Published by: World Tibet Network News Saturday, November 29, 1997

November 28, 1997

When it came to a choice between the dictator and the dissident, Prime Minister Jean Chretien cozied up to the man with blood on his hands.

Chretien has rolled out the red carpet for Chinese President Jiang Zemin while giving the finger to Harry Wu, the victim of Red China's totalitarian despotism. Jiang -- the mass murder -- was wined and dined at Rideau Hall last night and will be given the royal treatment on Parliament Hill today before flying to Toronto. Wu -- the human rights activist who spent 19 years in a Communist slave labor camp -- was given the cold shoulder about meeting Chretien.

Our prime minister had no time to listen to Wu recount the life of misery and pain he was subjected to under Communist rule. By speaking out against communism in 1957, Wu was enslaved; his father tortured; his mother committed suicide; and his brother beaten and killed.

That is the ugly side of China which the world saw so clearly when Jiang and the Communist ruling elite ordered the tanks to roll over thousands of student protesters in Tienanmen Square in 1989.

Had Chretien found a few moments to speak to Wu, he might have second thoughts about his good buddy Jiang, the Butcher of Beijing.

For the story that Wu tells is one that sends shivers up the spine and loathing for the Chinese dictator and the totalitarian system he runs.

For nearly an hour yesterday, Wu kept the Commons Foreign Affairs committee spellbound with the horrors of life inside China.

There are no fewer than 1,100 concentration camps in China, called Laogai, where up to six million Chinese produce goods for export to Canada and other nations around the world, he told Mps.

It is in the camps and slave labor factories where mass market goods are produced for export with the profits ending up in the pockets of Jiang and his cronies. According to Wu, Chinese goods such as artificial Christmas trees, toys, rubber shoes, Christmas lights and steel pipe come from China's slave labor factories. The list of horrors inside China include 14 million abortions a year, religious persecution, no free speech, mass torture, and of course, the slave camps. One of the worst evils of the slave camps and prisons is the selling of human body parts by China's rulers at $30,000 an organ.

Trade in human bodies happens in many Third World nations, where poor people, for example, sell their kidneys to feed their families. The difference in China is that this practice is sanctioned by the state.

Wu produced a Chinese law that legally permits authorities to remove and sell the body parts of death row prisoners. He estimates there are 88 hospitals, many of them military, where the organ transplants are carried out. The buyers are mainly people living outside China. In 1996, Wu estimates there were 18,759 kidney transplants alone. About 20,000 Chinese prisoners have had their organs removed after they were either executed or died from natural causes.

"They are making money from body parts. They are standing by in the execution grounds to remove the organs," he said. "This evil is government policy." China denies it has an "organ removal-and-selling policy" despite the document produced by Wu and numerous reports by major media and Amnesty International. If Chretien had found time to see Wu, the Chinese dissident said he would have urged the PM to show Jiang the document produced by the Supreme Peoples Court entitled "On the Use of Dead Bodies or Organs from Condemned Criminals" and dated Oct. 9, 1984. "If Chretien wants to talk to the Chinese, ask Jiang Zemin: is this your document?

You are the president of the country, are you responsible for this policy? Tell me about it.

Under this policy, how many people have been executed? How many people had their organs removed and how many have been sold to international patients? It's simple but I don't think Chretien would like to do that."

Sadly, Wu said he knows the PM would never broach the subject of the brutal atrocities committed by China with the dictator for fear of losing billions of dollars in trade deals. As for why he thought Chretien would not meet him, Wu had a simply answer: "I cannot bring the contracts."

Later, Wu told reporters that he wished Chretien had invited him to the state dinner that taxpayers threw for Jiang at Rideau Hall. For Wu would not have been as subservient as Chretien has been to the Butcher of Beijing.

"I think Jiang Zemin would recognize me. I would say `you tried to destroy me but you cannot ...

You did destroy many, many human beings but you see some (victims) are standing on their own feet. That is lesson for you."