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| Janna Imel meets Harry Wu, a former political prisoner in China |
Harry Wu is one of the rare lecturers who possess the ability to take his audience into the past and allow them to grasp the greatest understanding of his trials and triumphs.
In Mr. Wu’s lecture entitled “In the Mouth of the Dragon: U.S. and China Relations in the 21st Century,” he recounted his imprisonment in a Chinese forced labor camp and shared with us our duty to help stop the human rights violations in China.
Mr. Wu began his lecture speaking about his life as a teenager in China. He enjoyed baseball and spending time with his girlfriend. Like younger adults at this age, he did not have many worries. He recounted the day that he was approached and asked about his views on the government. Mr. Wu was singled out because of his family in a time where the Chinese government was cracking down on the Counterrevolutionary movement. He spoke about China’s attempt to abolish the “capitalist” and “landlord” classes. Mr. Wu’s father was a prominent banker, so his family fell into these categories. Mr. Wu was forced to go to the labor camp. Even though he had no interest in politics, he was labeled as a counterrevolutionary. As he continued to recount his story, I had the hardest time figuring out why he was sent to the camp in the first place.
Upon arriving to the camp, Mr. Wu was called into the warden’s office. The warden asked Mr. Wu if he knew how long he had been sentenced to the labor camp. After Mr. Wu shook his head no, the warden informed him that the sentence was life in prison. Mr. Wu ended up being a prisoner for 19 years.
Mr. Wu often mentioned in his lecture how grateful he was to now be in a country of freedom. “I am now a free man,” he said. In America, we take the right to speak out against the government for granted. How can we take this right for granted when it is absent in so many other places in the world? And how is it that we can stand by and allow other nations to imprison their citizens (just like Mr. Wu) for no reason?
Mr. Wu spoke about the Lao Gai system that he was forced into. In Chinese, “Lao” means “forced to labor” and “Gai” means “forced to reform; brainwash.” Mr. Wu spoke about how these prisons were not only set up for punishment, but also to make the prisoners follow the government. He showed us a prison sign that read, “Labor is the means, reform is the goal.” I think this sign speaks for itself.
I will end this blog with a story that Mr. Wu shared with us during lunch and in the lecture. In Lao Gai, prisoners are not allowed to possess books. Mr. Wu loved the book Les Miserables and chose to hide his prized possession. After the guards discovered his book, Mr. Wu was made to kneel down in front of 1,000 prisoners. To humiliate him, the guards broke his arm with a steel bar and burned the book. I think this story resonated so much with me because not only do I share Mr. Wu’s love for Les Miserables, it made me imagine being in a situation where I could not have access to books and thus, outside knowledge. Mr. Wu was only given access to what the government wanted him to hear. This concept is so foreign in our country and we often dismiss the idea of it occurring elsewhere in the world.
I admire Mr. Wu for speaking out about his imprisonment and the necessity to address the human rights issue in China. As Americans, we should be more cognizant about what is occurring outside of our country. We are all a part of a global community. It is time we start helping our fellow man across the world.
Janna Imel, of Greenup County, Ky., is a junior McConnell Scholar at the University of Louisville. She is studying psychology and political science.