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Sunday, 17 August 2008 |
Rounded up into torture camps: the 'undesirables' China doesn't want you to see
'From street children, hawkers, the homeless and prostitutes, to the mentally ill, black migrants, drug dealers and gays caught in public bathhouses, the camps on the outskirts of the city started filling up with Beijing's 'undesirables' last year as part of the Chinese regime's determination to present what it sees as an acceptable face to the world.
It is all eerily reminiscent of the build-up to the 1936 Games in Berlin, when the government cleared similar 'undesirables' from the streets. Under Hitler's regime many of the Nazi concentration camps bore the slogan Arbeit macht frei (Work makes you free) at their gates. In China, the camps bear the slogan 'Re-education Through Labour'. (It's a peculiar irony that Beijing has been so determined to use the English language to welcome the world, that street signs even bear the chilling words.)'
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