“I never think commies will be honest”
I attended the speech by Harry Wu, a Chinese dissident. (You can even wiki him here!) He was sentenced at the ripe old age of 23 to a life sentence at a labor camp. Upon his release, he became a human rights activist.
He talked about a variety of issues in China such as the current one child policy. If a woman becomes pregnant a second time, the government will force her to have an abortion. If she flees China, the government will detain her family until she returns. If she returns, she will be sterilized.
Next he talked about the prison labor camps he spent 19 years of his life in. Just as a gulag is known around the world as a gulag, Wu has pushed for the word “Laogai” to be synonymous with Chinese forced labor camps. Eventually, the Oxford dictionary defined it and listed it in their version. SInce then, it has been adopted by other dictionaries.
These labor camps have two main objectives. They serve to “reform” political prisoners through hard labor. This hard labor produces a LOT of products the USA is familiar with. If you’re celebrating Christmas this year, chances are- those lights may have been produced by prison labor. If you’re driving a car, chances are- those brake pads may have been produced by prison labor. Prisoners do not have to get paid regular wages. Therefore, cheap labor = cheap prices for the rest of the world. And the rest of the world takes advantage of this fact. Around 314 known businesses are currently linked to Laogai camps. The problem is, corporations sign papers that distance themselves from knowing where these products are coming from, so they can claim innocence in the case of an investigation. The other problem is that all of these products go through the Chinese National Trading Company. This means that they don’t have to answer to anyone because they’re the government.
In addition to what other people may call “slave labor,” Laogai camps apparently are the source of organs used for transplants. Wu walked into a hospital in China inquiring about an organ transplant. He was told that for $30,000 cash, he could get a new [insert organ here]. It is estimated that 95% of organ transplants come from executed prisoners. But no one knows that because when asked, the government doesn’t have to answer to anyone.
The most fascinating part of this presentation was Mr. Wu himself. HIs family was completely destroyed by Communist China, he spent 19 years in prison, and then came to America with forty bucks in his pocket. He became an activist after the Senate asked him questions about his prison sentence in China. After that, he started investigating through the Laogai Research Foundation. He even opened up a museum in Washington D.C. called the Laogai Museum. And lastly, he has a pink Razr phone (just thought I would put that in there).
If you are interested in his research or museum, check out www.laogai.org and their museum blog (http://laogaimuseum.org/).
FACTS:
1000 Laogai Camps in operation
3-5 Million people in these camps currently
40-50 million people have been jailed in these camps
5000 people, approximately, have been executed in 2009 alone.
