Hell on Earth Is in China
Masanjia Labor Camp
And one man managed to get his story out
Welcome back to China Uncensored.
I’m Chris Chappell.
Masanjia Labor Camp was known as
one of China’s most brutal prisons.
Survivors call it hell on Earth.
And a lot of them carry the scars to prove it.
The things that happened in Masanjia,
those stories usually don’t see the light of day.
But in 2013, this woman, Julie Keith
went shopping for Halloween Decorations at Kmart.
And inside was something truly spooky.
A desperate letter from a prisoner inside Masanjia.
That real life story was turned into an edge of your seat documentary
called Letter from Masanjia.
I sat down with director Leon Lee to find out more.
Thanks for joining us today, Leon.
Thank you for having me.
So for those watching who haven't seen Letter from Masanjia,
what is it about?
It's a real life message in a bottle story.
A woman in Oregon found an SOS note
in a package of Halloween decorations she purchased from Kmart.
It turned out it was written by a man in one of the most
notorious labor camps in China, Masanjia Labor Camp.
And it took us three years to track down the letter writer,
and he told us the full story.
So Masanjia.
Can you paint us a picture of what Masanjia is?
Because it's not a normal labor camp.
Well it started from being a normal labor camp,
and then quickly it turned out to be what they call
a national center of excellence
for reeducating and transforming people,
mainly through torture.
So-
Excellent.
In Chinese dissidents' words, "This is a place of nightmare."
This is the place they would rather die than being sentenced to.
So when you heard about the letter, it was found by...
What was her name?
Julie-
Julie Keith.
When you heard about that story, were you like,
"Wow, I got to make a movie about this"?
I immediately flew to Oregon,
where the Julie Keith lived,
and I talked to her.
She was very cooperative.
I think I interviewed her several times over the years.
I knew there had to be an amazing story behind it,
because at the time I had interviewed
over a dozen survivors from Masanjia Labor Camp.
I just couldn't imagine how could this letter writer
find a pen and paper?
How could he write the letter
under the watchful eyes of the guards?
How could he manage to hide it?
And who is this person?
So I really wanted to find out the story behind it.
And because of my previous films,
I had a underground network in China consist of dissidents and journalists.
And I put the word out.
As I said, three years later, one day somebody told me,
"I think I got your guy."
And we had our initial meeting over Skype.
Because at this point, he was out of Masanjia, correct?
Right.
He had been out for a couple of years, and he was in hiding.
He certainly knew that the letter was discovered,
and he knew it was one of the reasons that
the entire labor camp system in China was abolished,
and that's probably why he did not want to advertise
that he was the letter writer.
It probably wouldn't have been good for him.
But then you come out with this movie saying that
he was the writer of this letter.
Were you concerned either for his safety
or for your own safety in making this movie?
Well certainly for his safety.
It was an easy decision for me to, after talking to him,
to decide to make this film,
because obviously we both realized what it meant,
but he said something that changed my mind.
He said, "Look, I am providing technical support
to the underground press now,
and these are the people are the most targeted
by the Chinese communist regime.
So if I get caught,
whether by helping other people or helping you making the film,
I face the same consequences.
If I take the same risks,
I might as well do something more effective."
So that's how we came together to work on this film,
but then there was still one problem.
As I said, because of my previous films,
I couldn't go back to China.
Because you've done several movies
critical of the Chinese Communist Party, correct?
Certainly not welcomed by the Communist Party.
And at the same time, Sun Yi, the letter writer,
he did not know how to use a camera.
So we two have to find ways to mainly work over Skype.
That involves training for him, how to use a camera,
how to collect audio,
how to take pictures or shoot videos without being discovered,
and how to use a microphone.
How does he even transfer footage to me?
So that whole logistical things we had to work out one by one.
So not only was he the star of your movie,
he was also the cameraman inside China for you.
Quite often, yes.
Now one part of the movie that was amazing to me is,
at one point he went back to Masanjia to get footage.
And I remember you said like,
"That's a terrible idea.
You can't do that."
But he went ahead.
What was going on with that?
One day over our Skype meeting, he said, "I have an idea.
I want to go back to Masanjia Labor Camp
and interview the former inmate guards."
I said, "That's not a good idea."
He felt they were quite close to him, but I told him,
"No matter how close you think you were,
these were the people that could just
turn back and call the authority."
But he really wanted to go back.
And he said, "This is not only for the film,
but more importantly, this is for them.
This might be their only chance to find redemption."
So he went back, and he compressed the footage,
he encrypted and sent to me online.
I watched the two interviews with two former inmate guards,
and I was in tears.
One guard was at one point telling people
how good he was as a torturer,
and the new methods he invented himself,
and how effective they were.
But as soon as he met Sun Yi,
he completely changed to a different person.
He talked about how his of Falun Gong,
how his entire point of view on life was changed by knowing Sun Yi.
And that's an important part.
Sun Yi was in Masanjia for practicing Falun Gong.
So of all of the things you could make a documentary about,
why do you feel it was important to make one about Falun Gong?
Well if he wasn't practicing Falun Gong,
I probably would make the film anyway.
It is a rare story that connects Western viewers
to human rights violations in China.
But he happens to be a Falun Gong practitioner,
which is all the better,
because the persecution against Falun Gong
is one of the largest in the world now
in terms of human rights violation.
It's been going on since 1999.
And in terms of its scale and severity,
it's probably one of the largest atrocities we're facing nowadays.
And as I understand it,
Sun Yi wrote multiple letters while in Masanjia,
and only the one was found, correct?
Yes.
What was Julie's reaction when she got this letter?
Sun Yi wrote probably 20 letters.
And by the way, it took him more than one night to write one letter.
So it's obviously very difficult for him to find time to write it.
And Julie's initial reaction was that she thought it was a hoax.
So she immediately went online, Googled Masanjia Labor Camp,
and did her research, and very soon she realized this is not a hoax.
This is real.
And she wanted to do what Sun Yi asked her to do.
It was in the letter that the writer wanted the recipient
to send the letter to the human rights organization.
She did.
She tried to contact Human Rights Watch, I believe,
but it went nowhere.
So she did not stop.
She then tried to find...
I think she posted on Facebook,
and then she contacted her local newspaper.
It became a front page story on Christmas Eve.
And then after that it, just went viral.
CNN, Fox News, New York Times, everywhere.
Have you faced any pushback from the Chinese Communist Party
for making this documentary?
Not on this film.
Not so far.
At least not I'm aware of.
But my previous films, in particular Human Harvest,
which was about large-scale organ harvesting
on prisoners of conscience in China,
I received lots of interference.
For example, in festivals, in other forms of distribution,
quite often there were pushbacks.
What has been the response to Letter from Masanjia?
We had our world premier at Hot Docs in I think maybe last year.
So it's got a year on the circuit now.
We've been in I think over 40 festival,
winning over 1000 awards.
And almost every screening, I see people in tears.
I have people walk up to me and telling me
that they are filmmakers themselves,
they are well aware of all the techniques,
but somehow this film moved them to their core.
Government officials wanted to take action after seeing the film.
The film screened in European Parliament in Brussels.
It screened in Canadian Parliament.
We are still organizing screenings
in other parliaments around the world.
And we have lawmakers telling me that
an individual story like Sun Yi's journey
is so much more powerful than reading reports.
So basically, from all walks of life,
people suddenly realized that,
whatever impression they had of China before,
it has opened their eyes to see very different things,
different aspects of China.
So Sun Yi did a lot of the camera work inside of China.
As I understand it, he also contribute sketches to the documentary.
Yes.
Part of the film was animated
because it is obviously very difficult to do reenactment
or going back to inside Masanjia Labor Camp.
So it was a interesting story.
Again, we had our Skype meeting one day,
and Sun Yi wanted to show me some artwork.
He, obviously, he kept a sketchbook
after he was released from Masanjia,
and he wanted to remember his experience inside.
So, right then we decided to do animated sequences
based on his own sketches.
His sketch has a particular style that's similar to
a traditional Chinese graphic novel.
When I ask him,
he told me since he was young he loved reading
traditional Chinese graphic novels,
and he would quite often practice drawing
the figures on the book margin,
so he became quite good.
Later on he became an engineer,
so he studied drafting, which also helped, I suppose.
So, he himself did all the sketches for the key scenes,
and based on that,
we had a professional team who did all the animation
but making sure would still follow his art style.
Well I certainly recommend Letter to Masanjia for anyone watching.
If somebody wanted to see the movie,
where should they go?
It's on various digital platforms now.
The common ones, iTunes, Amazon, Google Play.
It's also on YouTube.
And we also have physical DVD and Blu-rays available in different outlets.
If you visit letterfrommasanjia.com and click on watch,
you'll see dozens of platforms where you can watch the film.
Great.
We'll definitely provide a link to that at the end of this video.
Thank you so much for joining us,
and congratulations on a really powerful documentary.
Thank you.
If you haven't seen Letter from Masanjia,
I highly recommend it.
If you'd like to see it, click the link here.
It will take you to a trailer of the movie,
which will then take you to a way to rent the movie on YouTube.