20 Questions: Harry Wu

Because he insists the truth be told about the human rights abuses of the Chinese government, Harry Wu has become a problem for China and the U.S. Seventeen years ago Wu was released from the brutal "reform through labor" camps of the Chinese laogai system after serving nearly 20 years for counterrevolutionary activities. He fled to the U.S. in 1985 and became an American citizen. Since his release, Wu has secretly--and at great risk to himself--reentered China four times to document the human rights abuses of the regime. Carrying a small video camera, he visited the camps where he was once held. In chronicling the horrific lives of the prisoners, Wu documented the use of forced labor to make products that are exported by China to the West. Posing as an American businessman, he exposed the trade in human organs for transplant, and his tape aired on "60 Minutes."

During his latest attempt to enter China this past June, Wu was detained by Chinese authorities and charged with spying and stealing state secrets. The charges are punishable by death. Fate and coincidence intervened in the person of Hillary Clinton, who was scheduled to address the United Nation's Fourth World Conference on Women near Beijing this past summer. Both Clinton and the Chinese government promptly became hostage to the fate of Wu. The first lady hesitated to address the women's conference while an American citizen was being held in China, and the Chinese refused to release a man who had exposed their embarrassing secrets. Finally the Chinese blinked, sentencing Wu to 15 years and deportation. Deportation came first and Wu was forcibly sent back to the U.S. At the conference, Hillary Clinton gave a fiery speech denouncing abuses of human rights in China.

Contributing Editor Morgan Strong spoke with Harry Wu only days after his return from China.

1.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you again risk death in order to return to China?

[A] Wu: There are thousands of brave men and women--workers, students, intellectuals and religious leaders--who are being tortured and forced to labor in the gulag--or as it is called in Chinese, the laogai--simply because of their desire for freedom and democracy. Their suffering is real, their future is dark, their sense of isolation is much greater than mine. I must continue to expose the regime.

2.

[Q] Playboy: How many people have been put in prisons?

[A] Wu: China has 8 million people in labor camps. We think that about ten percent are political prisoners, though it's difficult to say because many are jailed for political crimes but charged with "disturbance of public order." Some of the students from the Tiananmen Square massacre were charged with crimes. Three students threw paint on a portrait of Chairman Mao; one was sentenced to life, the other two to 15 years. But they were charged with the crime of damage to public property.

3.

[Q] Playboy: The U.S. imports billions of dollars in goods from China. How many of these goods are produced with slave labor?

[A] Wu: Chinese law requires that prisoners spend 12 hours a day in forced labor. The amount of what they produce that is exported is a state secret. But as an example, China is the largest exporter of tea in the world, and one fifth of the production comes from labor camps. I worked in a labor camp that produced grapes. Dynasty, the famous Chinese wine, came from that vineyard--10 million pounds of grapes a year. In a labor camp, you go to work when the sun rises. When it sets, you come back. There is a saying there: "Good labor, good food; no labor, no food; less labor, less food." Quotas are set by the camp commanders, and if you don't meet them you are punished. The government is trying to get Western firms to set up in China. Volvo was asked to build a plant there, and so was Adidas. But when these companies found out the laborers would be from the camps, they said no.

4.

[Q] Playboy: China also has a thriving, government-sponsored business in the transplant of human organs.

[A] Wu: Yes. Prisoners are sentenced to death, and after--or before--execution their organs are removed. There were, for instance, 10,000 kidney transplants in China last year, 90 percent of which used the organs of executed prisoners. If you have money and need an organ transplant, you can receive one from China or go there and have it done. I videotaped a prisoner whose kidneys were surgically removed while he was alive, and then the prisoner was taken out the next day and shot. The organs remain fresher that way. The tape was broadcast by the BBC.

5.

[Q] Playboy: When you were arrested and charged with spying this last time, that tape was part of the evidence against you. You confessed to the spying charge, and you also confessed to the crimes you were earlier accused of and sent to the camps for. Why did you confess?

[A] Wu: The first time I was arrested, in 1960, I didn't know why. I thought I was accused of stealing $50 from my college roommate. I was taken to a prison and interrogated. The police demanded I confess, so I finally said I stole the $50. I didn't, but I said I did. Then they got angry and said, "No, that's not your crime." One of the guards kicked open the door to another room. Men were lying on the floor, beaten and bleeding, and others were hanging from the ceiling by their hands and feet. So I said, "Yeah, yeah! That's right, that's not my crime. I'm a counterrevolutionary rightist." They said, "That's right. That is your crime. Now you can go to the camp." When I got to the camp I was finally told what my sentence was. It was three years. That's the way it is in China. Arrest. Sentence. The labor camp. And then a trial.

6.

[Q] Playboy: But didn't you serve nearly 20 years?

[A] Wu: They just kept extending it. Finally I got out in 1979. I had asked the police at the camp why my sentence was being extended, and they said, "If you ask, we will shoot you." So I still don't know. The authorities make you confess, but confessions don't mean anything. They want you to demean yourself by confessing over and over again. They want to break you. If you confess, they're happy--even if they know you didn't do anything. They destroy you that way. If you don't confess, how can they reform you? So if you don't confess they torture you untill you do. Then they are happy to reform you, over and over.

7.

[Q] Playboy: But weren't you born a counterrevolutionary rightist?

[A] Wu: [Laughs] Yes. My father was a banker, and we were wealthy at the time of the Communist takeover. So I was by birth a part of the bourgeois class. The lower classes and the bourgeois class are the enemy classes in China. But I was allowed to enroll in Beijing College of Geology as someone who could be reeducated. I was an honor student and captain of the best baseball team in the country. Still, I was considered a rightist. Finally, in 1957, during the period Mao called Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom, we were encouraged by the Communist Party to speak out. I criticized Russia's invasion of Hungary, and I was interrogated about my criticism. I said, "You encouraged me to speak out. 'Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom,' you said." They said, "We wanted flowers. You are a weed." [Laughs] Three years later I was in the laogai.

8.

[Q] Playboy: There is supposedly an economic rebirth in China. Will that change things?

[A] Wu: That's true, the economy is good. But it is supported in some measure by the trade in goods produced by forced labor, and also by foreign trade. Foreign trade accounts for a good deal of the economy. There are 500 major enterprises, state run, in China. But most of them, 61 percent, would be bankrupt if not for state subsidies. If that happened, millions of people would be on the streets. And that would mean the end of the regime.

9.

[Q] Playboy: So the very fact of trade with China allows the brutality to continue?

[A] Wu: I saw on the news that former president Bush was in Vietnam saying that trade can improve human rights. What was he talking about? It's the typical political theory today that economic development means democracy. Economic development does not mean democracy will follow. In China, it only means that those in power will remain in power. Trade only keeps the regime alive. Without trade the regime would collapse. Henry Kissinger is a great advocate of this.

10.

[Q] Playboy: Why are you so critical of Henry Kissinger? We understand that he helped get you out.

[A] Wu: During my interrogation at my last arrest, a general came in, which is unusual. He said Kissinger was coming. I didn't understand what he was talking about. He meant Kissinger was coming to China, not coming to see me. He said he was coming with a delegation of powerful businessmen who were interested in doing business with China. The fact that I was in jail was an embarrassment. The general thought I had arranged for Kissinger to intercede. But yes, he did help, both in his personal appeal to China's leaders and in his writing in the Los Angeles Times.

11.

[Q] Playboy: But you fault his methods of dealing with China?

[A] Wu: I was in prison when Kissinger and Nixon visited China in 1972. Everybody said that was great, that things would change. And when, in 1984, Nancy Reagan had that song, Love Me Tender, played in the Great Hall Hotel, everybody thought that was nice. That was very good for the Kissinger campaign. For a decade there was no criticism of China. Then in 1989 there was the Tiananmen Square massacre, and Kissinger said it was only temporary. He even said that if that sort of demonstration happened in any country's capital, the government would have to act. But the Chinese people are still waiting for the "temporary" situation to come to an end.

12.

[Q] Playboy: Meanwhile, plenty of people are getting rich. Would you favor trade sanctions?

[A] Wu: Sanctions are not realistic. But why is it that the Soviet Union never enjoyed most-favored-nation status? Because of its deplorable record on human rights. China is worse than South Africa ever was, but there is no boycott.

13.

[Q] Playboy: What would you recommend?

[A] Wu: The last time I was arrested and imprisoned, the police carried cellular phones. That's how the security police communicate in China. We can stop selling them cellular phones, for one thing. We can stop trading in products made by forced labor. We can stop the exchange of military information. We can stop providing the Chinese with high-tech information. We can cut off no-interest and low-interest loans. We can put a quota on textile imports. There are a lot of things we can do to force them to reform. They depend on us for survival, and they are sensitive to foreign pressure.

14.

[Q] Playboy: Well, you got out because of it. But don't you think there might be a racial equation to all this?

[A] Wu: I understand there is a cultural gap. People in the West enjoy Tchaikovsky and the Russian ballet. They have never enjoyed Beijing opera. The world condemned the concentration camps in Germany and denounced the gulags in Russia. There are novels and movies about them, but not about the gulags of China. You know what it said over the entrance to the camp I was in? Labor Makes Freedom, just like over the entrance of Dachau, Arbeit Macht Frei. I visited Dachau. I said to my Chinese companion, "Aren't we human beings? Don't we have a right to be considered human beings? If we are human beings, why can't we stand up straight?"

15.

[Q] Playboy: Why does the U.S. seem reluctant to irritate China?

[A] Wu: China has nuclear weapons. That's a big problem. If China becomes an economic giant--and that's possible if we continue to feed it--then you'll have real big problems. China supports North Korea. The U.S. fought China in Korea and lost 37,000 men. China supported Vietnam, and the U.S. lost nearly 60,000 men there. China sells missiles to Pakistan, nuclear material to Iran and Scud missiles to Iraq. Why would we want to appease this despotic regime and make it stronger? Why do we allow millions of people to suffer in camps?

16.

[Q] Playboy: Why have you taken it upon yourself to expose the regime?

[A] Wu: There are two reasons. First, I cannot turn my back on the people in the camps. I'm free, but they are not.

17.

[Q] Playboy: And the other reason?

[A] Wu: China is my motherland--my parents' graveyard, my brother's graveyard. And that is where I want to have my grave. It is a moral-consciousness kind of thing. I have to gather the information, be a witness. I want to expose what they are doing. Communists are liars.

18.

[Q] Playboy: Was there a deal for you to be released, or deported, to allow Hillary Clinton to attend the women's conference in China?

[A] Wu: I think there was an understanding between the White House and the Chinese government. I don't know if there was any deal per se. But China was going to deport me whether I wanted to be deported or not. I was forced to go. I left the prison with 16 police officers as my escorts to make sure I got on the plane. [Laughs]

19.

[Q] Playboy: You served almost 20 years in Chinese labor camps, where you were beaten frequently and nearly starved to death. Your sentence this time was 15 years plus. And you wanted to stay?

[A] Wu: Yes. I told them I would not leave. They came to me the morning after the trial last August. The judges, three of them, came to my cell. They said, "We are thinking about your health and your family. We have decided to deport you immediately instead of having you serve your sentence first." I said, "No, I want a fair trial. I have the right to appeal," which I knew would take years, but I would have appealed. They became angry and said, "Are you sure?" I said yes. Then they said they were going to deport me anyway.

20.

[Q] Playboy: If you return to China, and if the authorities catch you, they will likely kill you. Would you take the risk of going back?

[A] Wu: If I get the chance, I have to go.

the foolhardy china critic on his homeland's use of slave labor, its thriving human-organ trade and why he can't wait to get back