Harry Wu, China Human Rights Campaigner Dies At 79

Harry Wu, an ex-political prisoner who spent his whole life disclosing atrocities in China's brutal prison labor camp system died at 79.

During a vacation in Honduras, he died Tuesday morning, said Ann Noonan, the administrator with his Laogai Human Rights Organization, but it is not known why he died, his son Harrison and ex-wife China Lee were on their way to retrieve his remains from the Central American nation.

"He was a real hero," Noonan said. "Harry's work will continue, it will not stop."

He had been born in a wealthy Shanghai family whose property got confiscated after the 1949 civil war victory of Mao Zedong's communists. Having studied geology at the university, he got into trouble with the officials when he criticised the Soviet Union that was China's ally at the time.

He got sentenced in 1960, when he was 23, to China's prison camp system or Laogao, that translates to "reform through labor."

At Laogao, intellectuals and political prisoners faced long sentences and brutality, leading to millions of deaths. Wu was shifted to 12 different camps, and underwent harsh work regimens in the farms, coal mines, and work sites, experiencing beatings, torture, and near starvation.

He was set free in 1979 after Mao's death. In 1985, he moved to the US and taught, wrote and founded the Laogai Research Foundation, even as he moved intermittently to China to research the labour system.

He assumed U.S. citizenship but again got arrested when he visited China in 1995. He got another 15 years for espionage. Though he got deported to the U.S. he continued to document Chinese human rights abuses, frequently speaking before Congress and at academic events.

The Laogai Museum was established in 2008 to "preserve the memory of the laogai's many victims and serve to educate the public about the atrocities committed by China's communist regime," according to the Wahington DC foundation's website.

The Laogai has since been removed, though a weaker version known as Laojiao, or "reform through education" remains.

Wu's books on his experiences include "The Chinese Gulag," ''Bitter Winds," and "Troublemaker."

Various other issues that he championed included international labor rights, religious freedom, opposition to the death penalty, forced organ harvesting, and China's population control policies.