After languishing 19 years in China’s forced labor camps, a Chinese dissident has set up a museum in Washington to highlight the “horrors and atrocities” in secret detention facilities.
Harry Wu (吳弘達), who labored in 12 different camps in China from 1960 to 1979, set up the museum in memory of the millions who he said perished within the camps, known as laogai or reform-through-labor camps.
Wu hopes it “will preserve the memory of the laogai’s many victims, including the millions who perished within the labor camps, and serve to educate the public about the horrors and atrocities committed by China’s communist regime,” a statement from his Laogai Research Foundation said.
“To this end, the museum will not only introduce the history and structure of the laogai, but will also tell the personal stories of many of its prisoners,” it said.
Materials on display at the museum, to open to the public on Thursday, include photographs, government documents and prisoner uniforms from Wu’s own archives or donated by other laogai survivors.
Wu set up his foundation in 1992, seven years after he fled to the US where he obtained citizenship.
The laogai camps were established under Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東) after the communists came to power in China in 1949. They included both common criminals and political prisoners.
About 40 million to 50 million people have been imprisoned in the laogai, many of them prisoners of conscience, Wu’s group said.
In 1990, China abandoned the term laogai and labeled the detention facilities as “prisons” instead, but Wu maintained that evidence gathered by his foundation suggested that forced labor was “as much a part of its prison system today as it ever was.”
This includes so-called laojiao or reeducation through labor, a form of administrative rather than judicial detention, where dissidents, petty criminals and vagrants can be imprisoned for several years without a trial, Wu’s group said.
The laogai museum in Washington was set up with the support of a human rights fund established by Internet giant Yahoo, whose chief executive officer Jerry Yang (楊致遠) is slated to inaugurate the museum on Wednesday.
Yang set up the fund after his company came under fire from rights groups for allegedly helping Chinese police nab and jail cyber dissidents, including a Chinese journalist, Shi Tao (師濤), who is still behind bars.
Ahead of the museum’s opening, rights group Amnesty International accused Yang of not giving priority to pushing the Chinese authorities to release the journalist.
Shi Tao was convicted in 2005 of divulging state secrets after he posted a Chinese government order forbidding media groups from marking the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre on the Internet.
Police identified him by using information provided by Yahoo. He was sentenced to 10 years in jail.
“That Shi Tao and others remain in prison after using Yahoo services, as your company remains silent in China, hollows your human rights fund and scholarship into seeming public relations attempts,” Amnesty’s USA executive director Larry Cox said in a letter to Yang.
“Your company’s response to the imprisonment of journalists and dissidents who have relied on your services must include a clear focus on their releases,” Cox said.
Yahoo had defended its action on the grounds that it had to comply with China’s laws in order to operate there.
It had reached a settlement with the families of Shi Tao and another cyber dissident Wang Xiaoning (王小寧) to stop a lawsuit, which charged that Yahoo provided information that enabled Chinese police to identify the duo.
Shamans in Peru on Monday gathered for an annual New Year’s ritual where they made predictions for the year to come, including illness for US President Donald Trump and the downfall of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. “The United States should prepare itself because Donald Trump will fall seriously ill,” Juan de Dios Garcia proclaimed as he gathered with other shamans on a beach in southern Lima, dressed in traditional Andean ponchos and headdresses, and sprinkling flowers on the sand. The shamans carried large posters of world leaders, over which they crossed swords and burned incense, some of which they stomped on. In this
Indonesia yesterday began enforcing its newly ratified penal code, replacing a Dutch-era criminal law that had governed the country for more than 80 years and marking a major shift in its legal landscape. Since proclaiming independence in 1945, the Southeast Asian country had continued to operate under a colonial framework widely criticized as outdated and misaligned with Indonesia’s social values. Efforts to revise the code stalled for decades as lawmakers debated how to balance human rights, religious norms and local traditions in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation. The 345-page Indonesian Penal Code, known as the KUHP, was passed in 2022. It
‘DISRESPECTFUL’: Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s most influential adviser, drew ire by posting an image of Greenland in the colors of the US flag, captioning it ‘SOON’ US President Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his claim that Greenland should become part of the US, despite calls by the Danish prime minister to stop “threatening” the territory. Washington’s military intervention in Venezuela has reignited fears for Greenland, which Trump has repeatedly said he wants to annex, given its strategic location in the arctic. While aboard Air Force One en route to Washington, Trump reiterated the goal. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “We’ll worry about Greenland in
‘TRUMP’S LONG GAME’: Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said that while fraud was a serious issue, the US president was politicizing it to defund programs for Minnesotans US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday said it was auditing immigration cases involving US citizens of Somalian origin to detect fraud that could lead to denaturalization, or revocation of citizenship, while also announcing a freeze of childcare funds to Minnesota and demanding an audit of some daycare centers. “Under US law, if an individual procures citizenship on a fraudulent basis, that is grounds for denaturalization,” US Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. Denaturalization cases are rare and can take years. About 11 cases were pursued per year between 1990 and 2017, the Immigrant Legal Resource
RSS