On the recordApril 28, 2016
on Tuesday, the world lost a courageous activist for international workers' rights, Harry Wu. Harry Wu spent 19 years in one of China's ``laogai'' prison labor camps. That word is pretty much unknown in English--L-A-O-G-A-I. It is a word that the Chinese made famous, at least in their part of the world, as the terribly brutal labor camps where they sent political prisoners. Mr. Wu was imprisoned in 1960 at age 23 because he spoke out against Communist China's ally in 1960, the Soviet Union, after its invasion of Hungary. Over those 19 years, from 1960 to 1979, Mr. Wu was brutalized. He was sent to work on farms, mines, and prison camps. He was beaten and forced into concrete cases. As he has written and told us, he survived on food he foraged in rats' nests. After his release, following Mao's death, Harry Wu dedicated the rest of his life to exposing the horrors that his homeland leaders inflicted on their own citizens. He risked his life to return to China under cover and gathered secret footage of the abuses in China's laogai, China's prison camps. He wouldn't let the world ignore Chinese atrocities. He wouldn't let us forget that opening our doors to China-- demanded by U.S. corporations with few strings attached--came at a steep price. Through the footage he collected, he helped show the world that products like cheap wrenches and artificial flowers sold in the United States were made with forced labor. Think about what this was about. U.S.…
