Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 9, 1995 TAG: 9507100105
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BEIJING LENGTH: Medium
Harry Wu, 58, a Chinese-born American citizen who has secretly filmed abuses in Chinese prisons, was detained June 19 when he tried to enter China from Kazakhstan.
The government-run Xinhua News Agency reported that Wu was formally arrested and charged Saturday in the southeastern city of Wuhan - thousands of miles from the Kazakhstan border. It did not explain why or how he was taken to Wuhan.
The charges were ``entering into China under false names, illegally obtaining China's state secrets and conducting criminal activities.'' Espionage carries a maximum penalty of death.
Xinhua said Wu used aliases to enter China several times in the past four years, went into areas off-limits to foreigners and ``engaged in espionage and bought secret information and stole secret documents.''
U.S.-China relations already are at a low point, battered by China's angry reaction to a visit last month to the United States by the president of Beijing's rival government in Taiwan. Suspicions that China is selling medium-range missiles to Pakistan are another chronic irritant.
Wu's arrest ``represents a major escalation of China's confrontation with the West over human rights, especially the United States,'' said Robin Munro, a researcher with the New York-based group Human Rights Watch-Asia.
``They are seeking to draw a line in the sand, prepare for battle,'' he said.
Munro noted that Chinese authorities last month revoked medical parole for Chen Ziming, named by the government as one of the main forces behind the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy movement, and returned him to prison to serve out the rest of his 13-year sentence.
The two actions could signal a shift in the way Beijing handles international pressure to improve its human rights record and an end to token gestures such as releasing dissidents championed by international groups, Munro said.
He called for ``the most robust and sternest response from Washington.''
In Washington, the State Department said China had promised consular access to Wu and that Consul-General Anthony Macias was being sent to Wuhan to try to meet with him.
Shortly after the detention, a U.S. consular officer had traveled to the border town of Horgas, where Wu was supposedly being held, but Wu was not there.
The State Department accused the Chinese government of misleading U.S. officials about Wu's whereabouts and violating the two countries' consular agreement. The United States says China was obligated to grant access to Wu within 48 hours of a U.S. request.
Wu has been a frequent witness at congressional hearings on Chinese human rights. His testimony helped alert customs officials to the import of Chinese goods produced by prison labor, a violation of U.S. law.
Wu's evidence was collected during several secret trips into China since 1991 to uncover prison abuses. In violation of Chinese laws, Wu snuck into labor camps and filmed conditions with hidden cameras.
Wu's last trip into China was to film a documentary in secret that accused the Chinese government of harvesting organs from executed prisoners.
His wife, Ching Lee Wu, said in a statement from their home outside San Francisco, ``The Chinese Communists are holding him hostage because he dared to tell the truth about the Chinese gulag.''
Wu served 19 years in labor camps in China for criticizing the Communist Party. After his release, he emigrated to the United States in 1985 and became an American citizen.
He was a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, then joined the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in 1987. Three years ago, he started the Laogai Research Foundation to study Chinese prison camps.
He made headlines in 1991 when he returned to China, carrying a hidden camera for CBS-TV's ``60 Minutes'' and for Newsweek magazine.
Posing variously as a businessman interested in buying labor camp products, as a worker from Shanghai visiting camp guard friends and as a Chinese policeman, Wu filmed inhumane working conditions and treatment, including prisoners forced to stand waist-deep in vats of chemicals used to treat animal hides.
by CNB