MEDIA representatives from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan were escorted around a re-education-through-labour camp in Beijing yesterday as the Central Government sought to prove it was not ill-treating Falun Gong members.
About half of the 800 inmates at the Tuan He camp are members of the banned sect or their families who have been sent there without trials.
Beijing officials say that most of the detainees have abandoned the sect after spending terms ranging from one to three years, attending lessons, planting flowers and vegetables and breeding animals at the camp.
But one man interviewed on Hong Kong television said he had adhered to his beliefs and was being kept in isolation.
``The government cannot oppress beliefs, Falun Gong should not be defined as evil. Oppressing people's beliefs is the root of the problem,'' said Fang Bing, who was arrested last year.
He said everything would be ``back to normal'' when the government came to understand the Falun Gong.
Other detainees, however, thanked the government for retraining them and changing their beliefs. An anonymous inmate told reporters that the educators were nice to them and ``treated us like friends''.
Re-education camps, introduced in the 1960s to house drug dealers, prostitutes and political and religious dissidents, have come under attack by the United Nations Human Rights Committee.
Tuan He camp director Zhang Jingsheng insisted that inmates were not abused.
``We ban hitting, scolding or physical penalties against those being re-educated. They even have voting and religious rights,'' he said.
But Beijing academics were reluctant in supporting the re-education system.
``By putting citizens in a camp without going through the judicial system and manipulating their freedoms for a long period is a violation of human rights,'' Professor Chen Weidong of the People's University told Hong Kong media..
``The system should be monitored by the judicial system,'' Professor Chen said, adding that more people would be detained in those camps after the implementation of laws defining evil cults.
Professor Zhang Bingzhu of Beijing's University of Politics and Law suggested gradually dissolving the re-education system.