Harry Wu | Harry Wu spent 19 years incarcerated by the Chinese government in the Laogai — the “Bamboo Gulag”— as a political prisoner. Wu was forced to manufacture chemicals, mine coal, build roads, and plant crops. He survived beatings, torture, and starvation, and witnessed the death of many of his fellow prisoners. After his release in 1979, Wu moved to the United States determined to expose the truth about the Laogai - the most extensive forced labor system in the world. He documented his imprisonment and survival in his book Bitter Winds: A Memoir of My Years in China’s Gulag. He has repeatedly risked his life returning to China to document slavery and human rights abuses. In 1995, Wu was arrested in China, found guilty of “stealing state secrets,” sentenced to 15 years in prison, and was then expelled. Since his release, Wu courageously vowed to continue to expose human rights violations in China. In November 2008, Wu opened the Laogai Museum in Washington DC, the first museum in the world to exclusively deal with human rights in China.
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