Harry Wu

From "cliver" <cliver@fulbrightweb.org>
Date Tue, 27 Apr 2004 13:05:17 -0400


I have only caught one side of what looks like a heated debate on Harry Wu. I can tell you this, when I worked for the U.S. Customs Agency in Beijing, part of our work was investigating claims of exports of products of prison labor from China to the U.S. (I even got to visit a Chinese prison once.) Although the Chinese government was, naturally, not very cooperative in helping us pursue our investigations, the allegations from the U.S. side were also ridiculously burdensome. In particular, the U.S. Congress swallowed whole Harry Wu's unbelievable report on exports of prison labor, which pretty much claimed that every prison in the country (and there are a lot) was producing goods for export. This could not possibly be true, however, and is just one more example of this rather pathetic individual (and I mean this sympathetically, the poor guy has been through a lot) attempting to take revenge on his tormentors by deluding whoever will listen to him.

Robert Cliver
Shanghai, 2004