changed to Ren’ai Educational and Training Center on 18 September 1972)
Chingshuikeng, Tucheng, Taipei County
Propaganda photo of upper echelon inspection tour of PEEC classroom.(provided by CNA)
The Production Education Experiment Center (PEEC) was established in Tucheng, Taipei County in May 1954 to hold political prisoners from the Women’s Squadron (“Squadron Eight”) at the Green Island New Life Correction Center. It was also the location for those sentenced to reform and re-education, as well as political prisoners who were close to completing their sentences. Many were mothers who, clutching their children, served out their sentences at the PEEC.
According to Prison Diary by the famed radio scriptwriter Tsui Hsiao-ping, in September 1972 the PEEC was renamed Ren’ai Villa (Ren’ai Education and Testing Center). She says, “For a true-blue rebel criminal, this was really heaven. For the innocent, no matter how ‘ren’ai’ [benevolent] the treatment, it could not dissipate the humiliation of the injustice felt within the heart. A prototypical facility for the thought reform of prisoners serving long sentences, the PEEC had class instruction as its core, supplemented by hard labor. Operating from the 1950s to the end of martial law, the PEEC held countless political prisoners, including Fu Cheng, Tsui Hsiao-ping, Roger Hsieh (Hsieh Tsung-ming), Wei Ting-chao, Lee Ao, Li Cheng-yi, Lu Hsiu-yi, Annette Lu, and Chen Chu. All of them did some of their time there. Before leaving, a prisoner had to get two guarantors to vouch for them. Many mainlanders who had no relatives in Taiwan had their terms extended owing to their failure to find such guarantors. This sometimes resulted in having PEEC personnel serve as guarantor, in exchange for money secretly given them once the political prisoner had won his or her freedom.
2011 Dialogue on Peace in Green Island 