A lot of people even outside the Chinese government aren’t too crazy about Harry Wu. Fellow members of the human-rights community, which has its share of zealots, privately groan at the mention of his name. But his abrasiveness and his fervor have won him many friends on Capitol Hill -Sen. Jesse Helms has praised him as “one of the bravest souls I know.” Media outlets from “60 Minutes” to NEWSWEEK rely on his information, And as the world’s only activist piecing together detailed evidence on China’s forced-labor system, he can hit Beijing where it hurts: in the economy. The U.S. Customs Service has issued 23 “detention orders” stopping Chinese imports suspected of being produced in prison camps, from diesel engines to sheepskin.’ ‘Virtually all" of the detention orders were based on information from Harry Wu, according to Jeffrey Fiedler, a union official and board member of Wu’s Laogai Research Institute in Washington.
Wu’s arrest comes at an awkward moment for U.S.China relations. When Washington granted a visa last month to Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui, Beijing (which considers Taiwan an errant vassal) recalled its ambassador to Washington in retaliation. Now Harry Wu has the U.S. Congress up in arms. “Should harm come to Harry Wu while he is in Chinese custody, there will be severe implications for China in the United States Congress,” Helms warned recently in a letter to Secretary of State Warren Christopher.
Wu’s parting shot, before leaving for China, was a report on how prison labor helps to produce expandable graphite, a product used in the furniture, steel and space industries. Replete with photographs and brochures from the Qingdao Graphite Mine, the document accused a New Jersey company called Asbury Graphite Mills, Inc., of importing at least 820.7 metric tons from Qingdao, through a state-run trading company. Steven Riddle, an employee and the son of Asbury’s chairman, told NEWSWEEK he had visited the mine and did indeed know it was a prison, because “the officials there told us it was a prison.” U.S. Customs refused to comment on whether it had launched an investigation of Asbury. If it does, it will be thanks to the vituperative Harry Wu.
