Chapter 8 6. A brief review of gray prisons

"Grey prison" means unofficial prison, which is a word I invented.I often make the mistake of inventing new words, but I am actually forced to do so.According to laws and regulations, this thing should not exist, but looking at history and reality, this thing can be seen everywhere, and each has a publicly recognized name, and it has not been evasive.There are so many things that say black or white, white or white, and I want to give it a general name, but I can't find it for a while, so I have to make up one temporarily. The last time I discovered a gray prison was in Li Changping's book describing his personal experience.Mr. Li Changping used to be Secretary of the Party Committee of Qipan Township, Jianli County, Hubei Province. In early 2000, he wrote to Premier Zhu Rongji of the State Council to complain for the heavy burden of farmers, which attracted the attention of high-level leaders.After being reported on the front page of "Southern Weekend", the incident became well-known throughout the country, and Li Changping was also named the person of the year by "Southern Weekend" for daring to tell the truth.

In Li Changping's book, gray prison appears under two different names.The one that appeared first was called the study class, and the one that appeared later was called the small black room. In May 1997, Zhu Changxian, a farmer in Chabu Village, Zhemu Township, Jianli County, Hubei Province, committed suicide by drinking pesticide. The direct cause was the "study class". In July 1996, the southern part of Jianli County was hit by floods, and farmers lost their crops.However, the county collected grain early in May, and Zhu Changxian's family has already paid a burden of 800 yuan.After the disaster, the Secretary of the Hubei Provincial Party Committee inspected the disaster area and called for "the strength of the whole province to fight against the Jianli disaster." However, the then county magistrate of Jianli County misappropriated the disaster relief funds to build hotels, government agencies and dormitory buildings that exceeded the standard, and also allocated disaster relief funds. Buy high-end cars for various departments and bureaus.Not only did Zhu Changxian's family not receive relief during the catastrophe, but the 800 yuan that was handed over to the government in advance was not returned.

The following year, the county government arranged to collect 25% of the annual tax in May, and Zhu Changxian's family should pay 700 yuan.Zhu Changxian asked to use the 800 yuan he paid last year to pay it back. The cadres of the management area and the village head said that the Xia Zheng task assigned by the county government must be completed, and it will be paid at the end of the year.The two sides quarreled, beat and scolded, and finally the cadres sent Zhu Changxian's husband to the village primary school for "study classes".Zhu Changxian had no reason to say anything, and in desperation, he used his own life to seek an explanation-suicide by drinking pesticide.

It is mentioned here that Zhu Changxian's husband was imprisoned in the village primary school to "run a study class". I don't go into details, but we can use the details in the following story to supplement. Xiong Huapin, a farmer in the fifth group of Xinxiong Village, Huangxiekou Town, Jianli County, should pay 2,085 yuan in taxes and fees according to local standards, and the taxes and fees are still in arrears. On the evening of November 1, 2000, just after Xiong’s family fell asleep, seven cadres including the deputy mayor of Huangxiekou Town, the general branch secretary and deputy secretary of the management area, and several thugs came to Xiong’s house and asked Xiong Huapin to go to the management area to handle the crime. Study class, ask why, and say that you owe money.Some people stuck their necks, some held hands, some pulled his feet, and lifted his feet into the car.Someone also punched him in the back and smashed his head with a flashlight.After arriving at the management area, Xiong Huapin and three other farmers were locked into a house.The branch secretary said, no matter where you go to sue, we are not afraid.

After Xiong Huapin was released home, he went around looking for the cadres to ask for medical expenses, but they refused to come.He said, I was beaten to pieces, my neck was stuck, and my head was broken. I paid three to five hundred yuan for medical expenses, and I used three to five yuan for pesticides to deal with them.He went to the small shop in the village to call his son who was in the army but failed, so he secretly took a bottle of pesticide from the shop and drank it while walking home. Ten minutes later, he was sent to the hospital for emergency treatment and died. Less than 20 days after Xiong Huapin's death, Li Qidong, a farmer in Hongyang Village, Nanchan Management District, Xingou Town, Jianli County, was taken from his bed and locked in a "small black room" set up by the management district. He froze to death two days and two nights later.

The deceased, Li Qidong, was 68 years old and owed 190 yuan for food and electricity during the commune period.After the contracting system, the village changed five Party secretaries, but none of them asked Li Qidong to accept the 190 yuan. In the middle of the night on November 23, 2000, the general branch secretary and deputy secretary of the Nanchan Management District, the village party secretary, and the village director brought some thugs to Li Qidong's home, demanding to pay off the arrears that had changed from 190 yuan rolling interest to more than 1,800 yuan.Li couldn't hand it in, and he didn't even put on his clothes, so he was taken to the management area and locked up with ten other people in a "small black room" of more than ten square meters.

A young man in the same gate said: "There was only some straw spread on the concrete floor in the house. It was dawn not long after we were locked in on the 23rd. On the evening of the 24th, Master Huang, the cook in the management area, saw us shivering from the cold, and secretly threw them in in the middle of the night. A few sacks kept us out of the cold. Young and middle-aged people have trembling hands and cramps in their feet, especially after a nap, they often wake up from the cold. When it was dawn on the 25th, we found that Li Qidong was dying of cold, and called the cadres to rescue him People, they said it was just pretending, and ignored them. After waiting for a while, seeing that he really couldn't do it, we yelled and kicked the door. Tang Hui and Yan Zehua came, cursing: "What are you shouting early in the morning? I'm so noisy. Get up early and kick you to death!' They saw that Li Qidong was going to die through the window, so they called Jiang Dadi, the village party secretary. Jiang Dadi came after more than an hour, and he asked two janitors hired for 40 yuan a day I opened the door and went in to see if it was a fake, and after seeing that it was really bad, I was sent to the hospital, where I heard that he died on the way.”

The detainees said that after Li Qidong's death, the town was afraid, so they released dozens of other detainees, and said that Li Qidong died of illness, and told us not to talk nonsense. According to the reporter's investigation, Xingou Town has always used methods such as arresting and shutting down people to forcibly collect taxes. After reading the above stories, one can naturally understand what the small black room and study class are.It was a place where the authorities used to imprison "negligent" people. Here, the imprisonment was enforced, used as a punishment, and deprived of personal freedom.A place with these characteristics is a prison.However, township governments and administrative districts belong to administrative departments, and they have no power to establish prisons to deprive citizens of their personal freedom, so we cannot call them prisons.If it is not called "gray prison", we can only call it a study class or a small black house like the locals.

But why are there two names?Is there any difference between the small black room and the study class?My first feeling is that words come first and then later.At first it was called study class, but later people found that it was only closed for people and no classes were held, so they gradually changed their name and called it Xiaoheiwu.However, after investigation, the last time the word study class appeared in the above quotation was around 10:00 pm on November 1, 2000, and it was popular not earlier than Xiaoheiwu.My guess was wrong. In desperation, I called the author for advice.Li Changping replied: "Study class, that's the name of the cadres; small black house, that's the name of the peasants. They are all the same thing."

Once again, I am overwhelmed by the creativity of the broad masses of cadres and masses.Doesn't the township government have no right to build prisons?Then we will hold a study class within our authority.To avoid predation, certain insects take the shape of twigs or even dung, which ecologists call "mimicry."The mimetic strategy of the majority of cadres is simpler and cheaper, just pick a noun.The peasants refused to accept this term, but they didn't know how to call these prisons which were not prisons, so they called them "little black houses".The road is one foot high, and the magic is one foot high. This game of identification and anti-identification is played vividly.

Say something far away.In Mr. Zhang Zhengming's "History of the Rise and Fall of Shanxi Merchants", there is a paragraph describing how the government forced merchants to "voluntarily" donate: "In the fifth year of Jiaqing (1800), one county in Shanxi donated 100,000 taels, and there was a limit to urge them to pay. Those who fail to deal with it will be held accountable and even locked up in the classroom, which is called a 'black kiln'." People in Hubei live in houses, and people in Shanxi live in kilns. Black houses are "black kilns".After two hundred years and a distance of more than a thousand miles, the words used are so similar, as if ghosts and gods haunted them. In the name of the study class, the reality of detention is almost as long as the name of the study class. On December 22, 1967, "People's Daily" published an editorial "Mao Zedong Thought Study Class Vigorously Running Well", which conveyed Chairman Mao's latest instructions: "It is a good way to run study classes, and many problems can be solved in study classes." All kinds of classes have sprung up, and many names reminiscent of detention have appeared one after another, such as "Study Class for Educating Children", "School for Petty Theft" and so on. According to the records in official publications that I have read, the study classes with the nature of gray prisons appeared as early as June 1968, only half a year after the publication of the Supreme Directive.According to Yu Luoke's younger brother Yu Luowen's book "My Family", he was imprisoned in Banbuqiao Prison in Beijing after the Spring Festival in 1968. One day at the end of September 1968, “Three trucks took us to the No. 1 Juvenile Prison in the northern suburbs of Beijing. It turned out that we were sent to the I'm here to attend the second study class." Yu Luowen wrote: "The first issue came here three months ago, and all of them were released back to the original unit before we came. This undoubtedly indicates good hope for us, but no one told us that it will be released and when it will be released (More than a month later, a college student from the Institute of Light Industry escaped from here and was arrested without mercy.) "There is also a group of 'study class' living here. There are fifty or sixty people. We call it the 'Heigan Study Class' privately. The members are all children of the 'gangster', like Liu Shaoqi's daughter and He Long's son. My son, etc., have been here for several months, and it seems that there is no intention of releasing them." Going back to the days when the Supreme Directive on the Classes was published, it seems that the source is not being traced.Zhu Hongzhao, a scholar who specializes in the study of the Yan'an period, talked to me about a common method at that time, which was to detain people for meetings and study, and not to let people go unless they changed their positions.He mentioned that in October 1942, when Mao Zedong made an opening report at a meeting of high-level cadres of the Northwest Bureau, in order to convert those who were not of the same mind as Chairman Mao, the meeting lasted for 88 days, and the meeting would not end unless they changed.When I heard this story, I immediately judged the heart of a gentleman with the heart of a villain, and guessed how those detained leaders should make small calculations: the longer they are out of power, the less influence they have, and the possibility of being replaced by others bigger.If you don't change, there is no capital to make troubles. This story took me one step further to understand the complexity of things.What we are dealing with is not a well-defined thing.Since meeting and studying always requires people to be confined in a certain time and space, and the participants always lose part of their freedom temporarily, then, a circle for three to five hours is a circle, and a circle for three to five months is also a circle; you can ask for leave for minor matters and illnesses Fake, this is the only thing in everything, and you are probably not allowed to ask for leave—in this uninterrupted series, where is the dividing line between detention and meeting and studying?This ambiguity provides a space within which a right to legitimately harm others can arise—a valuable thing to exploit. By the way, during the Yan'an rectification movement, the term "study class" was not yet popular, but "study group" and "rectification class" had appeared.Wei Junyi said in "Sitonglu" that her husband "Yang Shu was locked up in the rectification class, but every morning they were asked to go to the Wuding River to work in the cold wind." Wei Junyi wrote: "Rectification! Rectification Chairman Mao’s rectification report is so reasonable, why is it done like this here?” She said, “Naively, we thought it was done by a few people from the prefectural committee, and Yang Shu went to Yan’an to appeal. I only found out later , it turns out that the situation in Yan'an is worse than that in Suide." The rectification class that Wei Junyi wrote about was active in December 1942, but it was still not the end.Prior to this, the Kuomintang had invented gray prisons such as training groups and training classes, where half-day study, half-day labor, and centralized detention were used. You can still go further.I read in the book "Slow Variables in Qing Dynasty Society" that at the end of the Qing Dynasty, the squires in Nanxun Town, Zhejiang Province spontaneously set up the "Pursuance of Hearts and Mobilization of Good", and some people who were not enough to be brought to the court The rascals and those who do not succeed in the town" are imprisoned in it, patrolling and guarding day and night, "the bureau's stewards talk to them about good things every day", "confine their bodies so that their unruly spirit has to be dissipated, and their conscience makes them feel ashamed and regretful." After a long time, these detainees had the intention of repenting, and their relatives came to protect them, and then they were released.It seems that this is already a very authentic prison study class. The bullpen mentioned here is the place where various units imprisoned "ghosts and snake spirits" during the Cultural Revolution. A large number of them arose after the publication of the People's Daily editorial "Sweeping all ghosts and snake spirits" on June 1, 1966.The bullpen is not a formal prison, but a gray prison during the Cultural Revolution.So, who are the monsters and monsters? Ordinarily, I can be considered a person who has experienced the Cultural Revolution, and I seem to understand what ghosts and monsters are.But to be honest, I feel that it is not clear.I asked my parents who had been monsters, ghosts, and snake gods for advice. They discussed for a while, and the answer they gave was: "The rich and the bad, the rightist, the feudal capitalists, the traitors, the secret agents, the capitalist roaders, the bourgeois reactionary academic authorities, and those who conform to the Six Articles of Public Security , and so on. ——However, almost none of these were true, and they were all rehabilitated in the end.” I also asked two veteran cadres who had been ghosts and ghosts, and their answers were almost identical.In order to highlight the correctness of this definition, Lao Song, who was a rightist, gave me a counterexample.He said that the secretary of their school league committee belonged to the royalists and had an extramarital relationship. He was caught by the rebels when he was going to bed, with a broken shoe hanging around his neck to criticize the fight, and then he was locked in the cowshed.Soon after, a higher-level rebel organization ordered his release.It can be seen from this that ghosts and ghosts still talk about standards, and "broken shoes" are not qualified. Against the above criteria, I examined several familiar samples.Lao Song used to be a rightist, but he was dealt with by a ghost and a snake god. He is worthy of the "right" who "returns the rich to the right".My mother was a university teacher. During her lectures, she mentioned the anti-revolutionary policy of "not killing one, not arresting the majority". Someone put up a big-character poster, saying that she was a revisionist who advocated the theory of reconciliation, so she paraded in the streets to criticize. The "repair" in "Feng Zi Xiu".My father came from a family of poor landowners, and he was charged with living in a cowshed as a "class alien".This one seems to be hard to classify.What counts as class dissidents?Compared with the theoretically "high-quality" proletarian "standard person", is it really possible to find a living person who has no alien elements?What really matters is that the faction in power will find fault with him, and the whole person will always find a crime. I continued to compare and found Mr. Ji Xianlin's.Mr. Ji also lived in the cowshed. What is his crime?This question was also something he had pondered over and over again back then.Capitalist?As the head of the department, it can generally be counted.Bourgeois reactionary academic authority?Revisionists?Counter-revolutionaries?Seems to be enough.In the end, he was imprisoned in the "gangster compound" of Peking University (Mr. Ji said that this is another name for the bullpen, which can be classified into the gray prison series), and won another title of gangster. However, the biggest problem is that none of this is true, and it was all rehabilitated later, so it doesn't count.What is this standard?Wouldn't it be a fool's errand to seriously examine the above-mentioned standards and definitions? Then again, this ambiguity exploits the power to harm others at low cost.For those in power in each unit, it is easier to deal with people with this weapon.Since things are good, the demand is naturally relatively large, and it is easy to popularize cowsheds, and they did spread to almost every work unit during the Cultural Revolution. Compared with the bullpen, the participation criteria of the study class are broader.From the members of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee to the prisoners in the prison of ghosts and snakes, who can say that they should not study?This more ambiguous characteristic makes the vitality and popularity of the study class exceed that of the bullpen. Ever since I knew the word "squad room", I have always regarded "squad room" as a colloquial name for a prison. "Ci Hai" (1979 edition) explained "class room" as: "commonly known as a place where prisoners are held, referring to detention centers, prisons, etc." It seems that I am not the only one who feels this way. A few years ago, I began to read ancient books seriously, and only then did I realize that the prison is not the same as a formal prison.In the original sense, the prison is the place where the servants in the government office or private mansion are on duty or rest. Later, this place was used to temporarily detain people, and gradually developed the meaning of gray prison. In my reading range, the word class room first appeared in (Ming) Tang Xianzu's (1550-1616) "Peony Pavilion Naoyan".There was a banquet in the government office, and the scholar wanted to go in to find his father-in-law, but was stopped by the guards. The scholar thought: "I am afraid that when I come in, I will test a Taiping banquet poem...and wait in this room, thinking about one, just to be prepared. .” The office mentioned here is the place where the yamen servants are on duty.One hundred and fifty or sixty years later, Cao Xueqin wrote in the fifty-first chapter that the doctor saw a doctor, "I went out of the gate of the garden for a while, and sat in the classroom of the guards of the garden, and prescribed medicine." This classroom is also home. A place where servants are on duty and rest. Half a century later, the classrooms mentioned by the famous teacher Wang Huizu (1730-1807) in "Xuezhi Shuozhu" already had a clear "gray prison" nature.When talking about political points, Wang Huizu warned officials to set up a "supervisory book" of the class and check it frequently. He said: "The name of the prison is not available in the law firm. It is used as a last resort, and it is recorded as you go." Please pay attention to the four words "the law firm does not follow".Prisons have official status in law, but prisons do not.The detainment in the class is without legal basis, so it cannot be called "white"; but it is used "as a last resort" by the legal government, so it cannot be called "black".The place of detention where people talk about black and white is exactly the "grey prison". We have a vast land and rich resources and a long history, and it is difficult to unify the names of gray prisons. For example, in Sichuan, they are called card rooms, and in some places they are called official stores, and there are also names such as mission halls and prison houses.The classroom is just one of the more popular ones. Who is detained in the classroom?According to Wang Huizu, most of them are suspects of thieves and robbers, and there are also people involved in the murder case.People in connection with civil proceedings are also often imprisoned. Zhang Jixin once served as the vice-governor in charge of punishment and prisons in Sichuan. He described the size and condition of the Sichuan class room in the record of the twenty-eighth year of Daoguang (1848) in the "Daoxian Official History Record": "The card room is the most Cruel. Hundreds of people were detained in Kafang, a large county, and no less than dozens or more than a dozen people in a small town. Even witnesses of household marriages, land, money debts, and tenancy were also detained, and they were given rare daily Mi Yiou, without seeing the sun all the year round, suffers a hundred times as much as a prison.... Previously, there were no fewer than two thousand people who were killed in the province of Yu every year." One or two thousand people are put to death in gray prisons in the whole province every year. What does this mean?At that time, the number of executions per year in Sichuan Province was only one to two hundred, and the number of "gray executions" was ten times that of legal executions.From this, we can get a quantitative judgment and understand whether the Huanghuang National Law or the gray rules are stronger or weaker. Is such a disparity in proportion believable?Will Zhang Jixin exaggerate the number of "gray executions"?A piece of material I saw suggested that Zhang Jixin probably shrunk rather than exaggerated the number.In the early years of Daoguang, Chen Leshan, a supervisor in Fengdu County, Sichuan Province, was detained for seven months in Ba County (belonging to Chongqing) and two months in Huayang County (belonging to Chengdu) because he was involved in a lawsuit. Yu dead.He calculated in his letter to the emperor that six or seven thousand people died every year in Sichuan Province. From the perspective of language development, jail has become more and more influential in actual social control, and finally became a synonym for prison in the mouths of the people, and the original meaning has disappeared. Who benefits from a gray prison?Harmful to whom?How are these benefits distributed? From my reading impression, it seems that the government servants have benefited the most from the gray prison system.According to Wang Huizu's "Xuezhi Shuozhu", the government servants are very good at using detainees for profit.Suspected thieves can steal at night and get a share of the stolen goods.Those involved in civil lawsuits can be used to cheat and seek benefits.People involved in murder cases can be held in filthy places, freeze him in winter, heat him in summer, starve him in normal times, and extort money from him. The above three methods are only part of it.The methods I know also include: 1. Force the detainees to point their fingers at the innocent, and then blackmail the innocent; 2. Extort high-priced food money from all the detainees; 3. Molested and raped the women in custody; Shutdown is a threat to extort civilians. In this way, the class can be regarded as the profit of the yamen servants, and they are naturally supporters of the class.However, the status of yamen servants is low, and officials cannot afford to risk violations for their own interests.So, for the superior leaders of the yamen servants, how to weigh the pros and cons of the class? Zhang Jixin saw the serious disadvantage of killing one or two thousand people every year. In 1848, when he took office in Sichuan Province, he strictly ordered all card rooms to be demolished: "Don't investigate the past, and if there are any private card rooms in the future, they will be strictly involved." Zhang Jixin has only been in charge of the prison in Sichuan for more than a year. He has no follow-up records of how well the order to demolish the card room was implemented and what problems occurred.Then again, why should he be so persistent?One or two thousand people are slaughtered every year, and the detainees and their families are the first to be hurt, and then the court that is resented by others, and the interests of both are different from his personal interests.Zhang Jixin ordered the demolition of all card rooms, indicating that he is a good official who still takes the interests of the court and the people seriously. In order to be a good official, he is willing to issue an official document.In fact, in the high position of deputy governor, it is easy to issue an official document. After all, the cost of canceling the class is not borne by him, Zhang Jixin. Wang Huizu's works also have records of banning leather squads.He said that prisons were banned a few years ago, but the actual need for those temporary detentions still exists, so the officials asked the government officials to detain people in "private homes". As a result, it is more difficult to check and has more disadvantages. It is better to be detained in "public offices". . Wang Huizu has been changing the positions of the master and the county magistrate. He personally checks the class and releases people at any time after the trial is over to prevent the government officials from cheating.Wang Huizu understands the actual situation better than Zhang Jixin.He knew that the price of the forbidden leather class was borne by the detainees, who would therefore be more vulnerable to extortion by the yamen servants.Those who were originally detained for three to five days were likely to be quietly held for several months—in my own home, the yamen servants were even more unsupervised, so why not take the opportunity to squeeze a little more money?It's really an amazing view.It turns out that the prison is not a bad thing, but a product of a compromise of interests, which also includes the meaning of proper protection for the detainees. From this point of view, what really matters is the need for detention "as a last resort".What the hell is this? Judging from what Wang Huizu said, this need seems to be related to the efficiency of solving or adjudicating cases, as well as the efforts and achievements of officials.In this regard, Wang Huizu's remarks were relatively rough, neither detailed nor traced to the source, but the contemporary case provided by Li Changping can just supplement the above-mentioned deficiencies. Li Changping cited an investigative report written by a reporter, which traced the history and causes of the small black house in Jianli County.The original text is transcribed as follows: This section of the investigation clearly states that the need for detention stems from the need to collect food.Some people protested against food and money, and the grassroots government had to strike and deter them. Therefore, "gray prisons" and small black rooms appeared, and "gray police" pickets also appeared. After more than two thousand years of education and training, Chinese farmers are generally not resistant to grain.In their minds, planting land and receiving food is a matter of course.In name, the imperial grain is generally not too heavy. After the Han Dynasty, the tax rate was only 3.3% per mu, and the tax rate was only 3.3%. There has been no obvious change in the concept of farmers as being right and right, but there have been changes in cadres.They want to build super-standard office buildings and dormitory buildings, and buy high-end cars.It is only natural that the government should do things that should be done, such as exempting and giving relief, but it has blatantly let it go. Not only that.According to today's regulations, the reasonable burden of farmers cannot exceed 5% of their annual income. Although this is 1.66 percentage points more than the nominal burden of previous dynasties after the Han Dynasty, farmers have not expressed dissatisfaction. After all, the previous figures are just nominal. , not to mention everything is rising.But the family pays more than 2,000 yuan a year, which is ridiculously high.According to the figures provided by Li Changping, the total reasonable burden of the farmers in Jianli County is about 170 million yuan, and the county government agreed to collect 220 million yuan, which is an excess of 50 million yuan.After layers of overweight, the total actual burden of the county is 387 million yuan, which is more than 200 million yuan more than the reasonable burden.Exceeded 1.27 times.In fact, the burden on farmers today has reached about 25% of their total income, which is more than double the Confucian classic "tithe tax".In this way, farmers' willingness to resist grain will naturally increase.They felt it was unfair and distressed, and it was indeed difficult for them to come up with such a large sum of money. What is the government collecting so much money for?In addition to building a building and buying a car at one time, according to Li Changping, it is mainly used to pay salaries and support cadres.Cadres at all levels in Jianli County arbitrarily arrange financial meals for relatives and friends, resulting in serious overstaffing.There are more than 150 people in a town financial office alone, of which there are no more than 20 people in the official staff, and more than 130 people in the super staff. We now know where the need for incarceration came from: the extra taxation.The additional taxes and fees are generated from the over-standard office buildings, dormitory buildings and cars, and from the seriously overstaffed personnel. That's not all.Li Changping said that when expropriation was difficult and the higher-level government was under strict supervision, grassroots cadres often borrowed usury advances from relatives and friends, and some simply borrowed their own money. In 2000, the county, township, district, and village debts in Jianli were about 1 billion yuan. For this reason, the county paid about 200 million yuan in interest every year, and the reasonable burden of farmers in the county was only 170 million yuan, which was not enough to repay the usury. .Every season when it comes to collecting money, village cadres try their best to collect money and keep it to repay the usury they have already owned.As a result, the huge sum of RMB 1 billion with an interest rate as high as 20% has become a new burden for farmers.Therefore, in addition to the supernumerary staff salaries and super-standard buildings and cars, we can also find a third need behind the gray prison: the interest income of the creditor group composed of cadres and their relatives and friends. Against the above background, it is easy to understand the peasants' resistance to grain and the cadres' suppression.This is a real and important conflict of interests, and the gray prison is the product of this conflict, and its function is to maintain the distribution of interests in which cadres benefit and farmers suffer.Ordinarily, super-standard buildings, super-staffed cadre salaries, and usury income are not legitimate rights and interests, but belong to the hidden rule system of benefit distribution. He didn't bother to hide at all.Accordingly, we can define the gray prison as a deterrent that supports "hidden rules" and "horizontal rules". After writing the above definition, I feel guilty again.Could it be that the gray prison has no role in safeguarding the public interest at all?It would be unfair to say so.During the actual grain collection, public interests (legal collection) and agent interests (redundant staff and over-standard supplies, etc.) were mixed together.Who can tell which part of the anti-grain resistance is?It is precisely because of this ambiguity that the agent's interests can free ride. In addition, as far as I know, gray jails not only detain food rebels, but also detain a large number of people who violated family planning regulations in previous years.A friend from a village in Hebei told me that the main way they deal with the superbirth guerrillas is to arrest the in-laws or parents of absconded pregnant women, lock them in a small dark room to freeze and starve, and at the same time send out a message to let the pregnant women take Proof of miscarriage to redeem. I think this is implicated, which is wrong. The friend asked me what is the proper way, but I couldn't answer.Put yourself in the shoes of grassroots cadres, if the completion of family planning has the effect of a veto, and a few super-birth households will make my years of hard work in the official career go to waste, how will I feel?When I really entered the situation, I felt that "anger comes from the heart, and evil comes from the gall."Who doesn't know that family planning is in the interests of the whole nation, including the bearers themselves?Why do you have to have more children?I also found myself quite willing to set up dark rooms for in-laws who were suspected of complicity.If nothing happens, if you don't make mistakes, if you don't lose your hat, then I'll let go and grab it.If the county asks, I will use the mimicry strategy and say that this is a family planning class.I believe the county magistrate and I can reach a tacit agreement. In the same way, organizing petty theft classes also has the effect of safeguarding the public interest.In this way, I can pack them with more freedom and flexibility, less constraints, and more efficiency.Similarly, if I want to blackmail or create an injustice, I will feel that I have a sharp weapon, and it is naturally more convenient to be a corrupt official. Then there is a trade-off: for Chinese society, is the extra corrupt officials more harmful, or the extra thieves and super-born guerrillas more harmful?If the Family Planning Law is formally enacted, cadres will inevitably be subject to many constraints, at least the implicated policy is not easy to use anymore.This may reduce injustice and illegal infringement, but it will inevitably increase the number of over-births.I guess that part of the reason for the delayed promulgation of the family planning law lies in this trade-off. From this result, we can see the value judgment of the legislators. Then again, even if the Family Planning Law is promulgated, I believe there are still "countermeasures".As long as the family planning completion target has an impact on the promotion of cadres, our cadres can find a way to implicate the nine ethnic groups.Office women are not allowed to study classes. Is it okay to "accommodate" these old people who have been abandoned by their children?Containment is also not allowed, so you can always try "double regulations", right?Is it illegal to let the parents-in-law tell clearly where their daughter-in-law is hiding at the specified time and place?If you have to count, do you still want to engage in family planning? We've looked at who Gray Prison is good for, and we haven't looked closely at who it's bad for.We already know that the inventor of the small black room was not punished, but promoted.That is to say, they are only benefited and not harmed, and the victims are mainly the low-level people without power, which is nothing to investigate.However, there is also a gray line for violating civilians. If you cross this line, you may encounter resistance and hurt the invaders.This ability to counteract is the key factor in maintaining the boundaries of rights and interests, that is, the key factor in determining the position of the gray boundary line.This principle is the same as the number and weaponry of the Wehrmacht affect the position of the border line.If there is no actual ability to kill intruders, no matter how large or large the boundary markers are, they are just decorations. In addition to the rectification class in the Yan’an era, the stories cited in this article have a common feature, that is, the common people’s recognition of the compression of the boundaries of their own rights represented by the gray prison.Starting from the classroom, through the bullpen to the study class, the gray prison has never encountered real resistance, or even been questioned.Chinese farmers accept unspoken rules for grain requisition, and they also accept detention in gray prisons.They don't make trouble, they don't sue, and they don't take the beautiful talk of personal liberty and civil rights seriously.But this is already the bottom line, and more in-depth violations will inevitably encounter resistance.For example, it is impossible not to give relief when it is time to give relief, and at the same time collect food according to the standard of unspoken rules.For another example, it is okay to arrest people, but they cannot be beaten to death; it is okay to put them in gray prisons, but they cannot be frozen to death.If these boundaries are crossed, farmers will sue, make trouble, or commit suicide if they fail. Having said that, I should explain the outcome of the above-mentioned three deaths. 1. Zhu Changxian.After Zhu Changxian, a peasant woman, committed suicide, her body was carried to the township government. Li Changping, then party secretary of Zhemu Township, had been studying abroad for a month. After hearing the news, he immediately rushed back to the township government to deal with the funeral.Seven days later, a private teacher in Shakuhachi Town, Jianli committed suicide due to the burden of farmers.The two peasant suicides occurred on the eve of Hong Kong's return to the motherland, and the central leadership instructed that they should be dealt with severely and quickly.According to the spirit of the central document, two consecutive deaths occurred in one county. Not only the main leaders of Jianli County will be punished, but also the leaders of Jingzhou City will be punished. The Hubei Provincial Party Committee should write an inspection to the central government. So the secretary of the Jianli County Party Committee thought of a way to lose the car to keep the handsome man, and sent Li Changping's most respected old leader to talk to him, do work, and make wishes, and asked Li Changping to take care of the overall situation and do "four no pushbacks."First, don’t push the past—don’t say that the disaster relief policy in 1996 was not implemented, and don’t say that Zhemu Township’s fiscal deficit was more than 12 million yuan; second, don’t push comrades——don’t say that you are not at home; Incidents of food requisition, death, and detention; four do not push the superiors—do not say that county documents, speeches, minutes, and telegrams are not in line with the spirit of the Central Committee. According to the request of the secretary of the county party committee, Li Changping wrote a letter to the secretary of the Jingzhou Municipal Party Committee requesting punishment. 2. Xiong Huapin.After Xiong Huapin committed suicide by drinking pesticide, the Huangxiekou Town Party Committee and the town government reached an agreement with the family of the deceased: 20,000 yuan for burial, 50,000 yuan for pension, 10,000 yuan for cremation before 12:00 on the 6th, and no payment after 12:00 This ten thousand yuan. Before 12 o'clock on the 6th, Xiong Huapin's body was cremated.When the reporter investigated, apart from the pension of 50,000 yuan that needs to be further implemented, the other 30,000 yuan has already been in place. 3. Li Qidong.Li Qidong was imprisoned by the cadres in the "small black room" set up by the management area and died of freezing after two days and two nights. The town paid 80,000 yuan to his family and released all the detainees at the same time. The two suicides here have a common motive, which is to call the attention of higher-ups, put pressure on the offenders, let them be punished, lose money, and suffer as a result.It seems that the people have lost a lot of money by exchanging their lives for an administrative sanction and a sum of funeral expenses and pensions for officials, but after all, they did not die in vain, and they got something in exchange.These things can be regarded as the official price of human life - a fair price recognized by the upper and lower levels.In light of the history of the Qing and Qing dynasties, even though the population is now larger, the official price of human life has risen instead of falling. This anti-damage ability is a new thing of great significance. According to the provisions of "Law of the Ming Dynasty Criminal Law Human Life": "Anyone who threatens a person to death due to an incident shall be punished with one hundred sticks. If an official, minister, etc., threatens a civilian to death not because of official duties, the crime shall be the same. (Note by the quote: less than 2,000 yuan)." (Ming) Lei Menglin, an official of the Ministry of Punishment, explained this article in "Du Lv Suo Yan", emphasizing that: "Officials, ministers, etc., pursue money and food, and capture official affairs. Pursuing criminals, and thus threatening people to death, the actions of the lawsuit are righteous, so what crime is there if he despises himself?" It can be seen that the legal right to harm people who chased money and food back then was even greater, and killing people was in vain. Not even a punishment for officials can be exchanged.Officials were the parents of the people back then, but now officials are the servants of the people.If a father asks his son to die, the son dares not not to die; if a public servant asks his master to die, there must always be some trouble.This difference may help explain the difference between the class room and the small black room.The class room is not afraid of the death of the detainees, but the small black room has to pay for those who freeze to death. Therefore, the number of long-term detainees and the number of deaths have been greatly reduced.This is the sign of social progress. In short, what can really prevent our officials from becoming cruel officials is probably neither the superior nor the conscience.It's not hard to fool your superiors with your conscience.The point is how to distribute the damage, in other words, whether I can provoke those I intend to harm.The so-called unprovoked means that the risk of harming them is very high, and I may suffer the same or even greater harm as a result.The so-called affordability means that it is profitable to hurt them.The peasants who are in a state of disunity have no power or power, and filing a lawsuit is costly and laborious, and there is no certainty of victory.As the old Dong in the book said: "The people's family has been harmed by the government. What else can I do except endure it? If it is the case, it will be sent back for interrogation as usual, and if it falls into his hands, won't it be another one?" " On the other hand, if the appeal is simple, easy, fair and effective, the ministries will not have to swallow their anger, and the government will not be able to provoke the minjia. Even in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, even when a complaint was equal to a confession, there was still a bottom line for officials to violate the common people. According to the provisions of the "Law of the Ming Dynasty, Military Law, Military Administration, Revolutionary Good People", "Any official of the herdsmen who loses his character, acts illegally, and drastically changes the good people, and thus gathers a crowd to rebel and loses the city, will be executed." —— Here is the radical change of the good people That's the bottom line.Of course, the officials can also prescribe the right medicine, bullying them as usual, while nipping the rebellion in the bud, preventing them from colluding in private to form cliques, establishing illegal organizations, and so on.After these tasks are done, the position of the bottom line can be further lowered. In any case, step after step of compression always leads to increasing risk.With the deeper intrusion into the boundaries of civil rights, the sense of injustice among the common people accumulates, and the power to rebound or resist also accumulates.Once a relatively weak breakthrough is found, or, even though there is no breakthrough, he has come to a desperate situation like Chen Sheng and Wu Guang, and he is shackled to the point of being unable to live by the "gray shackle" (semi-formal torture tool) like Li Zicheng, the whole world, no matter Whether it is the perpetrator or the victim, the greater damage will be borne jointly.Because of the fear of this situation, the official laws and regulations in ancient China did not dare to compress the boundaries of the rights of the people too much, but behind the official boundary markers there are only a group of unarmed mobs. Finally, after talking enough about the gray cells and rules, I transcribed several Chinese and foreign official regulations as a bright tail.Article 37 of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China stipulates: "The personal freedom of citizens of the People's Republic of China is inviolable. No citizen shall be arrested unless approved by the People's Procuratorate or decided by the People's Court and executed by a public security organ. Illegal detention and Illegally depriving or restricting citizens' personal freedom by other means, and illegally searching the bodies of citizens is prohibited." This is the constitution adopted by the Fifth National People's Congress on December 4, 1982. On March 11, 1912, the Provisional Senate of the Republic of China passed the "Provisional Constitution", the first constitution after the overthrow of the imperial system: "The body of the people shall not be arrested, detained, interrogated, or punished except in accordance with the law." On March 12, 1912, the second day after the "Provisional Constitution" was promulgated, Zhang Shizhao, a revolutionary at the time and a well-known newspaperman who returned from studying law in England, wrote an article questioning: "If someone does not arrest, detain, interrogate, or punish people in accordance with the law, if Why? With the quality of the "Yuefa", the "Yuefa" cannot answer." Zhang Shizhao talked about Britain from this. He said that both Chinese and foreigners have the desire to abuse power, but the British invented a law to protect freedom: "Whenever there is an incident of illegal infringement on the person, no matter who , all may submit a court writ (Writ of Habeas Corpus, now translated as writ of habeas corpus) to the appropriate court, and the court has to agree. Failure to do so will result in a corresponding punishment. The writ of the court is an order issued by the court A petition, ordering the aggressor to bring the victim out of the court within a certain period of time, state his reasons, and be tried. The English have this system, and individual freedom is completely covered by it."