THE most disturbing memory Li Heping has of Zhejiang Shiliping forced labour camp in China is of being injected with psychotropic drugs. "My pulse raced. I felt something alien wriggling in my blood. Every face I saw was twisted like the face of a devil. Outside a cat miaowed. I suddenly thought it was a huge tiger coming to tear me to pieces. My saliva and my urine reeked with a disgusting smell of chemicals," he says.

That was four years ago. Today Li is in The Herald's office in Glasgow, recalling the Orwellian nightmare he endured in one of China's labour camps called laogai, or "re-education" centres as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) euphemistically calls them.

He is in Scotland to relate his experiences to children at an Ayrshire school and to raise awareness of China's 21st-century gulags. With the nation's president, Hu Jintao, on an official visit to Britain this week, Li wants the world to know about the beatings, the summary executions and the forced labour that underpins the world's fastest growing economy.

"Just as arbeit macht frie (work makes you free) was used as the slogan in Nazi Germany, the equivalent in China is laodong gaizao, or labour transforms," Li says, his eyes widening as he talks. He believes his analogy with one of the most heinous political regimes in history is not an exaggeration.

Since the creation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, it is thought that 47 million people have been sent to China's laogai. Human Rights Watch Asia says there are about 1000 forced labour camps and the US State Department estimates six to eight million people are being detained, including the leaders of the 1989 democracy protest in Tiananmen Square. The laogai are designed, according to critics, to brainwash anyone perceived as a threat to the CCP's totalitarianism and to create the world's largest and most profitable workforce to drive an economy that has been growing nearly 10% a year for the past three decades and flooding western markets with cheap goods.

"We would be made to work all day to produce toys, dolls, handicrafts, coats, sweaters and lighters. The head of the camp was one of China's most famous businessmen and our products were packaged to be sent to Australia," Li says.

As a practitioner of Falon Gong, the banned spiritual movement based on Buddhist principles, Li was arrested and sent to Zhejiang Shiliping camp in August, 2001. His nightmare was about to begin.

Before he was put to work Li was "re-educated" until he signed a document renouncing Falon Gong and promising never to practise it again. Sleep deprivation was the preferred method of torture by the CCP. Li was put in solitary confinement. As soon as he closed his eyes there would be loud shouting and banging and his eyelids would be forcibly pulled open and a violet light shone into his face. Recordings of people denouncing Falon Gong were played at ear-piercing volumes. His face was brutally slapped and he was kept naked in a cell that was continually hosed down with freezing water.

"The only sustenance was salted soup which produced a terrible thirst. I begged and begged for water. I heard the agonised cries of someone else being tortured. Even one of the guards watching me burst into tears at the spectacle he saw. I surrendered against my conscience and signed. They made me despise myself," Li says, his hand shaking.

His torment lasted nine days. But, unconvinced his spirit was broken, the guards used mind-altering drugs on Li, a common practice according the United Nations Committee Against Torture, which has documented a number of methods routinely used by the CCP in laogai, including gang rape, force-feeding, the use of electric shocks, forced abortion and the shackling of people in excruciatingly painful positions.
Li's ordeal lasted for two years.

THERE is a general reluctance to upset China or to say anything that might threaten access to its markets, despite the fact that the country's use of forced labour is illegal and contravenes numerous conventions and international laws, including the United Nations Charter. But last year the European Parliament issued a declaration on laogai describing them as "concentration camps". "The work of inmates is exploited to provide the Chinese government with unpaid labour and is the only reason for the substantial growth in Chinese GNP, which constitutes a threat to the west."

The Chinese government denies these allegations. It says it has ratified five of the basic international human rights treaties, including the convention against torture, and Louise Arbour, the UN's high commissioner for human rights, said, following a visit to China last month, that she was "guardedly optimistic" the country was making progress.

But while China continues its protestations of innocence another Chinese visitor, Hao Fengjun, a former Chinese policeman who defected to Australia in February this year, was in London to give evidence to human rights groups about China's 610 Office, where he worked for five years.

The 610 Office was set up in 1999 by the CCP to target China's 70 million Falon Gong practitioners and other "dissidents" such as Catholics and Protestants. According to Hao, this would also ensure the laogai were kept full.

He told The Herald how the 610 Office is systematically targeting people both at home and abroad and how he witnessed torture in a laogai. "When we arrived at the detention centre we saw the Falon Gong practitioner, Sun Ti, a women in her fifties. She was sat on the bench in the interrogation room and her legs were buckled by plywood on to the bench. Her eyes were beaten to slits. When she was interrogated the policeman would hold a half-metre long blood-stained steel rod with screws in it.

Hao was so sickened by what he saw he spoke out before fleeing to Australia, where his claims of human rights abuses were backed by Chen Yonglin, the former Chinese consulate-general in Sydney, who defected in March and who was also in London. Both have been granted protection visas by the Australian government.

Hao said: "Through this you will understand that the CCP is merely putting on a show when talking about human rights issues with you. You do not really know what is happening in China under the CCP's rule."

Li Heping was released from Zhejiang Shiliping on June 11, 2003. He says: "I want people to think carefully this year before buying Christmas presents with Made in China labels," he says.

The modern powerhouse
China is the world's third largest trading power behind the US and Germany.

In 2004, China accounted for 6% of the world's exports and 10% of global economic growth.

Each month China builds a city the size of Manchester to keep up with economic growth.

There are 377 million mobile phones in China making it the world's largest market.

In 2004, five million cars were sold in China, making it the third largest market in the world after the US and Japan.

China's road network is now the the third longest in the world and 44% of it was built in the past 15 years.

There are 100 million internet users.

Sources: Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development. World Trade Organisation. China's National Bureau of Statistics. World Bank.

The history of repression
In 2004, 3400 people were executed in China, accounting for 90% of the world's total.

Amnesty International has expressed concern over the sale of organs from executed prisoners.

Six to eight million people are thought to be detained in laogai.

Human rights organisations claim the Falon Gong, journalists, labour activists, pro-democracy supporters, ethnic minorities, Catholics, Protestants, Tibetans and the Muslim Uighur minority in the region of Xinjiang are targeted.

Disappearances and torture of Dalai Lama supporters are common.

Hu Jintao ruled as Communist Party secretary with a rod of iron from 1988 to 1992 when hundreds of Tibetans were killed.

Sources: Amnesty International, Laogai Research Foundation, Human Rights Watch.

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