Harry Wu Reflects on Working Toward Peace
Every
tyranny needs a suppression machine to maintain its rule.
Hitler had his concentration camps; Stalin, his. Yet some
people think that Communist China has no need of a suppression
machine. They think that China gets along with a normal,
even a Western-style judicial and penal system, perhaps
with a few Eastern variants.
But this is untrue. The regime in Beijing has exactly
the kind of suppression machine it needs to enforce its
will. No professor of recent Germany history would fail
to speak of the Holocaust. And no scholar of the Soviet
Union would omit the Gulag. Yet many so-called China experts,
who use terms like "Great Leap Forward" and "Cultural
Revolution," make no mention whatsoever of the Laogai.
But "Laogai" is part of the everyday language
of the Chinese people. Almost everyone in China has family
or friends with personal knowledge of this hated system-if
he does not himself.
I realize it is difficult to discuss the Laogai. How many
people in 1937 were interested in hearing about the Nazi
camps? Germany's economy was growing steadily. The West
cooperated with German companies. There was no splashy boycott
of the 1936 Berlin Games. Few people were willing to believe
even the reports of escapees. It was not until the end of
World War II that people generally came to grips with the
evil that the Germans and their partners had committed.
Today, the blood, tears, and lives of millions of Chinese
men and women testify to the awful truth about the Laogai.
What is the Laogai? It is, quite simply, the Chinese Communist
version of Hitler's camps and Stalin's. In the words of
a Chinese government document, "Marxism holds that
the state is a machine of violence made up of army, police,
court, prison, and other compulsory facilities." As
for Mao, he made himself unmistakably clear: "The Laogai
facilities are one of the violent component parts of the
state machine. Laogai facilities of all levels are established
as tools representing the interests of the proletariat and
the people's masses and exercising dictatorship over a minority
of hostile elements originating from exploiter classes."
Listen to the words of another government document, this
one explaining why it is necessary to force Chinese prisoners
into labor: "Our economic theory holds that the human
being is the most fundamental productive force. Except for
those who must be exterminated physically out of political
consideration, human beings must be utilized as productive
forces, with submissiveness as the prerequisite. The Laogai
system's fundamental policy is 'Forced Labor as a means,
while Thought Reform is our basic aim.'" The goal of
the system, according to the government, is to "reform
prisoners into new, socialist people."
Incredibly, Western scholars make casual comparisons of
their own prisons to the Chinese. But if they bothered to
learn the least thing about the Laogai, they would never
utter such comparisons, which are not only ignorant but
insulting.
Hitler's ideology divided people by race and religion.
Stalin and Mao's divides mainly by class. All three constructed
labor camps to destroy the human being. Entrances to the
Nazi camps bore signs proclaiming, "Labor Makes Freedom."
Laogai camps have signs that read, "Labor Makes New
Life." While the German signs are long gone, China's
remain, along with the camps. Everyone knows the word "Holocaust."
And everyone knows the word "Gulag." It is time
for Westerners to learn the word that springs naturally
and fearfully to the lips of a billion Chinese: "Laogai."
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