American Confessed To TV ‘Lies,’ Chinese Claim Los Angeles Times

China claimed Thursday that American human rights activist Harry Wu has confessed to “deliberately falsifying facts” in documentaries he taped during clandestine trips to the country.

The official New China News Agency said Wu admitted that he and a British Broadcasting Corp. correspondent “cooked up the tapes,” which were used as the basis for exposes on prison labor camps and the sale of inmates’ organs for transplant.

A state-linked television production company also released a videotape - “See the Lies of Wu Hongda,” titled after Wu’s Chinese name - showing what purports to be Wu making his confession.

“When he was questioned by police, he confessed to having deliberately falsified the facts on the two videotapes,” the news agency said.

The United States expressed skepticism at the authenticity of the confession. “I would simply say this: It’s very difficult for us, watching television here in Washington, to determine what this tape is, who produced the tape, how it fell into the hands of commercial broadcasting companies for a price,” State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said.

He said the United States would continue to press for Wu’s immediate release, calling it “a major case on the U.S.-Chinese agenda.”

Wu, 58, a resident of Milpitas, Calif., has been detained since June 19 and was formally arrested on July 8 in Wuhan in east-central China. He has been accused of the capital offense of espionage.

The black-and-white videotape released Thursday shows Wu being interrogated in a small room. Asked about two BBC documentaries on human rights abuses in Chinese prisons, Wu admits to intentionally falsifying information.

The prison labor documentary showed leather jackets, children’s clothes and other goods being sold outside a prison, and asserts the goods were made by inmates coerced into labor. The Chinese government denies the charges. In the videotape, Wu purportedly agrees that the documentary was “wrong” and “untrue.”

As for a BBC report on the sale of organs from executed prisoners to wealthy customers, Wu admits that he “deceived people” but places much of the blame on the BBC.