Did you know -- ?

Laogai is now a word in the Oxford English Dictionary

September 4, 2003 (CSN) -- They are dirty, deadly, and shameful. They are the Laogai concentration camps, specializing in slave, or prison, labor. They are the source of many 'Made in China' products, and they are the miserable world of those who are imprisoned there. In addition to performing forced labor at no compensation, prisoners there are also beaten routinely, and tortured in hideously cruel ways. To merely show their torture methods would require "viewer discretion," and actual Chinese government-backed torture uses cruelty that is beyond the imagination of sadists.

Chinese dissident Harry Wu, the Executive Director of the Laogai Research Foundation [as seen at www.laogai.org], scored a victory with the release of the Oxford English Dictionary, revised tenth edition. There, laogai has a kindred definition to the word gulag, from the Soviet Union. The difference is that gulag is in the past tense, while laogai is in the present tense.

The Laogai system has been the involuntary home of many political prisoners, including today's leading Chinese dissidents. Appreciation is due to Harry Wu for his tireless efforts to expose this system and its horrors to the worldwide public. Americans have an increasing awareness that China relies upon forced labor to upend the balance of trade. The cheaply 'Made in China' products that are yielded by the Laogai have been made with an unfair cost advantage -- slavery. U.S. trade has allowed China to make a profit directly off the back of a human rights abuse.

The situation has pressured American manufacturers, and larger and larger numbers of Americans know it well -- they have seen their jobs taken away, and moved overseas to China. Perhaps the next time you pick up a 'Made in China' product, you will think to wonder -- who really made this item? David Chu of the China Support Network hopes that you will put the item down, and choose to buy something else instead.

In this special release, the CSN is republishing an excerpt -- just the Laogai portion -- of David Chu's speech, "Never again."

David Chu:

The great Alexander Solzhenitsyn brought to the world the awareness of the "Gulags" -- a system of concentration camps that the Soviets perfected to punish their own people.

Well, there is a Chinese version and a word that you should also be aware of: Laogai -- it means "reform through labor." Don't let that innocuous translation fool you. Laogai is a word made known to the West by Harry Wu, a survivor of the Laogai prison system for 19 brutal and inhumane years. Mr. Wu has made it his life mission to expose this evil system that is taking place in China today.

Laogai is the Communist Chinese version of the Nazi concentration camps and the Soviet Gulags -- except the Communist Chinese have taken their concentration camps to the next level.

Why kill those who are sent to these concentration camps, the Communists reason? Why not put them to work? They are going to die in these concentration camps anyway. Why not work them until they die? Laogai. Reform through death labor.

Today in China and in Tibet, there are thousands of Laogai concentration camps holding, according to Harry Wu, at least 5 million Chinese people. Others have estimated 16-20 million. That would be like 1 out of 2 people in California being locked away as slaves. Nobody knows the real numbers because the Communists say that it is a "state secret."

Why are these poor souls there in the first place? Well, some are there because they are dissidents (someone who spoke out against Communism), some are there because they practice their Christian religion without state sanction, others are there because they were at the wrong place, at the wrong time and ticked off the wrong official. Whatever their reasons, they are living in a hell in some ways worse than the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. This is happening today in China and Tibet.

What are these prisoners doing day in, day out until they die? They are making goods and materials that find their way into America and the West. How do we know this? Harry Wu has been able to document over 1,000 such camps and the types of products they produce -- from agricultural materials like cotton and tea to finished consumer goods like tools, toys, and artificial flowers. The problem for us in the West is that we cannot tell which Made in China goods are made by these Laogai slaves and which ones are made by those in the slave factories mentioned earlier.

I have one question for you:

Would you buy a toy or a pair of shoes from Nazi Germany?

Let me go further, would you buy it if you knew that it was made by Jews in the concentration camps?

Of course not!

So why would you buy anything Made in China?

You NOW know that some of the Made in China goods are made by Chinese slaves in Laogai concentration camps.

Are you willing to take a chance? Do you cringe as I do when I see a label on some item that says "Made in China"?

If you would like to read David Chu's speech in its entirety, visit this URL--

The China Support Network (CSN) is encouraging a critical examination of the slave labor practice of China's. As stated by CSN's Executive Director John Kusumi--

"Where China uses slave labor to produce cheaper products, that is economic dirty pool. It forces American workers to compete with slave labor, violating the economic spirit of America's Emancipation Proclamation.

"Americans should be outraged at free trade with China, and we hope that workers and the fair trade lobby will join us in our worldwide effort."

In Beijing this week, U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow has been frustrated in his effort to get China to mend its ways about currency manipulation, another unfair trade practice. As the U.S. administration comes up empty handed, direct consumer action, as in this economic boycott, makes increasing sense to counter China's unfair trade practices.

The XIV Dalai Lama, now visiting the United States, was a proponent of boycotting merchandise 'Made in China' as early as 1993--

"I back the call for a boycott of goods Made in China"

--His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Those who want to take more action are invited to the China Support Network's web site,

Published by the China Support Network (CSN). Begun as the American response group in 1989, CSN represents Americans who are "on the side" of the students in Tiananmen Square -- standing for democratic reform, human rights, and freedom in China. For dissident news; to support a stronger China policy; or get more information, see http://www.chinasupport.net.