Laogai (short for laodong gaizao, which means reform through labor, was a criminal justice system involving the use of penal labor and prison farms in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Laogai was gradually abolished starting in 2001, with many laogai facilities being converted into prisons or detention centers.
Láogǎi is different from láojiào, or re-education through labor, which was the abolished administrative detention system for people who were not criminals but had committed minor offenses, and was intended to “reform offenders into law-abiding citizens”. Persons who were detained in the laojiao were detained in facilities that were separate from those which comprised the general prison system of the laogai. Both systems, however, were based on penal labor. Some writers have likened the laogai to slavery.
In 2003, the word “laogai” entered the Oxford English Dictionary. It entered the German Duden in 2005, and French and Italian dictionaries in 2006.
In Sepetmber 2013, laogai was completely abolished in Guangdong Province, with all laogai facilities being converted into prisons.
Harry Wu has written books, including Troublemaker and Laogai, that describe the system from the 1950s to the 1990s. Wu spent 19 years, from 1960 to 1979, as a prisoner in these camps, for having criticized the government while he was a young college student. After almost starving to death in the camps, he eventually moved to the United States as a visiting scholar in 1985. In 1992, Wu created the Laogai Research Foundation, a human rights NGO located in Washington, DC. In 2008, Wu opened the Laogai Museum in Washington, D.C., calling it the first ever United States museum to directly address human rights in China. In 2008, the Laogai Research Foundation estimated that approximately 1,045 laogai facilities were operating in China, and contained an estimated 500,000 to 2 million detainees.
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