Secret diary from a labour camp By Martin Patience

BBC News, Beijing Published duration 26 November 2013

image caption The hidden diary charted Ms Liu's time in the "re-education through labour" camp

For 50-year-old Liu Hua, the horrors of the labour camp are still fresh. In the last seven years, she has been sent to the "re-education through labour" camps a total of three times for protesting against what she says was a government land grab in her home village.

But during her last stint, Ms Liu did something truly extraordinary: she wrote a secret diary documenting her experiences.

The mother of one worked 11-hour days making coats for the Chinese military. When the guards weren't looking, she stole pieces of coat lining to write the diary.

In her small Beijing apartment, she laid out what appeared to be a patchwork quilt on a small table in front me. But if you looked closely at the sections, which had been taped together, they were actually diary entries from a two-year period.

The extraordinary document reads like a roll call of abuse. One entry from 13 September 2011 talks about a fellow inmate being tortured by guards who used electric batons. "Her face was all purple after she was beaten," it said.

image caption Liu Hua kept a secret diary inside the labour camp. She wrote her entries on scraps of cloth, which were smuggled out by fellow detainees, the rolled-up pieces hidden in their vaginas to pass body searches.

image caption The diary was written on material used to make underwear and lining for coats. Liu Hua said she stole these from the assembly line where she worked. She wrote something every day to keep a record of events.

image caption The hidden diary charted Ms Liu's time in the "re-education through labour" camp

image caption She initially used paper for writing, but found out it was hard to conceal. Writing her text on cloth made it easier for her to hide the pages of her diary inside her duvet.

image caption She also hid her diary in winter gloves. "I was caught once when I was writing on paper and I ate it," she said. The second time she was caught, she was beaten until she lost consciousness.

image caption Liu Hua managed to keep a secret record of her experiences at a "re-education through labour camp"

image caption Detainees had to wear a badge at the Masanjia Women's "re-education through labour" camp. This badge says: "Team one, group two, Liu Hua, Sujiatun district of Shenyang.

image caption Liu Hua is not optimistic about the future. Even if the labour camp system was abolished, no one would "give us justice and clear our criminal record", she said.

Treated 'like animals'

Ms Liu also showed me a small red pouch. Inside it was a tiny blue pen cartridge that she used to write the diary. She kept the pouch hidden under an armpit. Luckily, for her, the guards never found it.

She asked fellow inmates to smuggle out the pieces of cloth when they were released. Ms Liu then collected the diary entries when she got out and taped them together.

She had been snatched off the streets in Beijing in 2010. She was locked up for protesting against a government land grab - there was no trial, she had committed no crime.

During her incarceration, Ms Liu says that like many of the 400 hundred women in the camp she was beaten by guards. "We were treated like slaves," she told me, "slaves of the Communist Party."

Earlier this month, Beijing announced that it would abolish its much hated re-education through labour camps - the country's equivalent of the Russian gulags. In the past, petty criminals, and often dissidents or people who protested, could be locked up for four years without a trial.

Following her experiences, Ms Liu is trying to return to normal life as best she can. But she can't forget what she lived through.

"They treated us like animals," she said. "We just wanted to be treated as citizens and have our rights like everyone else."

The closure of the camps offers her little comfort. Such has been her despair that she's tried to kill herself in the past. And she believes that the Communist Party - camps or no camps - will still find a way of locking her up.