Harry Wu considers himself a survivor, a point he vividly depicted last night during his speech at Griffith Film Theater.
In front of about 100 students and community members, Wu recounted his experiences in Chinese prisons and voiced his support for the student movement against sweatshops.
As a political prisoner, Wu spent 19 years in the Laogai, China's system of forced labor camps.
"I stand in front of you not a hero," Wu told the crowd. "Just a simple human being, a survivor."
In one of the evening's most powerful moments, Wu showed a sequence of slides of two prisoners before, during and after their execution. The slides illustrated the prisoners, incarcerated for arson, being driven through the streets on a flatbed truck so the community would know of the impending public spectacle. Then, after the prisoners were shot in the back, the slides show Chinese officials emptying the prisoners' mouths of blood and stomping on the stomach of the prisoner who didn't die immediately from the gunshot wounds.
After the prisoners were dead, the hospital came to remove and sell their organs, Wu said. "[Chinese oppressors] make money, make profit from body parts," Wu said. "[They] make money, make profit from people's sweat and tears."
Fifteen days after he was released from the camps in 1995, Wu spoke in front of over 1,000 people in Page Auditorium. Since that time, he has taught at Stanford University and founded the Laogai Research Foundation in Washington D.C., a non-profit organization which collects data on Chinese forced labor camps.
Other slides showed products made in Chinese labor camps and sold throughout the world, such as tea, car brakes and wine. Wu held up Chicago Bulls' and Arizona Suns' baseball caps and a teddy bear as more concrete examples of forced Chinese labor.
In this vein, he spoke of his support for tracking where collegiate apparel is manufactured, likening sweatshops to Chinese forced labor camps. He has written a letter to be faxed today to President Nan Keohane and the 13 other university presidents on the Task Force responsible for refining the licensing code of conduct, which will apply to hundreds of universities.
In the letter, Wu voiced his support for both full public disclosure of sweatshop locations and a meaningful living wage clause. "Americans do not want to buy clothing made from the blood and tears of exploited workers, and they can only purchase university clothing in conscience if... these principles are fulfilled," Wu said in the letter.
In his speech, Wu also emphasized the destruction that communism has brought to China. "When the Communists came to power, the majority trusted them and believed communism was the future," he said. "After 37 years, we've learned from our blood, suffering and tears that communism is a joke."
In particular, Wu pointed out what he saw as United States hypocrisy in its treatment of China versus other nations.
He criticized the U.S. for instituting sanctions against Burma and Cuba while maintaining most-favored nation trade status with China.
"The American government talks about human rights but there is no real teeth in the policy," Wu said. "When they talk about copyrights they can enforce that."
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