Troublemaker

Harry Wu, China's most prominent dissident exile in the West, spent 19 years condemned as a counterrevolutionary in the laogai, his country's equivalent of the Soviet gulag system of forced labor camps. After escaping to California in 1985 he began a tireless campaign to publicize human rights abuses within the Chinese prison system, including the harvesting of organs from prisoners, and profiteering from forced labor supported by World Bank subsidies and U.S. importing of prison-made goods. Through Vecsey, a columnist for the New York Times, Wu recounts his incessant and intrepid troublemaking, including his clandestine trips back into China, on one of which he was caught, charged with spying, and deported after U.S. pressure for his release.