Information on the Shui Tuo Detention Centre near Fuzhou city in Fujian province and on whether spouses of prisoners in this detention centre can engage in procreative activities during their visits could not be found among the sources currently available to the DIRB in Ottawa. However, attached please find a list of names and locations of detention centres in Fujian province compiled by Hongda Harry Wu in 1992. This document might be of interest. Please note that every labour camp in China is given two names (Wu 1992, 147). One name designates the camp as a labour reform camp, a name to be used only by the public security system and the judiciary, while the other name designates the camp as an enterprise and is for public use (ibid.). Wu notes that the labour camps included in his list are sometimes listed only by their internal name and sometimes only by their enterprise name (ibid.).

Under the Provisional Regulations on Re-Education Through Labor and the Executive Regulations on the Administration of Re-Education Through Labor provisions, persons undergoing re-education, unlike those subjected to reform through labour, are entitled to "conjugal visits" among other rights (HRIC 4 June 1994, 13). However, one source interviewed by Human Rights in China (HRIC) stated that he had never heard of anyone who was undergoing re-education being permitted to act on this regulation (ibid., 14). This source was told that "conjugal visits were a reward for people who were doing a good job for getting re-educated, [but] not a right which anyone in re-education could enjoy." (ibid.).

According to Wu, family visits to prisoners of re-education camps usually last from 20 or 30 minutes and are monitored by a public security cadre (1992, 103; also see Ladany 1992, 127). Wu further stated that, however, "prisoners with good records as well as those whose families are high-level cadres or have connections have more liberal visiting privileges." (ibid.) Additional information could not be found. For background information on living conditions in the labour camps, please refer to the attached documents.

This response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the DIRB within time constraints. This response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim to refugee status or asylum.

Human Rights in China (HRIC), New York. 4 June 1993. Detained at Official Pleasure: Arbitrary Detention in the People's Republic of China.

Wu, Hongda Harry. 1992. Laogai The Chinese Gulag. Boulder, Col.: Westview Press.

Australia, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. 1993. Report of the Second Australian Human Rights Delegation to China: 8-20 November 1992. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, pp. 21-29.

China, Information Office of the State Council. 1991. Human Rights in China. Beijing: Foreign Language Press, pp. 35-42.

China Focus [Princeton, NJ]. 1 April 1994. Vol. 2, No. 4. "Newsbriefs: Fees in Prison," p. 6.

Human Rights in China (HRIC), New York. 4 June 1993. Detained at Official Pleasure: Arbitrary Detention in the People's Republic of China, pp. 13-14.

La lettre de reporters sans frontières [Paris]. January 1994. No. 54. "Deux mois dans leur xiao hao , des cellules de 4 m(2)," pp. 20-21.

Ladany, Laszlo. 1992. Law and Legality in China: The Testament of a China-Watcher. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, pp. 126-31.

Society [New Brunswick, NJ]. November-December 1991. Vol. 29, No. 1. Steven W. Mosher. "Chinese Prison Labor," pp. 49-58.

Wu, Hongda Harry. 1992. Laogai The Chinese Gulag. Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, pp. 147-49, 172-73.