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| Laogai Research Foundation holds international conference in Washington |
On May 4, 2006, the Laogai Research Foundation held a conference, co-sponsored by Freedom House and the RFK Memorial, entitled "The Soviet Gulag and the Chinese Laogai: Comparing Two Systems of Oppression". Conference speakers included scholars, activists and Laogai survivors from the U.S., Germany, France and India.
Laogai survivors Rebiya Kadeer, Ama Adhe, Palden Gyatso, Lu Decheng, Xu Wenli and Wu Yashan each described their individdual experiences in the Laogai and the incredible suffering they endured. The presence of Chinese, Tibetan and Uyghur Laogai survivors together at the conference was a strong representation of the persecution that the CCP has inflicted on people from many different backgrounds and ethnicities. (Please see the biographies below for more information on the Laogai survivors and other conference speakers).
House Minority Leader Representative Nancy Pelosi delivered the opening address to the conference. In her speech, she asserted that the introduction of economic freedom in China has not brought about political freedom. She condemned the continued persecution of religious believers and others who criticize the CCP regime. Finally, she called upon Beijing to "release the thousands of prisoners in Laogai labor camps whose only crime is to demand their basic human rights."
Congressional Human Rights Caucus member Representative Frank Wolf submitted a letter for an evening reception on Capitol Hill honoring those who spoke at the conference. In the letter, Congressman Wolf stated that LRF Executive Director Harry Wu's experience in the Laogai had spurred his involvement in China human rights issues. He remarked that, "from the jailing of journalist Shi Tao to the persecution of nearly every religious group, and from forced organ harvesting to the philosophy and hardship of "reform through labor" in the Laogai, the Chinese Communist Party brutally persecutes its people."
NED President Carl Gershman and Victims of Communism Memorial Chairman Lee Edwards also spoke at the conference. Dr. Edwards stated that the communist system is the most brutal system to have existed in the history of mankind. He spoke of the atrocities that have been committed in the Gulag and the Laogai as representative of this brutality.
Renowned author and Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum, German expert on Soviet and Chinese affairs Dieter Heinzig, and French expert on Nazi concentration camps Joel Kotek, along with Harry Wu, spoke at the conference about the similarities and differences between the Gulag and the Laogai. Mr. Wu told the audience how Soviet experts on the Gulag had assisted in the establishment of the Laogai in the 1950s. He also explained how the Laogai is unique in that it implements violence and starvation measures in order to brainwash people and try to mold them into supporters of the CCP.
LRF Director Tienchi Liao spoke to the audience about the "Black Series" of Laogai prisoner autobiographies, which was started by LRF 10 years ago. LRF has published 12 volumes in the "Black Series", in order to record history and preserve the memories of Laogai survivors. She thanked the authors of these books for taking the risk to release their personal stories to the world.
The Laogai Research Foundation and survivors of the Laogai call upon the international community to take notice of the human rights situation in China, which is worsening by the day. LRF calls upon everyone to actively support efforts to promote democracy in China, in order to finally bring about an end to the Laogai system.
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Speaker Introductions- The Soviet Gulag and the Chinese Laogai: Comparing Two Systems of Oppression
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi
Since 1987, Nancy Pelosi has represented California's Eighth District in the House of Representatives. Overwhelmingly elected by her colleagues in the fall of 2002 as Democratic Leader of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi is the first woman in American history to lead a major party in the U.S. Congress. Before being elected Leader, she served as House Democratic Whip for one year and was responsible for the party's legislative strategy in the House.
Representative Pelosi has long been an advocate for human rights around the world. She has fought to improve China's human rights record, attempting to tie trade to increased human rights standards. She has also been a leader on efforts to free the people of Tibet.
Dr. Lee Edwards, Chairman, Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation
Lee Edwards is a Distinguished Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, adjunct professor of politics at the Catholic University of America, and chairman of the bipartisan, non-profit Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, authorized by Congress to build a Memorial in Washington, D.C., to the more than 100 million victims of communism. He is the author of seventeen books, several hundred articles and columns, and has appeared on leading TV and radio news programs in the U.S. He has lectured in more than 20 foreign countries, including the former Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, on world politics.
For more than a decade, Dr. Edwards has shepherded the Victims of Communism Memorial through the 24-step process required for a Washington monument or memorial. A site has been approved on Capitol Hill at Massachusetts Avenue and New Jersey Avenue, N.W. A design has been approved, based on a bronze replica of the Goddess of Democracy statue erected by Chinese students in Tiananmen Square in the spring of 1989. The Foundation is now actively engaged in a capital fund-raising drive to raise the $750,000 needed for construction. Ground-breaking is scheduled for this summer with dedication of the Memorial in June 2007, on the 20th anniversary of President Reagan's famous speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin when he declared, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
Ms. Anne Applebaum, Columnist, The Washington Post
Anne Applebaum is a columnist and member of the editorial board of the Washington Post. She began working as a journalist in 1988, when she moved to Poland to become the Warsaw correspondent for the Economist. She eventually covered the collapse of communism across Central and Eastern Europe, writing for a wide range of newspapers and magazines.
Her most recent book, Gulag: A History, was published in April 2003 in America and Britain. The book narrates the history of the Soviet concentration camps system and describes daily life in the camps. It makes extensive use of recently opened Russian archives, as well as memoirs and interviews. Gulag: A History won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for non-Fiction, as well as Britain's Duff-Cooper Prize. The book was a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the LA Times Book Award and the Samuel Johnson Prize. It has appeared or is due to appear in more than two-dozen translations, including all major East and West European languages.
Mr. Harry Wu, Executive Director, Laogai Research Foundation
Harry Wu was imprisoned at the age of 23 for being a "Rightist" and subsequently spent 19 years behind the iron bars of the Laogai. Since that time, he has traveled back to China multiple times to visit Laogai camps in order to gather information and continue his call for human rights.
Wu continues to gather materials on the Laogai, Laogai products in the U.S. and the trade in the organs of executed Chinese prisoners, and uses these materials as evidence to urge the international community to push for the end of the dictatorial government in China.
Wu has written many books about the Laogai, including the English-language books: Laogai- The Chinese Gulag (1992), Bitter Winds-A Memoir of My Years in China's Gulag (1994), and Troublemaker-One Man's Crusade against China's Cruelty (1996).
Mr. Carl Gershman, President, National Endowment for Democracy
Carl Gershman was appointed President of the National Endowment for Democracy by the Endowment's Board of Directors and assumed his position on April 30, 1984. In that capacity he has presided over the development of the Endowment's grants program in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and Latin America. Under his leadership, the NED created the quarterly Journal of Democracy in 1990, the International Forum for Democratic Studies in 1994, and launched the World Movement for Democracy in 1999. Mr. Gershman is currently encouraging other democracies to establish their own foundations devoted to the promotion of democratic institutions in the world.
Prior to assuming the position with the Endowment, Mr. Gershman was Senior Counselor to the United States Representative to the United Nations beginning in January 1981. In that capacity, he served as the U.S. Representative to the U.N.'s Third Committee, which deals with human rights issues, and also as Alternate Representative of the U.S. to the U.N. Security Council.
Dr. Joel Kotek, Head of the formation department, Memorial de la Shoah of Paris; Professor at the Universit¨¦ Libre de Bruxelles and Sciences of Paris
Joel Kotek is director of the formation in the French "Memorial de la Shoah" in Paris. He teaches too at the Free University of Brussels (notably on Shoah) and at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris ("Sciences Po") and Dijon. Dr. Kotek has authored a number of additional publications, including L'Affaire Lyssenko ou l'histoire r¨¦elle d'une science proletarienne en Occident (Complexe, Bruxelles, 1987), Il y a cinquante ans, l'insurrection du ghetto de Varsovie (Complexe, Bruxelles, 1994), Brussels and Jerusalem, from Conflict to Resolution, presented to a colloquium in Jerusalem in December 1994, co-edited with Simone Susskind and Steven Kaplan, Jerusalem, 1996.
In October 2000, he published a book by Jean Claude Lattes, Paris, Le Siecle des camps (A century of camps. Imprisonment, Detention and Extermination- 100 years of Radical Evil). This book received le Grand Prix d'histoire Chateaubriand and is translated in Italian, German, Spanish, Rumanian, Russian and Greek. In May 2003, he published Au nom de l'antisionisme. Le Juif et Israël dans la caricature depuis la deuxi¨¨me Intifada», Complexe, Brussels, 2003. This book will be soon translated into English (Vallentine Mitchell). In addition, he just published a new book by Berg international La carte postale antisemite de l'Affaire Dreyfus ¨¤ la Shoah ("Antisemitic postcards from the Dreyfus affair till the Holocaust").
Dr. Dieter Heinzig, Expert in Soviet and Chinese affairs; Former deputy director, Federal Institute for East European and International Studies, Cologne
Dr. Heinzig has authored numerous publications on the history of the CCP, domestic and foreign policy of Communist China and Soviet policy towards Asia. His most recent book was entitled The Soviet Union and Communist China, 1945-1950. He has served as a lecturer on Soviet and Chinese policies in Asia at the Institute for Political Science at the University of Cologne, an exchange scholar at the Institute for Scientific Information for Social Sciences (INION) of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in Moscow, and, for more than two decades, as the vice president of the German Association for Asian Studies in Hamburg. He also served as the deputy director of the Department for the Soviet Union and the Third World at the Federal Institute for East European and International Studies in Cologne, and as a research associate at the Institute for Politics, Society, and Law of Eastern Europe at the University of Kiel.
Ms. Jennifer Windsor, Executive Director, Freedom House
Jennifer L. Windsor became the Executive Director of Freedom House in January 2001. Freedom House is a non-partisan, non-profit organization which supports the expansion of freedom in the world through its analysis, advocacy, and action. Freedom House's flagship publication, Freedom in the World, is an annual comparative assessment of the state of political rights and civil liberties in every country in the world. Freedom House conducts a variety of overseas programs including support to human rights defenders, civic groups, and independent media with offices in Almaty, Amman, Belgrade, Bishkek, Bucharest, Budapest, Dushanbe, Kyiv, Lagos, Mexico City, Namangan, New York, Rabat, Tashkent, Tunis, Warsaw, and Washington, D.C.
Prior to her position at Freedom House, Jennifer worked at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) from 1991-2000. She last served as the Deputy Assistant Administrator and Director of the Center for Democracy and Governance at USAID. Prior to that she worked on democracy and governance issues in Africa, and was special assistant/deputy chief of staff to USAID Administrator Brian Atwood. From 1986-1989, she worked on Capitol Hill on foreign policy issues with Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Congressman Ted Weiss.
Ms. Windsor is an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University and is a graduate of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University and Harvard University. She has written numerous articles on democracy published in The New York Times, The Washington Quarterly, The Daily Star and has appeared on NPR, BBC, VOA and other news outlets.
Mr. Jared Genser, President, Freedom Now, Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Global Advocacy Team Member
Jared Genser is the President of Freedom Now, a non-profit organization advocating for arbitrarily detained individuals worldwide, and an associate in the federal affairs and legislative practice group of a global law firm in Washington, D.C. Recently, Mr. Genser led a team of lawyers commissioned by former Czech President Vaclav Havel and Bishop Desmond Tutu to produce a report entitled Threat to the Peace: A Call for the UN Security Council to Act in Burma. Previously, he was a management consultant with McKinsey & Company, the global strategy consulting firm. Mr. Genser holds a B.S. in human service studies from Cornell University, a Master in Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University where he was an Alumni Public Service Fellow, and a J.D., cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School. In addition to being qualified to practice law in Maryland and the District of Columbia, he is also a Solicitor of England and Wales. He has published opinion-editorials on human rights topics in such publications as the Washington Post, Asian Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, and Washington Times. More information on Freedom Now can be found by looking at the following website: http://www.freedom-now.org/home.php.
Ama Adhe, Tibetan activist; Author of The Voice that Remembers: The Heroic Story of a Woman's Fight to Free Tibet
Mrs. Adhe Tapontsang, commonly known as Ama Adhe, was born in 1932 at Ghortsa village in Nyarong, Kham, (Sichuan Province). After her arrest on October 16, 1958, she was sentenced to 16 years' imprisonment and subsequently spent a total of 27 years in Chinese labor camps. She escaped to Nepal in 1985 and now lives in Dharamsala, India.
When Adhe Tapontsang- or Ama (Mother) Adhe, as she is affectionately known- left Tibet in 1987, she did so on the condition that she remain silent about her 27 years in Chinese prisons. Yet, true to her promise to the many that did not survive, she embarked upon a mission to illuminate the realities of the occupation.
In 1954, when Adhe's son was just a year old, and she was pregnant with her second child, her husband was poisoned and died in front of her. Her husband's mother died soon afterward, of grief. In 1958, nine armed men cam to Adhe's home, beat her in front of her children, and arrested her. Several months of physical torture followed, and finally she was brought before a large crowd and forced to watch as her brother-in-law was shot in front of her. Her book, The Voice that Remembers, captures the strength, courage, and selflessness of this extraordinary woman- and provides an engrossing first-hand account of Tibetan history in the last half of the 20th century.
Ms. Rebiya Kadeer, Uyghur human rights activist
Rebiya Kadeer is a prominent Uyghur businesswoman and political activist from Xinjiang Province (East Turkestan) in China. In 1999 she was detained, tried and imprisoned by PRC authorities on charges of "leaking state secrets", having sent newspaper clippings to her husband Sidik Rouzi, an expatriate living in the United States who is active in protesting Chinese policies towards the Uyghurs. Kadeer was detained in August 1999 while on her way to meet a US Congressional Research Service delegation investigating the situation in Xinjiang at the time, and was alleged to be in possession of a list of 10 people "suspected of having a connection with national separatist activities". On March 14, 2005, Kadeer was released early, nominally on medical grounds, to United States custody. On March 17, Kadeer flew to America and joined her family in Washington D.C..
Kadeer was born into poverty but enjoyed a successful career as an entrepreneur, starting first with a laundry service and then expanding her activities to eventually own a trading company and department store in Xinjiang. She was also an active philanthropist within the community, most notably through her foundation of the 1,000 Families Mothers Project, a charity intended to help Uyghur women start their own local businesses.
Mr. Lu Decheng, Laogai survivor
Lu Decheng was one of three people who "defaced" the portrait of Mao Zedong during the 1989 democracy movement at Tiananmen Square. Along with Yu Zhijian and Yu Dongyue, he threw paint-filled eggs at the portrait of Mao. The three men were charged with "counterrevolutionary sabotage, propaganda and incitement", and were all sentenced to lengthy prison terms. An employee of a bus company at the time, Lu was sentenced to 16 years in prison. Yu Zhijian, an elementary school teacher, was sentenced to life in prison. Yu Dongyue, a fine arts editor with Liuyang News in Hunan, was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Lu served over nine years of a 16-year jail term before being paroled early in 1998. He fled through Burma to Thailand in November 2004. He left Thailand for Canada on April 11, 2006 under a resettlement program run by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
Mr. Dan Southerland, Vice President of Programming and Executive Editor, Radio Free Asia
Dan Southerland joined Radio Free Asia (RFA) as vice president and executive editor in 1996, with primary responsibility for all editorial operations. His brief has since expanded to include oversight of nine broadcast services as well as RFA's award-winning Web site.
Prior to joining RFA, Mr. Southerland spent 18 years as a foreign correspondent in Asia and is recognized as one of America's most respected reporters on Asian affairs. He was The Washington Post's bureau chief in Beijing from 1985-90, where he covered China's economic reforms, political developments, human rights, and the Tiananmen Square uprising in June 1989. He also covered business and energy issues for The Washington Post's financial section.
Mr. Southerland worked previously for 13 years with The Christian Science Monitor, based in Saigon, Hong Kong, and Washington, D.C., covering the Vietnam War, conflicts in Laos and Cambodia, the U.S. invasion of Cambodia, and the fall of Saigon. In Washington, he was the Monitor's diplomatic correspondent. In 1995, Mr. Southerland was awarded the Edward Weintal prize for distinguished diplomatic reporting for a series on the Mao years in China. Other honors include a Pulitzer Prize nomination in 1990 for his coverage of Tiananmen, and an Edward R. Murrow Press Fellowship in 1990-91.
Ms. Tienchi Liao, Director, Laogai Research Foundation
Tienchi Liao is a scholar and author. She was a lecturer at the Ruhr University Bochum in Germany. Beginning in 1992, she served as the head of the Richard-Wilhelm Research Center for Translation and the editor-in-chief of the (Chinese-German literature translation) series ARCUS-CHINATEXTE. After leaving Germany in 2000 and moving to the United States, she began working as the director of the Washington-based Laogai Research Foundation, where she initiated a biographical series of Chinese political prisoners. At present, Ms. Liao is also the deputy publisher of the China Information Center in Virginia.
At the Institute for Asian Affairs in Hamburg, Ms. Liao edited the German-Chinese dictionary Deutsch-Chinesischer Wortschatz (Langenscheidt, Berlin 1977), as well as seven volumes of Mao Zedong's Collected Works (Hanser Verlag, Munich 1976-1980). She also served as the first chairwoman and a board member of the Federation of Democratic China's German Branch, part of the overseas Chinese democracy movement, where she organized political activities and conferences and supported human rights work.
Ven. Palden Gyatso, Tibetan activist; Author of Fire Under the Snow
Palden Gyatso was born in 1933 and raised in a small Tibetan village. At the age of 18, he became an ordained Buddhist monk at one of Tibet's most famous monasteries, Drepung Monastery. In 1959, when Communist China invaded Tibet, thousands of Tibetans who did not approve of the brutal occupation of their country were arrested and put in prison. Palden Gyatso was jailed by the Chinese authorities for being a "reactionary element."
Palden Gyatso spent most of the next 33 years in Chinese prison. Every time he would finish serving one of his long sentences, he would be re-arrested for taking part in political activities opposing the Chinese occupation. While in prison, Palden Gyatso endured violent physical and psychological torture.
Palden Gyatso never gave up his determination to fight for his country's freedom. In 1992, when he finally finished his last prison sentence, Palden Gyatso managed to escape to India, carrying with him some of torture instruments that had been used on him. Since his escape, he has traveled the world speaking to people about his horrendous experiences in jail and his continued mission to expose the injustice of the Chinese occupation of Tibet. He has testified in front of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and the US Congress. Palden's story, The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk, was translated by Tsering Shakya and published by Grove Press in 1997.
Mr. Xu Wenli, Researcher at Brown University; Founder of the China Democracy Party; Author of I Shed my Blood to Color My Country
Xu Wenli, a pro-democracy leader and one of China's most prominent dissidents, was tried on December 12, 1998 and charged with secretly organizing and planning the China Democratic Party with the purpose of "subverting state power". He was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment. He was unexpectedly released from prison on December 24, 2002, eight years shy of his scheduled release. Having collectively spent 16 years in custody since 1981, Xu arrived in the United States following his release from prison.
Xu Wenli was first imprisoned during the 1979-81 Democracy Wall movement. At that time, he helped launch April Fifth Forum, a major dissident journal, and in November 1979 he put up a poster on the Democracy Wall. He wrote a twenty-point list of suggestions to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, circulated a private newsletter, gave numerous interviews to foreign journalists and television stations emphasizing the need for democracy in a Marxist society, and published several articles in Hong Kong under a pseudonym. He was arrested on October 4, 1981 and sentenced on June 8, 1982 to fifteen years for "illegally organizing a clique to overthrow the government." In late 1985, he managed to smuggle out a detailed account, My Defense Statement, about his arrest, trial and general treatment in prison, including his 200 interrogation sessions. Following the document¡¯s publication abroad in 1986, Xu was moved to a windowless cell measuring only three square meters, where he spent three and a half years.
After serving 12 years, 11 of them in solitary confinement, Xu was released in 1993 but was repeatedly held for questioning thereafter and accused of violating his parole. After securing the restoration of his political rights in October 1996, he openly returned to political activities.
Mr. Wu Yashan, Author of Difficult Years
Author Wu Yashan was born into a prominent, Manchurian family, and took part in the 1947 student movement before joining the People's Liberation Army. After graduating from a Shanghai acting college in 1957, Wu was falsely denounced as a rightist in 1958. He subsequently spent nearly 20 years in the Laogai, during which time he experienced great hunger, illness, and mental and physical abuse. Mr. Wu has directed and acted in many operas, plays and films.
In the 1980s, Mr. Wu left China and took up residence in the U.S., where he remains today.
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