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.
‘CONFESSED’: A court in Beijing said that former CCP member Ren Zhiqiang abused his power at a state firm and embezzled almost US$7.14 million of public funds A Chinese tycoon who called Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) a clown and criticized his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic was yesterday jailed for 18 years for corruption, bribery and embezzlement of public funds. Ren Zhiqiang (任志強) — once among the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) inner circle — disappeared from the public eye in March, shortly after penning an essay that lambasted Xi’s pandemic response. His outspokenness had earned the former chairman of state-owned property developer Huayuan Group the nickname “Big Cannon.” Yesterday’s verdict said that Ren embezzled almost 50 million yuan (US$7.4 million) of public funds and accepted bribes worth 1.25 million
OFF BORDER ISLAND: The fisheries official disappeared from a patrol vessel wearing a life jacket and leaving behind his shoes, indicating an intentional move, Seoul said North Korean soldiers shot dead a suspected South Korean defector at sea and burned his body as a COVID-19 precaution after he was interrogated in the water over several hours, Seoul military officials said yesterday. It is the first killing of a South Korean citizen by North Korean forces for a decade, and comes with Pyongyang at high alert over the COVID-19 pandemic and inter-Korean relations at a standstill. The fisheries official disappeared from a patrol vessel near the western border island of Yeonpyeong on Monday, the official said. More than 24 hours later, North Korean forces located him in their waters and
The scarcity of commercial flights landing at Sydney Airport has been a disaster for airlines and workers, but for hobby pilots the COVID-19 pandemic has provided the opportunity of a lifetime. The quieter-than-usual runways mean that private pilots have been given the chance to land at the international airport for the first time. When Sydney Flight College club captain Tim Lindley put out a call, he received an overwhelming response. He eventually organized for 14 light aircraft to fly into Sydney airport on Sunday. “For a lot of the pilots involved, including myself, it was a childhood dream to land in a big
China on Thursday lashed out at the US at a high-level UN meeting over its criticism on the COVID-19 pandemic, with its envoy declaring, “Enough is enough.” Two days after US President Donald Trump used his annual address to the General Assembly to attack China’s record, US Ambassador to the UN Kelly Craft, also took an outraged tone — after which her Chinese counterpart showed palpable anger. “I must say, enough is enough. You have created enough troubles for the world already,” Chinese Ambassador to the UN Zhang Jun (張軍) told a Security Council meeting on global governance attended through videoconference
RSS