For Immediate Release	 				February 5, 1996
 
Harry Wu Discusses Chinese Human Rights Atrocities in Lawrence Convocation
 
	
	APPLETON, WIS. - Human rights activist Harry Wu, who has repeatedly
risked his life to expose the horrors of the Chinese forced labor and prison
camps, will discuss the atrocities he uncovered during his trips to his
homeland in a Lawrence University convocation Tuesday, February 13.  Wu will
deliver the address, "At What Price?  The Human Cost of China's Economic
Miracle," at 11:10 a.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel.  A question-and-answer
session with Wu will be held at 2 p.m. in Riverview Lounge in the Lawrence
Memorial Union.  Both events are free and open to the public.
	Wu's appearance is in conjunction with Lawrence's 1995-96 convocation
series, "The Ideas That Shape Our Time, The People Who Shape Our Ideas."   
	Hailed as "an American hero," for his daring trips to China to document
human rights abuses, Wu, 59, was incarcerated as a 23-year-old student in 1960
by the Chinese government for criticizing the Communist Party.  Although never
formally charged wih a crime or tried for one, Wu spent 19 years in the "Bamboo
Gulag," enduring grinding labor, systematic starvation and torture.  At one
point of his confinement, his weight had fallen to 72 pounds.
	The son of a Shanghai banker and now a naturalized U.S. citizen, Wu
came to the United States in 1985 after waiting four years for a passport.  He
had to sell all of his possessions and borrow money to buy an airline ticket. 
He joined Stanford University's Hoover Institute on War, Revolution and Peace
as a visiting scholar.
	Beginning in 1991, Wu secretly returned to China three times to visit
prison camps and document human rights atrocities occurring there.  Last year,
he drew worldwide attention to his mission when he was arrested June 19 trying
to cross the border into China from Kazakhstan.  He was found guilty of
"stealing state secrets" and sentenced to 15 years in prison.  But under
international pressure, Wu was expelled from China last August and returned to
his home in Milpitas, California.	
	In his 1994 best-selling autobiography, "Bitter Winds:  A Memoir of My
Years in China's Gulag," Wu said it was the West's failure to grasp the
critical role played by the labor camp system in supporting communist rule that
motivated him to return to his homeland and record the conditions within the
vast network of secret prison facilities that kept millions of Chinese citizens
incarcerated in sometimes brutal and dehumanizing conditions.
	"Even though I wanted to forget the suffering of the past after
arriving in the United States and had wanted to heal the wounds in my heart,
the 19 years of sorrow would not stop returning to my mind," Wu wrote.  "I
could not forget what I had experienced or those who still suffered inside the
camps.  If I didn't undertake this task, I asked, who would."
	Prior to "Bitter Winds," Wu authored the book, "Laogai: The Chinese
Gulag" in 1991.  A third book, still untitled, is scheduled to be published
this fall.  In addition to his work with the Hoover Institute, Wu is the
founder and executive director of the Laogai Research Foundation.       


Contact:  Rick Peterson, Manager of News Services, 414/832-6590