BEIJING
China formally adopted the historic reforms on Saturday that will ease their one-child policy and remove the labor camps.
Chinese legislative power, National People's Congress, resolved the submission that foresees the ease of one-child policy with family planning. Under the new policy, couples will be allowed to have two children if one of the parents is an only child. The rules can be implemented by local authorities in the country considering its own conditions.
This policy was introduced in 1979 to scale down the social, economic, and environmental problems inChina. Demographers estimated that the policy averted 200 million births between 1979 and 2009.
On the other hand, the controversial issue of "Laojiao", a system of administrative detentions inChina which was often used to sentence people for minor crimes by sending them to labor camps, abolished officially. With the reform, "Laojiao" detentions will be ineffective and the campers will be released.
The committees implementing "Laojiao" were composed of government bodies consisting of the police, civil affairs and education departments. In the systems, security forces and the committee were authorized to detain citizens without a public trial for up to four years. This was especially abused by local governments through arbitrary punishment.
englishnews@aa.com.tr
