May 4, 2010, Washington, DC- On Thursday May 6 Laogai Research Foundation Executive Director Harry Wu will be offering the keynote address for "Combating Illegal Traffic in Human Organs and Tissues," a two-day conference at the University of California- Berkeley. The conference is being sponsored by UC Berkeley's doctoral program in medical anthropology and Organs Watch, a university-affiliated medical human rights and documentation project concerned with illegal global traffic in organs and tissues. The program will feature public events as well as closed-door meetings with a working group on the issue of international organ trade.
 
Wu is expected to address the specific issue of organ trafficking in China, where, by the admission of Minister of Health Huang Jiefu, ninety-six percent of all organs transplanted are harvested from executed Chinese prisoners.  Victims of this practice are those who have been sentenced to reform through labor in China's infamous Laogai camps.  Himself a Laogai prisoner from 1960-1979, Wu declared the following concerning this practice, "The continuation of organ-harvesting from executed Chinese prisoners is an affront to the integrity of the medical profession.  In performing these operations, Chinese medical doctors have dehumanized their victims, making them victims not only of a brutal, draconian system of slavery but also of a forced invasive operation that will prove fatal.  This simultaneous denial of life and liberty to China's Laogai victims is cause for international action."  Harry Wu and LRF Researcher Michael Mignano will also be participating in a panel discussion entitled, "Defending the Bodies of the Living," which will focus on the costs and consequences of the global kidney trade.  
 
The conference will also feature "H.O.T- Human Organs Trafficking," a prize-winning documentary film by Roberto Orazi.  The film investigates the international trade of human organs, and features testimony from LRF Executive Director Harry Wu on the organ trade in China.  
 
For further inquiry, please contact Lindsey Purdy at (202) 408-8300 or lindsey@laogai.org.  
 
 The Laogai Research Foundation is a not-for-profit organization founded by former political prisoner Harry Wu in 1992.  Its mission is to gather information on and raise public awareness of the Laogai-China's extensive system of forced labor prison camps.
 
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