by F.R. Duplantier
Last August, Harry Wu stood before a Chinese judge wondering if he would be set free, sentenced to 15 years in a forced-labor camp, or condemned to death.
In a speech at North Carolina's Wingate University last December, human rights activist Harry Wu confessed himself "driven by the conviction that China's Laogai [a system of forced-labor camps] must become as notorious as Stalin's Gulag. The world must know what it really is. It's not just a system of prisons and punishment for criminal deeds. Much beyond that, it serves as an indispensable mechanism to keep China's Communist regime in power."
Wu reported that as many as eight million people "suffer inside these camps." They are "forced to labor. If they do not, they will starve. If they do not produce their quota, they will be fed less food, and often are beaten. If the quality of their work is not up to what the guards demand, they will be punished." Chinese goods have flooded the American market in recent years, but how can we know which goods are produced by prison labor? "You name it, and it is manufactured in a Laogai camp," says Wu. "Steel pipe, shoes, artificial flowers, toys, hand tools, machines of all kinds, chemicals, clothing, even soap and perfume. Minerals are mined. Cotton, tea, grapes, and other foods are grown."
Wu offered words of warning to U.S. officials and American businessmen bent on cozying up to the Communists. "You must understand that the Chinese government lies all the time. It lies to its own people. It lies to other governments. There are small lies, and big lies. But they are lies," said Wu. "They lie and say there are no political prisoners in China. They lie and say they do not export missiles to Iran and Pakistan." Wu argued that the Chinese government "cannot survive without lying. The Communist Party's members lie to themselves. Nobody really believes in Communism any longer in China. They believe in power. They are desperate for power. It is this combi-nation of lying and desperation, along with incredible instability, which mix together in a dangerous way for the people of China, and for United States policy."
Wu pleaded with his audience to recognize that his native people pay an enormous price for our indifference to their plight. "Chinese and Tibetan dissidents are either locked up in prison, forced into hiding, or silenced by fear of police retaliation against their families. All the happiness about China's eco-nomic growth has made many Americans forget that police clubs and guns and the Laogai system keep the Communist Party in power. Moreover, it is still little recognized how American resources help to sustain that power through trade, investments, and the transfer of technology." Wu insisted that his release "did not change China any more than will the release of any single dissident. It is only when the Laogai is abolished in China that real change will come about."
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