Letter: Old-style abuse is still alive in the New China First, they accuse you of something you have never said or done, then they demand that you prove you are not guilty of the charges. They swiftly convict you in public before you have a chance to defend yourself.

It is a typical scenario of a communist style prosecution in China, but it is also how Daqing Zhao and the other Chinese students carried out their mission of discrediting human rights activist Harry Wu (``Harry Wu's charges against China are unproven,'' Letters, Sept. 12).

Wu presented the grim evidence of prisoner organ sales in China, but he has never claimed that the victims are all political prisoners. To Wu and other conscientious individuals, both human rights abuses and political/religious persecution are extremely offensive, but they're not necessarily the same thing.

Zhao and company purposely quoted Wu out of context and then demanded proof of any organ sale of a political prisoner. And they said that it is perfectly all right to harvest organs from condemned inmates, dead or alive, as long as the victims are not known as political or religious prisoners.

The communist apologists continue their rhetoric, asserting that political and religious persecution is merely a regrettable practice of the past and the ``New China'' is no longer ruled in such a fashion.

There are still hundreds of thousands of Tibetans languishing in laogai camps in Qinghai, Gansu, and Tibet. Countless Christian families continue to suffer in internal exile in remote provinces, such as Heilongjiang, Jilin and Xinjiang. As recently as the last four weeks, political dissidents throughout China were abruptly detained by the authorities.

Tiananmen student leader Liu Gang was tortured daily in his six-year ordeal in the laogai camp. Letters smuggled out of jail indicate that Tong Zing, personal secretary of prominent dissident Wei Jingsheng, is routinely subjected to beating and brutal mistreatments in prison.

Speaking of Wei Jingsheng, where is he? He was arrested on April 1, 1994, after he met with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State John Suttack, and never heard of since.

These are facts of life in 1995, not those of the notorious Cultural Revolution era.

-- Ignatius Y. Ding

Silicon Valley for Democracy in China