An 80 year old Chinese war veteran spent a year and a half in a “re-education” camp for trying to complain about a policeman, his son said on Wednesday, the latest in a series of high-profile labour camp cases.
Liu Chunshan, a veteran of the Chinese civil war and Korean war, was sent to a “re-education through labour” camp after he visited Beijing 37 times to try to complain about a local policeman, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
The dispute stemmed from rows with officers over Liu’s scrap metal recycling business.
Authorities in Liaoning province offered to pay Liu not to visit Beijing, but sentenced him to one and a half years of “re-education through labour” after he persisted in his campaign, CCTV said. He has now been released.
His son, Liu Xuebo confirmed the contents of the report to AFP.
China’s re-education through labour system gives police the right to hand out sentences of up to four years without a judicial trial. A 2009 United Nations report estimated that 190,000 Chinese were locked up in such facilities.
