyone who speaks out against the repressive, murderous commie government of china.
With over a trillion people on its soil, is it no wonder that the "local government" is constantly under attack for corruption and heavy handed justice. As such a lot of so called crimes committed on a local level are never directed to or reported to the Center Government itself. Yes, it is a shame that he had to go to prison for speaking out against the police chief and Bo Xilai, however this is a country that is still evolving and at least, these two criminals have finally been caught for their crimes against its people. In regards to the forced labor in the prison camps... I don't see anything wrong with it. California has the most prisoners currently housed in the nation. It costs tax payers an enormous amount of money every year to feed them, educate them, provide medical services, etc all on my dime. They should be made useful while being incarcerated... why should they get a free pass just because their prisoners. Don't want to be forced to work, then don't do the crime.
The Earth's population is currently just over 6 billion.
The issue here isn't the prison labor, which is required of prisoners in most American prisons as well (including prisons in CA).. and, yes, by the way, our prisons also insource those workers to corporations. American prisoners make everything from office furniture, to blue jeans, to printed circuit boards, they harvest crops, they serve as airline callcenter operators, etc, etc. Most state prisoners and all Federal prisoners except for those who are deemed too dangerous or in danger, are required to work. And, as I noted above, the work conditions this guy endured in China don't actually seem torturous and he was paid, albeit a pittance (American prisoners are paid more, but still extremely low amounts relative to what they would make "outside".. I think Federal prisoners are typically paid $0.12 an hour, and most of that is deducted toward their upkeep.. depending on the jurisdictions, American prisoners may be required to work up to 6 days a week, up to 12 hours a day). Personally, I have no problems whatsoever with forced labor as a means of reforming prisoners.
The issue here is that this guy was imprisoned for a crime of conscience.. or actually, just for blogging. He didn't commit a crime. He never saw the inside of a courtroom. He was just sent to prison by the fiat of a despot and there, denied virtually all contact with the outside world. The same despot - Bo - also directed the torture and extra-judicial killing of dozens if not hundreds of people.
Critical times hard to deal with, will be here.
Gee looking at that picture is it fog or smog?
smog.. this IS China we're talking about
Mymomdidnotraiseafool
I have a cleaver attorney. He works part-time as a butcher.
Well Mymomdidnotraiseafool, my Attorney is more clever then your Attorney. He work's part time at Wal-Mart.
why just last week i heard him say;
"Clean up on Aile three....somebody please get that it's beneath me to do physical labor like that and i still have to drive the mini van to the private school and pick up my wife's kid's from soccer practice. What if someone were to see me, so shameful"
Speaking of Wal-Mart, the other week i was in one and i asked an "Associate" where all of the Wal-Mart brand GREAT VALUE food comes from. The Associate told me, "I don't know they won't tell us, we're told not to ask"
Okay, everybody say it at the same time, on three.....one.......two......three......."CHINA"!!! Remember the tainted pet food that came out of China a few years ago that was killing our pet's.........yep, makes me want to run right down to Wal-Mart and buy some GREAT VALUE Chinese made food. How about you?