U.S. Citizen Detained by China

Harry Wu, a crusading human rights advocate who survived 19 years in Chinese labor camps and several clandestine trips back into China to report on prison labor conditions, has been arrested in remote northwest China during another attempt to re-enter his homeland.

Chinese authorities told American diplomats here Monday that Wu, 58, a naturalized U.S. citizen who lives in Milpitas, Calif., is being held for investigation of illegally entering an area restricted for foreigners. A female companion, also American, was held for four days and released.

The official explanation given for Wu’s detention was that officials are “investigating the validity of his travel documents.”

According to Wu’s Laogai (Reform Labor Camp) Research Foundation in Washington, D.C., Wu and his companion were detained trying to cross the border into China at Horgos, a frontier outpost on the border with Kazakhstan.

Before his arrest, Wu made three successful entries into China, including one in 1991 during which he helped a camera crew from the CBS-TV program “60 Minutes” surreptitiously film the interior of a labor reform camp.

In numerous appearances before Congress, Wu nearly single-handedly made prison labor a human rights issue in U.S.-China relations. His most recent testimony, which struck a raw nerve with Chinese prison officials, involved allegations that Chinese penal authorities arranged executions of inmates to sell their organs to wealthy patients.

According to the Laogai Research Foundation, Wu, who grew up in Shanghai and Beijing before emigrating to the United States in 1985, tried to enter China on June 19 using a U.S. passport bearing his legal name, Peter H. Wu.

“Wu’s documents are completely in order,” a statement by the research foundation claimed Monday. “He did not violate any Chinese laws or regulations.”

Times staff writer Jim Mann in Washington contributed to this report.