The Chinese government said Thursday that an American human rights activist charged with spying has confessed to faking two exposes of China's penal system.
Harry Wu was detained June 19 while crossing into China from Kazakhstan and was formally arrested July 8 for stealing state secrets and for other criminal activities.His case is now in what the Chinese call the "investigative" stage, which usually entails repeated interrogation.
A grainy black-and-white videotape sold to Western news agencies
for $3,000 shows Wu in an armchair, head bowed and arms folded, answering questions from a police officer while three others take notes.
Wu has only been permitted to meet with a U.S. official once since his detention, on July 10 in the central city of Wuhan. There was no way of ascertaining under what conditions the purported confession was made.
The video has English subtitles, but there is no indication when it was made.
The official Xinhua news agency reported that Wu told police he intentionally made errors editing two British Broadcasting Corp. documentaries on forced prison labor and the transplanting of organs from executed prisoners.
"This is wrong, untrue," Wu says in the videotape in response to a question about one of the documentaries.
"Who edited the commentary?" the policeman asks.
"The BBC," Wu replies.
In an indication of the case Chinese authorities may be building against Wu, the Xinhua dispatch contains accusations based on information reported in the documentaries: that they were shot with a hidden camera and that the filmmakers used false identities.
Wu confessed that he and BBC producer Susan Roberts posed as scholars, a couple or relatives of patients in need of transplants when they came to China in April 1994, Xinhua said.
China has not made public formal charges against Wu. Formal indictments are often not issued until close to the time of trial. That is also when defendants are usually allowed to meet with a lawyer.
Suspected of stealing state secrets, Wu was arrested under China's State Security Act.