Jiabiangou
Jiabiangou Labor Camp (Chinese: 夹边沟; pinyin: Jiābiāngōu; literally: "wedged between ditches") is a former farm labor camp (laogai) located in the area under the administration of Jiuquan City in the northwestern desert region of Gansu Province.[1] The camp was in use during the Anti-Rightist Movement in the years from 1957 to 1961.[1] During its operation, it held approximately 3,000 political prisoners, of whom about 2,500 died at Jiabianguo, mostly of starvation.[1][2][3][4]
Jiabiangou was a camp for "re-education through labor"[1][2] that was used to imprison intellectuals and former government officials that were declared to be "rightist" in the Anti-Rightist Movement of the Communist Party.[1][2] Some inmates were sent to Jiabiangou on the grounds that they had relatives who had owned a business or held a position in the Kuomintang government.[3] Originally designed as a prison to hold 40 to 50 criminals, the camp was overcrowded with 3,000 political prisoners.[1][2] The camp is located 27 kilometres (17 mi) to the northeast of Jiuquan City,[5] on the edge of the Badain Jaran Desert. As a consequence, agriculture in the camp area was limited to small patches of grassland in an oasis surrounded by salt marshes and desert.[2] Yet, no external food supplies were offered to the prisoners. The result was a famine that started in the fall of 1960.[2] In order to survive, prisoners ate leaves,[2][6] tree barks,[2][6] worms and rats,[2][6] human and animal waste,[3] and flesh from dead inmates.[1][2][6] The bodies of the dead were left unburied on the sand dunes surrounding the camp[2][5] as the surviving prisoners were too weak to bury them.[2] The starvation at Jiabianguo took place during the Great Leap Forward (1958-1961) and the Great Chinese Famine (1959-1962), which is estimated to have caused many millions of excess deaths.[7]
In December 1960, senior officials of the Communist Party learned of the situation in the camp and launched an investigation. As a result, amnesties were issued to the survivors and the camp's remaining population evacuated early in 1961.[2] In October 1961, the government ordered the closure of Jiabiangou as well as a cover up.[1] Authorities in Gansu[6] assigned a doctor to the fabrication of medical records for every dead inmate stating various natural causes of death, but never mentioning starvation.[1]
Partially fictionalized accounts of firsthand recollections from 13 survivors of the camp have been presented in the book Woman from Shanghai: Tales of Survival From a Chinese Labor Camp by Xianhui Yang[8] (originally published as "Farewell to Jiabiangou", Chinese: 告别夹边沟; pinyin: Gàobié Jiābiāngōu, translated into English by Wen Huang with support from a 2007 PEN Translation Fund Grant. The book was adapted into Wang Bing's 2010 film The Ditch.[9] Another account based on interviews with survivors is given in The Tragedy at Jiabiangou by Xu Zhao (2008), Laogai Research Foundation Publications (Chinese).[4]
See also
References
<templatestyles src="Reflist/styles.css" />
Cite error: Invalid <references> tag; parameter "group" is allowed only.
<references />, or <references group="..." />
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 Howard W. French (2009): Survivors' Stories From China, New York Times, New York Edition, August 25, 2009, page C1
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 Wen Huang (2009): I hope to be remembered as a writer who speaks the truth, guest post at Three Percent - a resource for international literature at the University of Rochester
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Sarah Halzack (2009): Surviving Jiabiangou, The Washington Post, August 23, 2009
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 James D. Seymour, Richard Anderson (1998): New ghosts, old ghosts: prisons and labor reform camps in China, And East Gate Book, p. 179, footnote B
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 N.N. (2007): The Unknown Gulag, PRI's The World, December 4, 2007
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Xianhui Yang (2009): Woman from Shanghai, published by Pantheon, a division of Random House, Inc.
- ↑ La Biennale di Venezia: The Ditch by Chinese director Wang Bing is the Surprise Film
