LRF Archive

"Indifference to objective truth is encouraged by the sealing-off of one part of the world from another, which makes it harder and harder to discover what is actually happening"
- George Orwell.

Information is incredibly precious when speaking on the Laogai system, in direct proportion to its scarcity.  The truth, even the tedious factual evidence, on the Laogai system is heavily guarded.  In China it is classified as a "state secret" - in the same way that Shi Tao and countless others have been locked away for years for the capital crime of "Revealing state secrets."  Harry Wu, an American citizen photographing Chinese prisons in 1995 was arrested and sentenced to 15 years in prison for the crime of "stealing state secrets."  Even as the Laogai system evolves and internationalizes, even as it is present everywhere and in the minds of every Chinese citizen, sharing information on the Laogai system is a criminal offense.

On the 61st anniversary of the People's Republic of China, we at the Laogai Research Foundation are intimately aware that the dangers of inquiry into the Laogai system are greater than ever.  When we first began building our Archive, therefore, we were deeply conscientious about the politically-charged nature of the collections we were building - not because they were contentious in content, but because the act of making our collections public was a challenge to the political power of one of the most powerful governments in the world.  The Laogai Archives is the largest archives of documentation on the Laogai system outside those internal collections of the Chinese government itself, and to make our collections public was to shout the unspeakable (on the Internet where even Chinese citizens themselves could possibly hear).

The Laogai Archives contains detailed information on over 1, 200 Chinese prisons and other Laogai facilities, including the enterprise information on many of those that use forced labor to produce goods that are sold for profit by the Chinese Communist Party.  It also contains over 100 public documents, photographs, and videos which detail the incredible range of the Laogai system throughout its existence, from criminal convictions of "Anti-Rightist Elements" during the Cultural Revolution to hidden camera footage of prisoners laboring on farms in the 1990s. 

Human memory is a fluid creature, prone to revision in the face of change and political will.  George Orwell pointed out the power of archives to stand against "the organized lying practiced by totalitarian states" and the infinite significance of the "reliable document" in the support of memory.  We believe that among the thousands of documents contained in our archives, which we hope to bring online within the next year, will be the handful of documents that enable a more truthful story to be told with respect to human rights and social justice in China, and in particular on the painful narratives that continue to emerge on the brutal Laogai system. 

On the 61st anniversary of the triumph of the Chinese Communist Party, we would like to issue a challenge in the service of memory, firm in the conviction that we all have an obligation to remember the millions of victims of the Laogai system.  We invite you to join us.

The Laogai Archive is a dense set of documents, full of aging papers and sepia-toned photos.  Imagine my surprise, then, in finding actual medical equipment among the records of China's family planning policies - an Intrauterine Device, or IUD. 

The IUD is a hormone-free contraception with a complicated history - it was widely unused for the first 30 years following its invention in 1928 due to high rates of infection.  More recently they have become a relatively safe and effective long-term contraceptive method, and in China they are currently in use by 45% of married Chinese women, representing over two-thirds of all IUD users in the world.  IUDs have long been widely used in China, where the One Child Policy strictly penalizes women and families who have multiple children. 

This particular IUD is a TCuC-S model, manufactured in the Wuxi Medical Instrument Factory of Jiangsu Province under the brand Tian Yi.  It promises to be "Sterile for 2 Years," although there is no manufacture date listed.  The documentation submitted with this particular artifact includes a birth permit issued in May of 1996.  It's a plastic model, T-shaped with 6 small copper bands wrapped around its skinny arms.  A blue filament hangs down from its base.  I am sure it is an unremarkable medical specimen, but as an American woman I find myself nevertheless struck by its presence.  (Read more after the jump)

Another look into LRF's Archive:

On June 18, 1996, Dr. Qian Xiaojiang testified in front of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, detailing his participation in organ extraction from prisoners in China.  During the 80s, Dr. Qian worked as a physician at the Bangpu Medical Institute in Bangpu, Anhui Province. At the time, organ transplantation was in its infancy in China: the surgery itself was extremely risky, and because of traditional Chinese conceptions of the body, virtually no Chinese willingly donated organs.  Qian found out about the hospital's first successful kidney transplant surgery from his medical school roommate, who happened to be the son of the hospital's director of the Urological Department.

The kidney, of course, belonged to an executed prisoner.

Dr. Qian moved to Shanghai and worked in clinical immunology at the Shanghai No. 2 Medical University, where he studied transplant rejection and organ failure.  Dr. Qian testified that approximately 20 kidney transplant procedures took place every year, and nearly all organs came from executed prisoners. And in China, doctors are not required to test if prisoners are brain-dead before beginning organ extraction: in one case in the spring of 1987, doctors "could feel tremblings and pulses in [the prisoner's] limbs.  Everything from that prisoner, kidneys, spleen, heart, and corneas were extracted. [A colleague, Dr. Shao Ming] used the word, 'Empty.'"

Dr. Qian concluded that in China, kidney transplant surgeries using prisoners' organs are an "open secret." "In China," he said, "whenever a patient needs a kidney, the first reaction, no matter whether it is the surgeon, the nurse, or the patient himself, is: 'wait for the guy to be shot.'"

Dr. Qian's full testimony will be available in the LRF digital archive when it launches this fall.

Over the last 18 years, Laogai Research Foundation has amassed an immense amount of historical and present day documents, photographs, video, and other artifacts related to Chinese human rights issues, with a particular emphasis on the Laogai. In order to preserve these resources and make them available to the public, LRF is building a digital archive to house our collection. While a limited amount of material will be made available in the fall of this year (and the online collection will grow as our resources permit), we wanted to give you a sneak peak at one item that will be available: video from a BBC investigation into the profitable harvesting of Chinese prisoners' organs for sale.

In a BBC broadcast from November 15, 1994 a news team traveled to China to investigate claims that prisoners who were executed in China were then harvested for their organs  for transplants to both Chinese and foreigners. In China, sentencing prisoners to death is often publicly televised (though this is less so today given international criticism) and quite often the crimes that people could be put to death for were ones that one wouldn’t normally think would be severe enough to warrant execution (i.e. robbery). According to reports, criminals under the age of 25 were those most “sought after” for organs, since they would likely be the most healthy. Chinese officials were reported as saying that the harvesting of prisoner organs allowed condemned men to repay a “debt” to society since they would be used for a “greater purpose.”