Six thousand of the eight thousand people executed worldwide in 1996 were Chinese, Harry Wu, a survivor of a Chinese prison camp, solemnly told an audience of about 70 yesterday at the beginning of a speech about human rights in China. Emotions ran high as Wu's talk continued, as several audience members later challenged Wu for painting a distorted picture of the current situation in China by highlighting past abuses.
Wu went on to recount numerous human rights violations allegedly committed by the Chinese government in order to ensure its stability. The Chinese government has held public executions in order to frighten its citizens through such demonstrations of state power, a practice called "killing the chicken to scare the monkey."
In a 1995 incident, 13 people were killed before a crowd of 20,000 not far from Hong Kong, in a region the Chinese have frequently shown off to Western politicians for its booming local economy. The crowd included numerous small children, Wu said.
He also noted that it is a "common practice to charge families for the bullet and the cremation."
90 percent of the organs transplanted in China come from the corpses of political prisoners, Wu said.
Several audience members stood up at the end of the presentation to challenge Wu, claiming that he had unfairly de-emphasized the Chinese government's recent moves toward democratization.
One young woman asked Wu why he "just wasn't more patient," citing progress that the Chinese government has made since 1996, the last year for which Wu could give the number of executions in China.
She also asked,"Why are you telling these things to the foreigners?" in reference to the audience, asserting he should instead work for change within China. She criticized him for not being in touch with current Chinese politics. Several members of the crowd muttered responses to the effect that Wu could not re-enter China without being arrested and forced to serve out the remainder of a prison sentence.
Wu responded by describing the importance of remembering the horrors of the past, citing the example of the Holocaust. He also acknowledged the importance of waiting patiently for the Chinese government to reform itself, but said, "We must be patient, but as human beings, we must tell the truth."
The young woman finally left the room, stating as she left that she did not take the side of either the imprisoned dissidents or the Chinese government, but that she thought Wu's presentation was skewed.
During the course of his speech, Wu also criticized the United States government's policies at length for failing to acknowledge the extent of China's human rights crimes.
He called profits from American businesses "a blood transfusion to the dying Communist government." Wu also noted that "Capitalism doesn't mean democracy," despite Western hopes that China will naturally become more democratic as it adopts Western economic practices and standards of living rise.
Wu described meeting with a Boeing executive, who agreed with all of his points about human rights yet nonetheless would not pull Boeing products out of China because it would entail laying off 2,000 employees.
Wu was also infuriated that, despite China's record of alleged human rights abuses, its "leader, ruler, dictator receives the red carpet and a national banquet at the White House."
Wu noted that when Western governments have succeeded in getting the Chinese government to release political prisoners, the West will only get China to release one or two prominent prisoners as "bargaining chips" and then go right back to its former practices while Western powers look the other way.
In spite of the expansion of Western businesses into China, no media or publication companies can expand into China because of the government's policy of "must control the gun, must control the pen," Wu said. Similarly, Wu noted that the Chinese government does not permit private schools.
Wu also criticized the Chinese government's birth control policies. While Wu considered procreation a "basic human right," no woman in China can give birth without a permit from the state, a policy which has led to numerous botched abortions and sterilizations.
Wu appeared on campus as part of a series of speeches and events commemorating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
