A report offering maps, information and directions to Chinese labour camps has been made available for journalists and tourists visiting Beijing for the Olympics. The Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (CIPFG), an international advocacy group, has compiled the report, which lists labour camps kilometres from seven major Olympic sites in China – Beijing, Beijing Tuanhe, Qingdao, Shanghai, Tianjin, Qinhuangdao, and Shenyang.
The report titled “Torture Outside the Olympic Village: A Guide to China’s Labour Camps,“ includes phone numbers for the labour camps, as well as for the local ”surveillance offices” and details first hand experiences from former detainees.
Phil Glendinning, director of the Edmund Rice Centre and Spokesman for the CIPFG in Australia, says the report is “vital reading” for anyone going to China, most particularly journalists.
“Any journalist going to China needs to have access to the fullness of the truth otherwise they are going with only half the story,,” he told the The Epoch Times.
People reading the report would be “shocked and disgusted” when they realise what is going on within close proximity to Olympic venues, he said, and it was important to realise that the Olympics had been chosen with the idea of improving conditions for Chinese people.
“The rest of the world can’t be supping at that table unless the rest of the world is prepared to help the Chinese and tell them the truth.”
First hand accounts
Conditions within the camps, the products made through forced labour and a number of show tours have been documented in the report, much of it through first-hand accounts.
However, it is the descriptions of tortures endured that are most chilling, confirming the statement from Amnesty International that it continues to receive regular reports of “torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment taking place in RTL facilities”.
“I was shocked with six electric batons by five policemen while tied up on a bed board,” says Zhao Ming, who was held at Tuanhe from July 2000 to March 2002 and is now a post-graduate student at Dublin’s Trinity College. Beijing Tuanhe is located some 50km from Beijing.
