Unsolved- Organ Harvesting in China: Interview with UN Special Rapporteur on Torture

By Charlotte Cuthbertson, Epoch Times Staff,  Aug 5, 2009 -

The U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, Dr. Manfred Nowak (Via The Epochtimes)

No straight answers have been produced by the Chinese regime over the allegations of state-sanctioned organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners, says Manfred Nowak, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture.

“The Chinese government has yet to come clean and be transparent,” said Nowak in an interview with The Epoch Times. “It remains to be seen how it could be possible that organ transplant surgeries in Chinese hospitals have risen massively since 1999, while there are never that many voluntary donors available.”

The Chinese Communist Party has denied the allegations for three years despite several compelling investigative reports and several probes by the United Nations. Falun Gong is a spiritual practice based on truth, compassion, tolerance, and includes five sets of meditative exercises. In July 1999, the communist regime in China began persecuting people who practice it.

Investigative Reports

International human rights lawyer David Matas, and former crown prosecutor and member of parliament, David Kilgour, published their first report in July 2006, following up with a second in January 2007.

Their report, “Bloody Harvest: Revised Report Into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China,” concludes: “We believe that there has been and continues today to be large-scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners … The very horror made us reel back in disbelief.”

Major findings include 41,500 organs in transplants unaccounted for between 2001 and 2005. Transplants increased in parallel with the persecution of Falun Gong. In 2001 the amount of liver transplants in China numbered seven. By 2005 it had reached 2,168 for one hospital. The Chinese military is heavily involved in the transplant system in China, and the regime has admitted that the vast majority of organs for transplant come from executed prisoners.

“The explanation that most of these organs come from death row inmates is inconclusive,” said Nowak. “If so, the number of executed felons must then be much higher as so far assumed. I have asked the Chinese government to provide clarity and asked for precise data.”

The accusations remain, said Nowak. “They were denied, but the Chinese government has not invalidated them, but on the other hand they haven´t been proven either. This makes for a difficult dilemma—one that only be resolved if China is willing to cooperate. And that is what is lacking.”

United Nations Requests Ignored

Nowak has submitted two reports to the U.N. Human Rights Council formally requesting the Chinese regime respond to the allegations. The report states, in part, that, “The [Falun Gong] practitioners were given injections to induce heart failure, and therefore were killed in the course of the organ harvesting operations or immediately thereafter.”

“Nothing seems to have changed for the better,” said Nowak. “We lack exact statistics. I cannot say if the situation has changed since I left China. But I have no reason to assume anything has turned for the better, because I have not had any such hints. The majority of the inmates in these [forced labor] camps were Falun Gong members. And that is so frightening, because none of these people were ever given the benefit of a trial. They were never charged.”

“Bloody Harvest” outlines extraordinarily short wait times for organs in China—one to two weeks for a liver compared with 32.5 months in Canada (median wait for 2003) as a further incriminating factor. Kilgour and Matas also present self-accusatory material from Chinese transplant centre Web sites that advertise the immediate availability of large numbers of organs from living donors. Organ price lists were available on Chinese hospital Web sites.

The Kilgour-Matas report includes evidence from a hospital Web site (now removed), that claims, from “January 2005 to now, we have done 647 liver transplants—12 of them done this week. The average waiting time is two weeks.”

A chart also removed about the same time indicates that in 1998 the hospital completed only nine liver transplants—by 2005 it had completed fully 2248.

No Trials, Forced Labor Camps

In a 2005 trip to China that took Nowak 10 years of requests to the regime, he discovered that two-thirds of the torture cases reported in labor camps were Falun Gong practitioners.

Falun Gong practitioners are put into forced labor camps, said Nowak. “In the same way the officials deal with prostitutes or with those that exhibit ‘other socially damaging behavior.’ One can say that a relatively big part of the inmates in these camps are Falun Gong persons. It definitely is one of the largest groups.”

Nowak said the number of practitioners in China is huge. “In spite of the persecution [it] has not diminished, but increased,” he said.

“Genocide has a specific background—ethnic, racist, or religious discrimination; in this case it could be religious discrimination. “[What the regime is doing] amounts to a systematic repression of a specific group of people for religious/political reasons, although the Chinese leadership has always denied this to be a religious movement.”…… (more details from The Epochtimes)

(Video) A Decade of Courage (Part 4)- China’s Deadly Harvest

NTDTV, via Youtube, July 15, 2009-

Numbers are symbols; they represent anything and everything. But they also hide what they represent, like a mask. In ten years, the names of over 3,000 Falun Gong practitioners have been collected; they are the names of people who have been killed through torture by Chinese authorities. But, how many more people simply disappeared after the persecution began? And what is the connection to China’s booming organ transplant industry. Though the truth is still unknown, the evidence points to a disturbing conclusion about the new China, and of what the rest of the world is willing to ignore. In this original investigation, NTD attempts to discover: ‘what happened to the people who disappeared?’

- NTDTV

Human Rights in Taiwan and China Today (6): Speech by Hon. David Kilgour

Paper prepared by Hon. David Kilgour, J.D. for An International Forum on the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Garden Villa Hotel, Kaohsiung City, Taiwan, 11 December, 2008 – (cont’d)

UN Committee Against Torture

The Chinese government should listen to the appeals of the world community and take effective action both to stop human rights violations and to punish those, including party members, who perpetrate them. One such appeal was issued last month by the United Nations Committee against Torture (CAT), which demanded that China’s party-state “immediately conduct or commission an independent investigation of the claims that some Falun Gong practitioners have been subjected to torture and used for organ transplants and take measures, as appropriate, to ensure that those responsible for such abuses are prosecuted and punished.” The statement was made in the committee’s concluding observations on the Convention against Torture and the experience in China. It can be found at <www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cat/docs/CAT.C.CHN.CO.4.pdf>.

“The Government of China should do what the Committee recommends. Failure to conduct or commission an independent investigation on organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners would put China in violation of its international obligations under the Convention against Torture, which the Government of China freely signed and ratified”, said David Matas, my co-author of a report of organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners. It is rare for the UN system to call the Government of China to account for its human rights violations. The Committee against Torture must be commended for its willingness to confront directly the very real human rights problems the Government of China has posed to the world.

The Committee considered the China compliance report in Geneva for three days only last month. It had a briefing session on November 6th with non-governmental representatives, which David Matas attended. The first report of Matas and myself on organ pillaging from Falun Gong practitioners was released in July 2006 and a second version in January 2007. It is available on the Internet at www.organharvestinvestigation.net

The Beijing party-state, of course, rejected both the CAT report and our independent report without making a single substantive point on its side of the controversy. As the Chinese Medical Association (CMA), which has certainly not been independent from the Party since 1948, agreed with the World Medical Association earlier this year before the Beijing Olympics not to allow any further ‘organ tourism’ within China, the conclusions in both reports would strongly appear to have been admitted by the CMA as in reality a branch of China’s regime. There are now about 52 pieces of evidence on our report website indicating that this grotesque commerce is occurring on a large scale across China.

The killing without any form of prior trial of thousands of Falun Gong citizens of China in order to sell their vital organs often to ‘organ tourists’ from wealthy countries is unimaginable to most people around the world today. One of Canada’s national dailies, the Globe and Mail, weighed in editorially on the UN Torture report recently: “… the full police-state playbook is in evidence… People trying to come to Beijing to petition the authorities for redress of their grievances may disappear into secret centres – ‘black jails’ – without review by a judge. Even on death row, prisoners are subject to abusive conditions, such as being shackled 24 hours a day. And there are continued reports that organs are harvested from the executed without their prior consent, or their family’s.”   (to be cont’d)

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- Original from http://david-kilgour.com/

UN criticises China over ‘widespread’ torture allegations

AFP, Nov. 21, 2008-

GENEVA (AFP) — A UN body has expressed deep concern over allegations of widespread torture in China and called on the country to fully probe rights abuses.

The United Nations Committee Against Torture, meeting in Geneva, also revisited the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, urging the government to grant reparations and investigate the crackdown.

“The committee remains deeply concerned about the continued allegations, corroborated by numerous Chinese legal sources, of routine and widespread use of torture and ill treatment of suspects in police custody, especially to extract confessions or information to be used in criminal proceedings,” it said in a report released Friday.

It hit out at “continued reliance on confessions as a common form of evidence for prosecution, thus creating conditions that may facilitate the use of torture and ill-treatment of suspects,” quoting the case of dissident and human rights militant Yang Chunlin.

The committee also criticised China’s handling of its relations with the Tibetan Autonomous Region, noting there had been “longstanding reports of torture, beatings, shackling and other abusive treatment, in particular of Tibetan monks and nuns.”

No inquiry had been carried out into the arrests, firing on crowds of peaceful demonstrators, torture or cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment during the recent repression in Tibet, the experts noted.

Regarding the Tiananmen Square protests and crackdown, the committee said China “should conduct a full and impartial investigation” of the events.

It added that Chinese authorities should “provide information on the persons who are still detained from that period” as well as “offer apologies and reparation as appropriate and prosecute those found responsible for excessive use of force, torture and other ill treatment.”

More generally, the committee pointed to “reports of abuses in custody, including high numbers of deaths… Reeducation through labour for individuals who have never had their case tried in court, nor the possibility of challenging their administrative detention,” and secret detention facilities.

The UN experts expressed concern about the fate of Hu Jia, like other human rights backers the victim of harassment and violence committed by thugs who were unofficially recruited by the authorities.

The Committee Against Torture mentioned allegations of removal of organs from members of the Falun Gong sect for transplant. The special UN rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak was quoted as saying that “an increase in organ transplant operations coincides with the beginning of the persecution of (Falun Gong practitioners).”

The committee was also concerned about the fate of North Korean refugees who were turned back at the border despite the risk that they would be subjected to torture in their own country.

Finally, the committee said it was worried about the conditions of people on death row who were chained day and night and whose organs could be removed for transplant after their death without their prior consent, according to information received by the experts.

Earlier this month, the committee’s chief rapporteur Felice Gaer had accused the Chinese of not providing sufficient information.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang denied this and said earlier this month that “it is China’s consistent stance that we oppose torture.”

Gaer had said China had been unwilling to release data on individual cases by invoking its State Secrets Act to withhold information.

- AFP

Another Olympics Gold Medalist: Banned Chinese Sect Falun Gong

Michael Learmonth , Silicon Alley Media, August 25, 2008-

One of China’s biggest fears going into the Olympics was that the event would give a bigger megaphone to banned groups, such as the Free Tibet movement and the Falun Gong religious sect.

China appears to have done a thorough job of suppressing overt protests — and even restricted access to Web sites for visiting journalists — but it appears Falun Gong has managed to use the newfound focus on China to their advantage.

The group had 13 videos among the top 100 most-viewed during the first week of the Beijing Olympics, netting 3.5 million views. And it had four videos among the top 100 the following week, netting 1 million views. That’s according to TubeMogul, which tracks video views across 20 sites, including YouTube, Revver, Dailymotion and Metacafe.

It’s the first time Falun Gong has any video in the top 100 since TubeMogul started keeping track in 2006, and until opening day of the Olympics Falun Gong videos had netted a mere 95,000 views. What changed? Hard to say; a PR push could have helped, as could paid promotion on some sites. It also helps that the videos make sensational claims, including this “news” report on organ stealing in Chinese labor camps.

- Original: Silicon Alley Media

New evidence: Admission of Organ Harvesting in China is ‘Undeniable,’ Say Canadian Investigators

Former Canadian Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific David Kilgour and David Matas, a human rights lawyer, on August 22, 2008, released a new letter, describing new evidence about continued murder of Falun Gong practitioners in China for their organs.

By Ben Bendig, Epoch Times Staff Aug 24, 2008 -

New evidence of the Chinese regime’s practice of harvesting organs from Falun Gong practitioners has come to light through the admission of a Chinese doctor.

An audio recording of the doctor admitting to having taken part in harvesting organs from Falun Gong practitioners, together with a state-endorsed documentary in which the same doctor acknowledges taking part in the conversation, is “an undeniable, inculpatory admission of the harvesting of Falun Gong practitioner prisoners for profit,” say David Matas, a human rights lawyer, and David Kilgour, former Canadian secretary of state (Asia Pacific), in a letter released yesterday.

Matas and Kilgour had their investigators call Chinese hospitals inquiring about organ transplants, specifically if they could get organs from Falun Gong practitioners, the rationale being that Falun Gong practitioners are healthy, owing to their practice.

In one case, Dr. Lu Guoping at Minzu Hospital of Guangxi Autonomous Region said that his hospital used to have organs from Falun Gong practitioners, but didn’t any longer. Here is a portion of the transcript:

“Caller: …what you used before, were they from detention centers or prisons?

“Lu Guoping: From prisons.

“C: Oh, prisons. And it was from healthy Falun Gong practitioners, the healthy Falun Gong right?

“LG: Right, right, right. We would choose the good ones, because we will assure the quality of our operations.

“C: That means you choose the organs yourselves?

“LG: Right, right, right.”

He later referred the caller to a hospital in Guangzhou, saying that this hospital would have Falun Gong organs.

Where the new evidence comes to bear is that in a documentary released by Phoenix TV, Lu Guoping admits to having received the call, and also to referring the caller to a Guangzhou hospital.

However, he denies what he said, stating in the interview, “I told her [the caller] I was not involved in the surgical operations and had no idea where the organs come from. I told her I could not answer her questions. She then asked me whether these organs come from prisons. I replied no to her in clear-cut terms.”

When shown a transcript of the interview on the video, Dr. Lu claims that it is a distorted version of the conversation. However, the documentary makes no mention of an audio recording, and no explanation for how the recording could have his voice saying some things that he admits, and other things he denies saying. Matas and Kilgour, in their report of the new evidence, make the point that the documentary suggests an altered transcript, but because there is no mention in the documentary of the recording, the recording itself is not being disputed.

Matas and Kilgour sum up the evidence: “So here we have on our recording an admission from a doctor that he and his colleagues used to go to a prison to select Falun Gong practitioners for their organs. He does not just say that someone else did this. He says that he and his colleagues used to do this themselves. Moreover, we have a further admission that the voice we have on our recording is the voice of the very person our recording says he is.”

One particularly damning aspect of the documentary is that it is available through Chinese consulates and embassies.

“[C]onsequently,” Kilgour and Matas state in their letter, concerning the documentary, “it has the sanction of the Government of China. The admission is, accordingly, one which is sanctioned and approved by the Government of China and can not credibly be denied by the Government.”

Kilgour and Matas have been investigating claims of Falun Gong organ harvesting since 2006. Some of evidence includes 40,000 transplants that have taken place in China with donors unaccounted for, since the persecution of Falun Gong began in 1999. Additionally, waiting times for organs in China are on the order of weeks, while in Western countries, the wait can be months or years.

Matas and Kilgour’s letter, along with links to the Phoenix TV video (with English subtitles), Chinese and English-language copies of the transcript of the conversation with Dr. Lu, and the audio recording of Dr. Lu, are available at: http://organharvestinvestigation.net/Dr.Lu-Voice-Recording/

- Original: Admission of Organ Harvesting is ‘Undeniable,’ Say Investigators , The Epochtimes

Falun Gong prisoners targeted for organs in China: report

Jennifer Macey, The World Today program, The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Austrlia, Tuesday, 12 August , 2008-

ELEANOR HALL: China’s human rights record is again under scrutiny, this time at an International Transplantation Congress in Sydney. A Canadian human rights lawyer says he has new evidence of forced organ removals from prisoners and Falun Gong practitioners in China.

David Matas says Chinese hospitals perform 10,000 organ transplant operations each year and that many of the recipients are foreigners. As Jennifer Macey reports, he’s now calling on the Australian Government to do more to stop the practice.

JENNIFER MACEY: China performs an estimated 10,000 organ transplant operations each year more than any other country in the world except for the United States. But China has no formalised system of organ donations and human rights groups say the short waiting times and availability of organs in China raises serious questions about their source.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch first reported 10 years ago that the majority of these organs come from prisoners. Now Canadian Human Rights Lawyer David Matas says among the prison population, it’s now members of Falun Gong who are being increasingly targeted.

DAVID MATAS: China’s source of organs for transplants is almost entirely from prisoners according to the Deputy Minister of Health it’s 95 per cent, according to other statistics it’s 96 per cent. So it’s almost entirely forced organ harvesting. And there’s two sources – it’s prisoners sentenced to death and Falun Gong practitioners.

JENNIFER MACEY: Mr Matas says hospitals and prisons have arrangements to split the profits made through organ transplant operations, often to foreign patients. He says the prisoners are killed after their organs are removed.

DAVID MATAS: Basically they wait until there’s an order from the hospital, they will blood test the person, and then they inject the person with potassium, and then they put them into a van and the actual organ extraction is in the van, where the prisoner is killed through the organ extraction and then the body is cremated.

JENNIFER MACEY: Last year David Mr Matas and Canadian former secretary of state David Kilgour released a report investigating allegations of organ harvesting of Falun Gong members in China. Mr Matas concedes it’s difficult to find proof of this practise as China won’t release official statistics on executions or organ transplants

But he says he has new audio tapes of Chinese doctors admitting they have Falun Gong organs for sale.

DAVID MATAS: We had callers calling in to China pretending to be relatives of patients who needed organs and asking the hospital that they were calling for organs of Falun Gong practitioners on the basis that Falun Gong’s an exercise regime that practitioners are healthy and their organs are healthy. And we got admissions on tape throughout China and we’ve got the transcripts in our report and we’ve got phone records and we got the tapes from pick up to hang down.

JENNIFER MACEY: Dr Yuan Hong worked as a heart surgeon for ten years at a medical university hospital in north eastern China. He says it was an open secret at his hospital that prisoners organs were used in transplant operations for patients who had travelled from Japan.

YUAN HONG (translated): I start to notice these issues because one of the nurse wearing the army dress and then I also find an anaesthetist also wear the same clothes. So I ask him “why do you have to wear these clothes?” and then he told me, “we have to go to the place where people do executions, so we needed to transplant a kidney there.”

JENNIFER MACEY: So you knew of Japanese people who were coming to your hospital for organ transplants?

YUAN HONG (translated): Because foreigner came to our hospital to be treated. It’s a hot topic, so everybody knows.

JENNIFER MACEY: Jennifer Zeng is a member of Falun Gong who was offered asylum in Australia several years ago. In China she spent a year in a labour camp near Beijing. She says at the camp her blood was taken for tests and she underwent several health checks.

JENNIFER MACEY: Only Falun Gong practitioners were tested and get this physical check up. A lot of Falun Gong practitioners thought that Falun Gong got some special treatment, because they saw a physical check up after you were there for long years, it’s good for your health.

So they ask the police, ‘how about we pay for the physical check’ and the police clearly said no, it’s only for Falun Gong. So other prisoners even protested against it, they say, they are not treated fairly because they obviously didn’t know the purpose.

JENNIFER MACEY: Human rights lawyer David Matas says there’s a lot more the Australian Government could do to help stamp out the practice.

DAVID MATAS: The Government’s could introduce extra-territorial legislation so that transplant tourism can become a crime, the way now child sex tourism is a crime,.

ELEANOR HALL: Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas ending that report by Jennifer Macey.

- Original: Falun Gong prisoners targeted for organs: report

Australia urged to ban China’s ‘transplant tourism’

ABC News, Australia, Aug. 11, 2008-

A human rights lawyer from Canada has called on the Australian Government to ban transplant tourism.

David Matas is addressing the International Congress of the Transplantation Society in Sydney today, where he says he will present new evidence of forced organ removals from prisoners and Falun Gong practitioners in China.

Mr Matas says he has audio tapes of Chinese doctors admitting they have Falun Gong organs for sale.

“We had callers calling into China pretending to be relatives of patients asking hospitals if they had organs of Falun Gong practitioners for sale on the basis that the Falun Gong is an exercise regime and they’re healthy, and therefore their organs are healthy, and we got admissions throughout China that yes, we have these organs for sale,” he said.

Mr Matas also says until recently, the main market for these organs was foreigners seeking cheap transplants.

“China still does not have a generation system for organs, does still not have a law allowing for the sourcing of organs from a brain dead cardiac alive, it still does not have a national organ distribution and sharing system, it’s still the overwhelming 90, 95-96 per cent of its organs are sourced from prisoners,” he said.

- Original: ABC News, Australia

China’s Organ Harvesting Questioned Again by Two UN Special Rapporteurs

Egovmonitor.com, UK , 9 May 2008-

Two United Nations Special Rapporteurs have reiterated their previous findings on China’s organ harvesting. Once again, they requested the Chinese government to fully explain the allegation of taking vital organs from Falun Gong practitioners and the source of organs for the sudden increase in organ transplants that has been going on in China since the year 2000.

Ms. Asma Jahangir and Mr. Manfred Nowak, the UN Special Rapporteurs on Freedom of Religion or Belief and on the Question of Torture, made the request jointly and documented it in their respective 2008 annual reports to the UN Human Rights Council, as a follow-up to their previous communications to the Chinese government.

The two Special Rapporteurs, together with Ms. Sigma Huda, the UN Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons, transmitted their original communication to China on August 11, 2006. Drawing on information submitted by individuals and volunteer groups, including the Falun Gong Human Rights Working Group (FalunHR), the Special Rapporteurs highlighted and raised questions about the identifiable sources of organs, the short waiting times for finding perfectly-matched organs, and the correlation between the sudden increase in organ transplants in China and the beginning of the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners.

Although the Chinese government responded in November 28, 2006, with categorical denials, it failed to address the critical issues raised by the Special Rapporteurs. The follow-up communication by Ms. Jahangir and Mr. Nowak, sent on January 25, 2007, holds the Chinese government to address those critical issues.

FalunHR has posted the Special Rapporteurs’ original and follow-up communications at (http://www.falunhr.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=1693&Itemid=0)

The Special Rapporteurs’ original communication is documented in their respective 2007 annual reports, and their follow-up communications in their 2008 annual reports. The annual reports of UN Special Rapporteurs typically document their previous year’s activities, and these reports are usually presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council during its spring sessions.

It is important to note that, in their 2008 annual reports, Ms. Asma Jahangir and Mr. Manfred Nowak also reported their joint urgent action, together with the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, on behalf of Mr. Cao Dong, a witness to China’s organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners.

On May 21, 2006, in Beijing, Mr. Cao met with Edward McMillan-Scott, the Vice-President of the European Parliament, and gave him testimony on China’s organ harvesting. Following this meeting, the Chinese authorities arrested Mr. Cao. Reports indicate that Mr. Cao was sentenced to five years in prison for “accepting illegal interviews.”

- Original from eGov Monitor: United Nations Human Rights Special Rapporteurs Reiterate Findings on China’s Organ Harvesting from Falun Gong Practitioners

China Media’s Organ Donation Report Raises Concern

By Shi Yu, Epoch Times Staff, Apr 15, 2008-

An article published in the April 4th edition of Qi Lu Evening , a newspaper in Shandong Province in eastern China, has attracted people’s attention and recently circulated throughout the Internet.

It reported that a young man temporarily working in Jinan City decided to donate his corneas after a kidney failure diagnosis. However, several major hospitals throughout the area explained that they were “not qualified” to accept the donation. An official in the Ophthalmology Department of the Jinan Central Hospital even mentioned that none of the corneas used by his department came from donations.

This report revisits the concern over the source of organs used for transplants in mainland China. Since witnesses testified on March 9, 2006 that China harvests organs from live Falun Gong practitioners at a hospital in Sujiatun, Shenyang City in northwestern China, Beijing has been confronted with increasing concern over the source of the country’s organ supply. Chinese authorities continue to proclaim that organs come mainly from donations, however the Qi Lu Evening report has further stoked public doubt.

(Photo at right: The Qi Lu Evening Newspaper reported on April 4, 2008 that many hospitals in Shandong Province are not qualified to accept donated organs./The Epoch Times)

Dr. Wang Wenyi, a practicing physician at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City has long dedicated herself to the investigation of the Chinese regime’s harvesting organs from living Falun Gong practitioners. She pointed out that to cover up the organ-harvesting atrocity the Chinese regime has repeatedly lied to the world. When questioned on the source of the organ supply in China, the regime initially claimed that they were donated, but later they admitted that the organs were harvested from death row criminals. However, the large number of organs being used for transplants in recent years, added by the short waiting period for matching organs, indicates the existence of a living organ bank consisting mostly of imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners.

The Qi Lu report described the case of Wei Linying, a 29-year-old man temporarily working in Jinan. Diagnosed with serious kidney failure in February, Wei decided to donate his corneas after his death. To help him find a place for donation, his family members came to Jinan and asked the Qi Lu reporter for assistance.

On the afternoon of April 4, the reporter called the Jinan municipal branch office and provincial and municipal branch offices of the Red Cross Society of China, the Shandong Ophthalmology Hospital and the Jinan Central Hospital. All of these medical institutions replied that they were not qualified to accept organ donations.

China expert Zhang Jielian says that the situation in Shandong province is the same across China. Because of their past traditions, Chinese people are not in the habit of donating their organs; as a result, there is no organ donor program in the country. Therefore, donation is not a likely major source for China’s organ supply.

On November 7, 2005, at WHO (World Health Organization) meeting in Manila, China’s Deputy Minister of Health, Huang Jiefu, admitted that the Chinese communist regime had been harvesting organs from executed criminals. This was the first official confession the regime made of this practice.

On March 9, 2006, the organ harvesting from live Falun Gong practitioners at the Sujiatun labor camp in Shenyang City was exposed. Confronted with shock and condemnation from the international community, the regime kept silent for 20 days before the regime’s foreign affair spokesman Qin Gang finally denied the allegation, arguing that all organ transplants were legal and had been agreed upon by the donors. Qin proclaimed that most of the organs were donated by patients’ relatives or victims of traffic accidents.

In November 2006, Huang Jiefu repeated in a meeting in Guangzhou that most of the transplanted organs in China were from criminals of death penalty.

In a BBC interview on Nov. 1, 2007, the Chinese regime’s Health Ministry spokesman Mao Qunan restated that “most of the transplanted organs were from criminals of death penalty.”

Dr. Wang Wenyi, who protested at the White House against Chinese leader Hu Jintao during his state visit on April 20, 2006, said the quantity of organs available from the executed criminals is far lower than the actual number of transplant operations, and it cannot explain why the organ donors can be identified within such a short time, either. She says that the regime’s explanation of harvesting organs from executed criminals is simply to divert public attention away from the organ harvesting of live Falun Gong practitioners.

Dr. Wang said once foreign patients receive notification from hospitals in China and make their payment, the transplant operation can proceed in as little as three days. In most cases, patients receive their organs within a week. Therefore, a “criminal”—with matching blood and tissue types—would have to be executed just a few days before, and be willing to donate his or her organs.

Dr. Wang believes that there is only one possibility to explain this coincidence— there exists an organ bank in China where live donors, whose blood and tissue types have been pre-recorded, can be retrieved whenever a paying customer needs one.

Referring to the Chinese regime’s official data, which mentions that 90,000 organ transplants were conducted before 2005, Wang estimates that 41,500 transplants should have taken place between 2000 and 2005. However, this number far exceeds the criminals executed in China over that time period. Without any other reasonable explanation, the only possible source of organs would be the large population of Falun Gong practitioners whose whereabouts are unknown after being arrested during the past eight years.

An independent Canadian delegate investigation published two reports in 2006, providing substantial evidence to illustrate that such “an evil that has never occurred on earth” has been truly ongoing.

In a report issued by the “World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong” (WOIPFG) in late 2007, the organization has interviewed several Chinese officials, including the coordinator of the kidney source in the Beijing 307 People’s Liberation Army Hospital, the chief and clerk associated with the No. 1 Criminal Court in the Jinzhou Intermediate People’s Court, and the surgeon in charge of kidney transplants at the Guangxi People’s Hospital. The interviewees’ testimony all indicates that a widespread program for organ harvesting from live Falun Gong practitioners is still ongoing in China.

- Original report from The Epochtimes: Chinese Hospitals Do Not Accept Donated Organs

Canadian MP Introduces Bill to Punish Human Organ Harvesting

By Matthew Little, Epoch Times Winnipeg Staff, Feb 21, 2008-

Ontario MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj has introduced a ground-breaking piece of legislation aimed at deterring Canadians from undergoing organ transplants involving organs that were purchased or stolen.

In its first reading, Bill C-500 would make it illegal for Canadians to get an organ transplant abroad if the organ was purchased or taken from an unwilling victim.

“This is the first piece of legislation that specifically addresses the horror of illegal harvesting and trafficking of organs and body parts,” Wrzesnewskyj said in an interview with Epoch Times media partner, NTDTV.

(Canadian MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj / The Epoch Times)

He said that the lack of legislation and increasing reports around the world of organ trafficking or harvesting (killing people for their organs) pushed him to draft the bill.

Years ago Wrzesnewskyj was shocked to hear of an orphanage in the Ukraine that was sacrificing children so their organs could be sold. Later, reports of poor Indian farmers and workers selling their organs for the price of a taxi cab pushed him further.

Reports in 2004 revealed that in some villages in Pakistan, as many as half the people have sold a kidney in the hope of escaping poverty. Some are left permanently disabled by health complications.

Wrzesnewskyj said the final push to act came in the form of a report titled “Bloody Harvest” by two Canadian authors, former Canadian MP and Secretary of State David Kilgour and highly regarded human rights lawyer David Matas.

The 2007 report detailed an array of evidence that strongly suggests the Chinese communist regime is killing thousands of Falun Gong practitioners held in detention and selling their organs in lucrative transplant deals. The report found that Canadians are among the developed world “customers” who travel to China for transplants.

“There was a realization that we have to do something,” said Wrzesnewskyj about the trade in human organs. “Canada has to be in the forefront. Canada has an incredible reputation in addressing this sort of question.”

The legislation itself was laborious to write. Wrzesnewskyj said he began working on it with legal staff and researchers in the House of Commons last summer. The bill went through 12 drafts before being introduced.

He is aware the government may fall before Bill C-500 becomes law but said if that happens it can be re-introduced. He also hopes it will inspire other countries to follow suit.

“It is accessible now to legislators of any country in the world if they are concerned about this issue … There might be some fine tuning involved [to use the legislation in other countries], but there is a template that can be applied in most of our western democracies,” he said.

Bill C-500 aims to treat organ theft or trafficking as a very serious crime, on a level with murder, said Wrzesnewskyj. Minimum sentences are five years and the maximum is life. The legislation would require each organ recipient to prove their organ was obtained ethically from a willing donor.

The bill would also ban people from other countries from entering Canada if it is known they participated in the illicit organ trade. That would include middlemen who purchase organs from impoverished farmers or doctors in Chinese military hospitals performing transplants with organs taken from murdered Falun Gong practitioners.

He pointed out that politicians of any stripe have reason to support the bill and that it is not a partisan issue.

“This is a question of humanity,” he said.

Wrzesnewskyj added that as an MP he is among the few people who can really affect the practice of organ trafficking and harvesting.

“I am compelled not just personally, but on behalf of the people that I represent, to do whatever I can and to stop this sort of horror from occurring.”

He encouraged people in support of Bill C-500 to tell their elected officials that they want it to pass quickly.

- Original report from The Epochtimes: One MP’s Crusade to Quell a Gruesome Trade

‘people are being killed for their organs’ while China ‘hosting an event to promote peace’

European politicians are expressing their concern about China’s appalling human-rights record ahead of the Beijing Olympics

From blog of Will Buckley, The Guardian, February 17, 2008-

On 1 January this year Torsten Trey, chief executive director of Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, sent a letter to, among others, Steven Spielberg and George W Bush. He wrote: ‘It is reasonable to say that in China organs are removed from executed prisoners as well as from living, non-consenting donors, in particular from practitioners of the peaceful meditation movement Falun Gong. As medical doctors, we are extremely concerned about these practices.’

On Tuesday, at a meeting in London, European Parliament vice-president Edward McMillan-Scott expanded on those concerns. ‘They are hosting a sporting event intended to promote peace and at the same time people are being killed for their organs,’ said Trey. ‘It is outrageous. Once you are a prisoner of conscience you are outlawed and lose any rights. You are just a body mass.’

Later that evening Spielberg resigned as artistic director for the Beijing Olympics. There was no connection between the two events – Spielberg, after all, cited China’s failure to put pressure on Sudan to ease the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, not transplant trading, as the reason for his decision – other than that the staging of the Olympics in Beijing means that China will be examined more closely and more critically than ever before.

There are plenty of areas of concern. Also speaking on Tuesday was Annie Yang. ‘On 1 March 2005, without any legal procedure, I was arrested at home and sentenced to two years in a Chinese labour camp,’ she said. This was for being a practitioner of Falun Gong, an organisation that is part Taoist, part Buddhist, and that flourished in the wake of communism before being banned as ‘an evil cult’ in 1999.

In an effort to make Yang renounce her beliefs, she was forced to survive on 500ml of water a day and half a slice of Chinese bread. She was also tortured. ‘They made you sit with your knees closed, your feet closed, your back very straight and your hands on your knees for 20 hours without closing your eyes. No one dared look at me. Only this one woman waved at me and she has now been tortured to death.’

Yang, an antiques dealer, recanted and four months later was asked by the authorities if she wanted to be a spy in London. She declined the offer.

Anne Holmes, from the Free Tibet campaign, said that ’silence is the cost of doing business in China’. Silence, in particular, about what is happening in Tibet. ‘There are some monks who must be protected and others who are invisible,’ she said, comparing the country to Burma. China’s influence is so great over Tibet and around the world, she says, that ‘Belgium no longer welcomes the Dalai Lama’.

China, in contrast, welcomes transplant tourists – it is alleged that 40,000 unexplained operations have been conducted in recent years. Also present on Tuesday was Professor Tom Treasure, a noted heart-transplant surgeon, who wrote an essay last year for the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine entitled ‘The Falun Gong, organ transplantation, the holocaust and ourselves’. In this he noted that waiting times for such operations in China were a mere one to two weeks and the cost under a tenth of what is charged in the United States. He also drew attention to the fact that, on being incarcerated, members of Falun Gong are blood-tested. This is unlikely to be for their own good, but is most helpful if you are looking for a blood-group match for organ donation.

As McMillan-Scott pointed out: ‘What makes it even more ghoulish is that the Falun Gong are regarded as good quarry because they neither smoke nor drink.’ Transplanting the organs of executed criminals is one thing, but using the organs of the living one hoped belonged in science fiction.

McMillan-Scott has long campaigned against human-rights abuses in China. He last visited the country in May 2006 and ‘all the reformists I had contact with have been arrested, and at least three of them tortured’. Last August he talked from the same meeting room in which we were sitting to eco-dissident Hu Jia in Beijing by live phone link. On 29 January Hu Jia was convicted of subversion.

‘There are 1.3 billion Chinese, most of whom are desperately unhappy living under a corrupt, arbitrary and paranoid regime which is dangerous to them,’ he says. ‘It is a terror state.’ Particularly if you are a practitioner of Falun Gong. ‘They have been subjected to systematic repression,’ says McMillan-Scott. ‘Falun Gong are to the Chinese what the Jews were to the Nazis. And that’s an understatement.’

Perhaps. One way in which they are being treated worse is that they are prohibited from competing in the Games. Hitler, in contrast, allowed one half-Jewish fencer to represent Germany and excluded the rest. Helene Mayer won silver in the individual foil.

Comparisons with Berlin have seen Beijing labelled the Genocide Games. This term is somewhat melodramatic, although it does remind one of Chairman Mao’s massacre of 70 million of his citizens during the Cultural Revolution. It is a reminder that worse things happen behind closed doors than partially open ones and, grim and nasty as life is in China, it may be less grim and nasty than it was. In part, this is because of the Olympic Games. Playing host means you are open to scrutiny and Tibet, Darfur and transplant tourism are subjects up for discussion.

Limited aims may be achievable and last year the number of transplants decreased considerably following the passage of the Human Organ Transportation Act.

There is, however, only limited leverage that can be exerted because the total boycott the admirable McMillan-Scott demands is just not going to happen. This is because the Olympic Games, like US vice-president Dick Cheney, are more about commerce than politics. The defining modern Games, after all, came in 1996 when they shared a home with Coca-Cola. Once the sponsors take over, they become indelibly corporate. Spielberg and a few others excepted, the capitalist West will flock to Beijing to do what it always does – shift product.

- Original from Will Buckley’s blog at The Guardian

Rabbi: Jews Must Lead Condemnation of China Over Organ Harvesting

by Hillel Fendel, Israel National News, 29 Jan 2008-

(IsraelNN.com) Rabbi David Druckman, the Chief Rabbi of the northern city of Kiryat Motzkin and an outspoken opponent of Land of Israel withdrawals, says Jews must take the lead in condemning China for its murder of prisoners of conscience in order to harvest their organs.

“The atrocity is so great,” Rabbi Druckman says on a recently released video, “that there are simply no words to express it. From a certain standpoint it is even worse than what the Nazis did… to cut organs from people under the cover of medical help for other people is simply astonishing and shocking from every human vantage point.”

“It is especially incumbent upon us as Jews to lead the campaign that expresses total disgust at this phenomenon,” Rabbi Druckman says. “Especially us, the Jewish Nation, that suffered the crimes of the Nazis, may their names be blotted out, and those of the Communists under Stalin – who can stand by and comprehend the world’s silence at all this?”

Israeli Petition Against Chinese Cruelty

Three months ago, over 220 Israeli rabbis, academics and politicians signed a petition calling for an end to the atrocities taking place in China. Among the signatories were 8 Knesset Members (Hendel and Levy from National Union, Melchior and Cabel from Labor, Kachlon of Likud, and Oron, Gal’on and Vilan of Meretz).

Over 40 rabbis signed, including Rabbis Chaim Druckman, Shlomo Aviner, Yuval Cherlow, Shmuel David of Afula, as well as Temple Mount loyalist rabbis, Moshe Feiglin and leaders of his Jewish Leadership group, and more.

Chinese Torture

China is accused of holding thousands of political prisoners without trial, beating and torturing people who protest being thrown out of their homes, employing slave labor for their mass manufacturing industries, and more. Among the most persecuted groups are the Falun Gong, which numbers at least 70 million members in China alone. Tens of thousands of practitioners of the Falun Gong system of meditation and character-building are ruthlessly persecuted by the government, including having organs removed from their bodies while still alive.

The CIPFG – Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong in China – has begun a campaign against holding the 2008 Olympics in China. “It will be a stain on the history of the Olympic Games and a disgrace to mankind if these games and these crimes against humanity are held at the same time in China,” the organization states.

In the video-taped speech, Rabbi Druckman says that one of the seven Noachide commandments that the Jews are bidden to disseminate in the world is not to murder: “We as Jews must therefore stand at the front lines of this war, and employ every possible tactic in order that the world expunge atrocities such as this.”

“When there is evil in the world,” he continues, “every person with a human conscience, and every person with intelligence, must protest against it… Jewish Law requires of us to spread values of faith in the Creator and of maintaining the human image throughout the world. The same Torah that tells us to keep the Sabbath and to eat only Kosher food, also requires that we influence all of mankind – as is written, ‘From Zion shall go forth Torah and the word of G-d from Jerusalem.’”

“We have to get our outraged objections, as people and as Jews, out to the world in every way possible… In this age of media, there are many methods, such as the torch passing through the countries of the world and will soon get to our region as well, ending with a giant rally here in Israel [on Feb. 18 - ed.]. It is obvious that we all support this initiative and welcome it. We must also do whatever will result in a sharp condemnation of these animals that are doing these things in China. This will help raise the standard of the entire human race in the world, and the more the world improves and becomes more gentle, this will bring us closer to the Redemption and the arrival of the Just Redeemer.”

Religious – Not Just in Dress, but in Thought

“I believe that behind the description we carry of ‘religious people’ there is also real content – not just outer covering, but a genuine way of looking at the world… Certainly this is so in the Jewish faith, whose teachings about ethics and kindness have no rivals… Certainly one who sees himself as a religious person, not just in title but in essence, must join up with activities of this type.”

- Original report from Israel National News

Covering up slaughter, with a little help from the CBC

By David Matas, National Post, Canada, via David Kilgour Website, November 23, 2007-

Turkey denies the Armenian genocide. Sudan pretends the ongoing genocide in Darfur is not happening. The Soviet Union maintained that there was no forced famine in Ukraine. Neo-Nazis claim the Holocaust never happened. The pattern is predictable. Genocide Watch has identified eight stages of genocide. The last is denial.

The massive crimes that China has inflicted on the Falun Gong spiritual group follow this pattern. David Kilgour and I have written a report titled Bloody Harvest in which we showed that China has been killing the Falun Gong by the tens of thousands since 2000 for their organs. The organs are sold for huge sums, mostly to foreign tourists, for transplants. Beijing denies it all.

Bloody Harvest has been supported by two independent researchers — Kirk Allison at the University of Minnesota and U.K. transplant surgeon Tom Treasure. All the evidence on which we relied is independently verifiable and available on our Web site, organharvestinvestigation.net.

Since the first version of our report came out in July, 2006, David Kilgour and I have been to over 40 countries publicizing its results. No one anywhere has refuted our report.

The Chinese government and its fellow travellers have responded with disinformation, denials and clumsy attempts at censorship. Beijing systematically tries to get our events cancelled. If that fails, it seeks to introduce its own propaganda into every forum to which we are invited.

When the CBC announced that it was broadcasting a TV documentary about China’s persecution of the Falun Gong that featured our report, it was predictable that the Chinese censorship machine would get into gear. What was not predictable was that the CBC would pay attention to it.

Beijing leaned on the CBC and the network pulled the originally scheduled Nov. 6 broadcast. It was replaced with an old documentary on Pakistan because, so the CBC spokesman said, recent turmoil in Pakistan made the rebroadcast timely.

But timeliness was not the concern. The CBC went back to the documentary’s producer, Peter Rowe, and asked for changes. The changes he made weren’t enough. So the CBC made more changes on its own.

The CBC version of the documentary was broadcast on Nov. 20. Since the original version is now available on YouTube, it is possible to compare the two.

The CBC’s deletions were telling. One expunged segment was the playing of tapes of telephone admissions from hospitals in China acknowledging that they were selling Falun Gong organs. (Chinese government denials remained in the CBC version.)

The additions were typical Chinese propaganda. The CBC on its own, for instance, added this screen to the documentary: “Amnesty International does not have conclusive evidence to back up the allegation the Falun Gong are killed for their organs.” (It should be obvious that Amnesty’s silence is not evidence of anything. The organization does not claim to be an encyclopedia of all human rights violations.)

The CBC claimed that the changes it made strengthened the documentary. But that is not what happened. Instead, the CBC has weakened itself.

-David Matas is a Winnipeg lawyer

- Report from  David-kilgour.com

CBC softpedals China’s ‘cult of evil’

By PETER WORTHINGTON, TORONTO SUN, Canada, Thu, November 22, 2007-

Insisting that pressure from China didn’t influence 11th-hour cutting, juggling and editing, the CBC documentary on the persecution of Falun Gong in China — Beyond the Red Wall — ran Tuesday night and was a searing indictment of Beijing’s paranoia.

Two weeks earlier, after Chinese officials complained about it, the CBC yanked the show hours before it was to be aired, even though it had okayed the documentary last March (when it was aired one day at 4 a.m.).

CBC spokesman Jeff Keay admitted the Chinese had complained, but said the film needed more work to be “journalistically rigorous and credible.” With something resembling disgust, producer/director of the documentary, Peter Rowe, washed his hands of the final editing, additions, subtractions and changes.

“I made the original changes they wanted, but when they wanted more and more on Friday and Saturday, and kept adding and subtracting, I finally said, ‘No more changes by me, you do it if you must.’ “

Understandably frustrated at the CBC’s frenetic fiddling with his documentary that has already been shown in New Zealand, Spain and Portugal without incident, Rowe recalled the CBC’s eight-hour, four-part series last year, China Rises.

“It cost 20 times what they paid me for Red Wall and it was like a travelogue,” he said. “No mention of Falun Gong or Tibet. Rather like doing a film in the past about South Africa without mentioning apartheid.”

While the CBC denied it was influenced by Chinese pressure, the Epoch Times phoned the CBC’s bureau in Beijing and was told by a nervous office manager (who identified himself as Zhu Tao) that Chinese authorities had pestered staff about the documentary. Rowe said he’d heard the same thing.

Rowe’s changes amounted to about five minutes of clarification, but he hadn’t a clue what the final version would be like.

As it turned out, the documentary that was aired will not please Beijing. Despite heavy editing, there’s no escaping the reality that China is persecuting, beating, torturing practitioners of Falun Gong, a non-political movement that advocates, meditation, exercise, tolerance, compassion and truthfulness as the essence of life.

Changes made by the CBC include soft pedalling allegations that Falun Gong practitioners are killed for their vital organs which are then sold to rich foreigners.

Former cabinet minister David Kilgour’s investigations into China’s “organ harvesting” were largely relegated to the cutting room floor as “unproven.” Inserted was an Amnesty International statement that it had no proof of organ transplants — but it and Human Rights Watch and the Swiss Red Cross were denied access to prisons or hospitals where transplants take place.

What survived was Kilgour’s statement that in recent years there have been 31,500 organ transplants in China, where the regime admits organs are taken from about 1,000 death-row criminals annually executed.

Excised were statistics that the wait for a lung transplant in China is 15 days, while in Canada, Britain and the U.S. it can take three to seven years.

Purged also is civil rights lawyer Clive Ansley’s view that awarding the 2008 Olympic Games to China “the biggest human rights abuser on the planet” is a propaganda victory mindful of Hitler getting the 1936 Olympics to advertise the superiority of the Nazis.

A lot of sub-titles were added, stating that film footage of incidents was provided by the Falun Gong, implying that these might not be “objective.” Cut down to snippets, were scenes of police beating Falun Gong supporters.

Missing were transcripts of Kilgour’s interviews with Falun Gong victims and a doctor who claimed to have performed 2,000 cornea transplants in two years from Falun Gong prisoners.

In fairness, CBC editing speeded up the documentary without damaging the basic message of China’s paranoid persecution of a benign and seemingly harmless spiritual movement it officially views as “a cult of evil.”

- Original report from TORONTO SUN

Taiwan Bans China Doctors Brokering Organ Transplants

By Mary Silver, Epoch Times Atlanta Staff, Nov 17, 2007-

Amidst increasing international outcry over evidence of China’s systematic and large-scale organ harvesting of unwilling Falun Gong practitioners and others, Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) recently announced that all doctors from China intending to broker organ transplants are banned from entering Taiwan.

The announcement came as part of a collaborative effort by the MAC, the Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of Justice to issue administrative regulations stopping transplant tourism to China and to conduct criminal investigations into illegal organ brokering between Taiwan and China.

“What kind of country does Taiwan intend to build?” said Democratic Party Legislator Tian Qiujin at an Oct. 29 press in Taiwan’s Legislature, according to Taiwan’s Liberty Times. “If we kept silent about the atrocity of killing or organ-harvesting that occurred in our neighborhood today, we children might eventually take it for granted and follow suit.”

Tien Chiu-chin held the press conference to address allegations that Taiwan doctors were involved in brokering unethical organ transplants for Taiwan citizens in mainland China.

Tien said healthy prisoners in China may be killed for their organs, not executed for their crimes, according to Taiwan’s Central News Agency. The cash value of the prisoners’ organs, which are sold to waiting transplant candidates, motivates their executions, said Tien. She decried “transplant tourism” to China and called for penalties against Taiwan doctors who facilitate it.

The Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Justice have proposed to increase punishments for Taiwan doctors who have brokered organ transplants in China.

Hsueh Jui-yuan, director of the Department of Health Bureau of Medical Affairs, said at the press conference that doctors who solicited patients to travel to China for organ transplants could face sanctions from reprimand to revoking their medical licenses.

“The Ministry of Justice says they are waiting for us to give more cases; they will conduct an investigation of all Chinese doctors visiting here,” said Theresa Chu, an international human rights attorney in Taiwan and the Asia director of the Human Rights Law Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to defending human rights.

International human rights attorney David Matas and David Kilgour, co-authors of a report titled “Bloody Harvest,” which investigates allegations of organ harvesting in China, held a public hearing in Taiwan’s Congress last October, Chu told The Epoch Times. “Since then Taiwan began to seriously pay attention to organ sources in China.”

An unnamed official of the MAC cautioned potential transplant recipients to work through legal channels. He said international media have reported that Falun Gong practitioners and prisoners in China have been killed for their organs. A recipient could be party to human rights violations.

Case in Point

One recent high-profile case involves Zhu Zhijun, chief of the transplant department of the Tianjin First Medical Centre in China. Zhu has visited Taiwan on several occasions—including March this year—to conduct evaluations on Taiwanese seeking organ transplants in China.

He and two Taiwan doctors are said to have examined liver transplant candidates in hotels in preparation for the patients going to Tianjin for transplants. Zhu’s hospital is said to be the largest liver transplant center in Asia, handling 600 to 700 transplants a year.

Any medical exchanges between China and Taiwan require the permission of the Ministry of Public Health. However, according to Xue Ruiyuan, head of the Ministry’s medical department, Zhu Zhijun had not received permission from the Ministry to conduct his organ brokering.

If the allegations that he facilitated the sale of organs are proven, Zhu can face a prison term of six months to five years if he returned to Taiwan, said the China Post.

Hsueh Jui-yuan said the Department of Health Bureau of Medical Affairs had asked the Taipei City government Department of Health to investigate Zhu’s visit and to find the names the two Taiwan doctors he worked with.

The Taiwan hospital which invited Zhu, the Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Kaohsiung, may face unspecified penalties based on a current statute governing relations between Taiwan and China.

Theresa Chu said other Asian countries will be closely watching what Taiwan is doing to prevent unethical transplant practices. “This matter is very important,” she said.

- Original report from the Epochtimes

Canada CBC TV Documentary Probes Persecution of Falun Gong in China

Beyond the Red Wall: The Persecution of Falun Gong will air on CBC Newsworld on Tuesday, November 6 at 10:00 pm ET/PT, and will repeat on Saturday, November 10 at 4 a.m. ET and 11 PM ET/PT. The film will also be aired in Quebec and Ireland this fall.

By Joan Delaney, Epoch Times Victoria Staff, Oct 29, 2007-

“Life there was like being in a den of monsters, but torture couldn’t change us.”

This is how Canadian artist and sculptor Kunlun Zhang describes his time in a Chinese labour camp in Beyond the Red Wall: The Persecution of Falun Gong, a one-hour documentary airing on CBC Newsworld Nov. 6.

(photo: Peter Rowe, producer and editor of  documentary Beyond the Red Wall, gathering footage at World Falun Dafa Day activities in Toronto, Canada, in May, 2005. /Jan Jekielek/The Epoch Times)

Red Wall recounts how Zhang, a Falun Gong practitioner, was arrested while on a return visit to China in 2002. He was sentenced without trial to three years in a labour camp, where he was severely beaten, repeatedly shocked with an electric baton, and brainwashed in an attempt to have him relinquish his faith.

Liberal Member of Parliament Irwin Cotler, who later became Minister of Justice, teamed up with human rights lawyers and Amnesty International to rescue Zhang, a Canadian citizen and a visiting professor who once taught at McGill University. Zhang’s case became a cause celebre, and before long he was safely back in Canada.

However, untold thousands of Falun Gong practitioners in China haven’t been so lucky. Routinely jailed without trial, they face the same sort of brutality inflicted on Zhang simply because they adhere to Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline and meditation practice.

Red Wall documents how Falun Gong became wildly popular in the early 1990s as part of the “qigong boom” that swept China in the spiritual vacuum left behind by the Cultural Revolution.

Chinese Sports Ministry estimates pegged the number of practitioners in the range of 50-70 million. Hundreds would gather in parks and squares across the country to do the Falun Gong exercises each morning on their way to work.

The “great law of the universe” as taught by Falun Gong founder, Li Honzghi, seemed to strike a deep chord in the collective Chinese heart. Truthfulness, Compassion, and Tolerance, the guiding principles of the practice, were catching on in China.

At that time, the Chinese regime sanctioned Falun Gong and many Communist Party officials practiced it. People found that even severe illnesses disappeared with constant practice. As the country’s public health system began to crumble in the 1990s, many people turned to Falun Gong and other forms of Qigong to deal with their health problems.

“[In qigong], many Chinese leaders believed sincerely that they had stumbled upon a new revolutionary Chinese science that was going to change the world,” says David Ownby in the documentary. Ownby is a professor of Chinese History at the University of Montreal.

But after about 10,000 practitioners quietly gathered outside the communist Party headquarters in Beijing on April 25, 1999 to protest harassment of the group, the Party was shaken to the core.

That such a large crowd could mobilize under the radar of China’s ubiquitous Public Security Bureau struck fear in the heart of then-Chinese leader Jiang Zemin, says Canadian reporter Ian Johnson of the Wall Street Journal, who appears in Red Wall.

“The Party was ticked off, and they followed through in banning Falun Gong with a vengeance that I had never seen against any group in the seven years that I had been in China.”

With a directive from Jiang Zemin that the group be “eradicated,” the official persecution of Falun Gong began on July 20, 1999.

What followed was a series of mass arrests and an intense propaganda campaign that vilified Falun Gong both in China and overseas. Soon, disturbing reports began to emerge, telling of the systematic persecution, torture, and execution of practitioners.

Toronto-based Peter Rowe, who wrote, produced and directed Red Wall, says he was prompted to investigate the story behind Falun Gong after seeing practitioners demonstrating against the persecution outside the Chinese consulate in Vancouver in 2003.

“It struck me as being an amazing story that people didn’t know about. It’s a mysteriously hidden story, and there are lots of people who don’t know what Falun Gong is let alone anything about the persecution.”

Rowe, who produces the “Angry Planet” series for OLN, says Red Wall was three years in the making. He commends the CBC for taking on such a controversial topic, especially in light of the fact that the network has broadcast rights to the 2008 Beijing Olympics in Canada.

“The fact that they’re willing to broadcast a film that has people in it advocating the boycotting of the Olympics which they themselves are the broadcaster of in Canada is remarkable,” says Rowe.

Rowe is referring to the section in Red Wall that documents the illicit, state-sanctioned harvesting of the bodily organs of Falun Gong practitioners to supply China’s booming transplant industry.

Some who are concerned about the organ harvesting have questioned whether Beijing should have the right to host the Games. In the documentary, Clive Ansley, a Canadian lawyer who practiced law in China, likens Beijing 2008 to the 1936 Olympics held in Nazi Germany, which served to glorify and legitimize Hitler’s regime.

Former Canadian cabinet minister David Kilgour co-authored “Bloody Harvest,” a report on the theft of Falun Gong practitioners’ organs. He speaks in Red Wall about his investigation and how organ brokers freely admitted in phone conversations that they had “Falun Gong suppliers” immediately available to provide organs.

Average wait times for a kidney transplant appear silently on the screen, the figures speaking for themselves: Canada, 2555 days; United Kingdom, 1095 days; United States, 1825 days; China, 15 days.

Red Wall tells how practitioners all over the world have become the voice for their counterparts in China, lobbying politicians and calling attention to the persecution, their sole aim being to somehow bring it to an end.

With its continuing protests and vigils outside Chinese consulates and embassies around the world and its many awareness-raising efforts, Falun Gong has almost become defined by its struggle to end the persecution.

Zheng Weidong, Minister Counsellor of the Chinese Embassy in Canada, denies in Red Wall that practitioners are tortured. He states emphatically that within China, Falun Gong has “crumbled.”

Such is the new party line. Inside China, state media have shifted from constantly vilifying Falun Gong to not mentioning it, as though the group no longer exists.

But behind this façade, reports show that Falun Gong continues on in China— as does the persecution, as severely as ever.

Two-thirds of reported torture cases in China are Falun Gong cases, according to Manfred Nowak, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture. Human rights groups have documented over 3,000 torture deaths of Falun Gong practitioners in China, and the most recent U.S. Department of State report on human rights highlighted the ongoing persecution.

Far from being eliminated, Falun Gong has even been quietly growing in rural areas and smaller cities, says Guo Guoting, an exiled Chinese lawyer who defended Falun Gong adherents in China before the authorities shut down his law practice. He fled to Canada in 2005.

“In my understanding, Falun Gong is not only a practice for physical health; actually it is a kind of belief, a faith, and nobody can destroy one’s belief,” says Guo. “This is why it’s impossible for the communist regime to destroy Falun Gong.”

Johnson, who won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of features he wrote about Falun Gong, says in Red Wall that the persecution “remains one of the scars on the body politic of China,” and the time has come for the regime to “come out and deal with this and say there was this terrible crackdown, this repression, and these people were systematically persecuted.

“In order for China to move forward, they have to have this kind of a reckoning.”

As Kilgour puts it, “the killing has to stop.”

Beyond the Red Wall will air on CBC Newsworld on Tuesday, November 6 at 10:00 pm ET/PT, and will repeat on Saturday, November 10 at 4 a.m. ET and 11 PM ET/PT. The film will also be aired in Quebec and Ireland this fall.

- Original report from the Epochtimess: CBC Documentary Probes Falun Gong Persecution in China

Joint Letter Responding to Chinese Medical Association Agreement on Organ Harvesting

by Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, David Matas and David Kilgour, and Human Rights Law Foundation, October 25, 2007-

An Open Letter Addressed to the World Medical Association

The recent agreement between the World Medical Association and the Chinese Medical Association (CMA) to end organ sourcing from prisoners in China except for prisoners donating organs to their immediate family members is welcome. We are pleased to see that the agreement covers all prisoners and not just prisoners sentenced to death. This broader terminology means that, in principle, the agreement encompasses also Falun Gong practitioners who are held in detention but sentenced to nothing. Yet it does not remove all our concerns.

A. The CMA is not a governmental entity. Its promise to avoid organ sourcing from prisoners indicates the good will of some Chinese medical doctors. However, it is not binding on the government. The CMA cannot make decisions for the government. The Government sets the rules for associations and not vice versa. The practice of sourcing organs from prisoners, whether prisoners sentenced to death or Falun Gong practitioners, was and is tolerated by the Chinese government. It is only the Chinese government that can stop this practice.

B. Even if it had been the Government of China, which had entered into the agreement instead of the CMA, it is questionable whether the agreement would be effective. The Chinese government has over time issued several laws and regulations prohibiting the selling of organs without the consent of the source. The very repetition of such laws is evidence that these laws are not effective.

The Chinese government has had a history of duplicity in this field. An example is the case of Dr. Wang Guoqi. On June 27, 2001, Dr. Wang Guoqi testified before the Subcommittee on International Operations, Organization, Democracy and Human Rights of the U.S. Congress, that organs for transplants are sourced from prisoners. The Chinese government called him a liar. This position was held until 2005, when for the first time Chinese officials admitted publicly that they indeed harvested organs from prisoners.

C. Liu Zhi, of the CMA’s international department, said that the agreement with the WMA has no legal effect. He expressed the hope that the agreement would influence China’s 500,000 doctors and government decisions. This statement, in our view, minimizes the effect the agreement might have.

At the very least, the CMA can insist that its own members comply with the terms of the agreement as a precondition for continued membership in their association. The fact that the CMA has not done this indicates a less than wholehearted support for the agreement.

D. The agreement does not address the issues of onus and standard of proof. In many cases in China, medical doctors are supplied an organ and told a source, but make no independent determination whether what they are told about the source is accurate or not.

In this regard, the Professional Code of Conduct of the Medical Council of Hong Kong is instructive. One principle is that, “if there is doubt” as to whether the consent is given freely or voluntarily by the organ donor, the profession should have nothing to do with the donation.

A second principle is that the onus is on the transplant professional to ascertain the status of the donor. The professional is not acting ethically as long as he or she makes no inquiries or only cursory ones. The transplant professional, after investigation, has to be satisfied beyond any doubt before participating in a transplant operation that consent was given freely or voluntarily by the donor.

The agreement with the CMA would not mean very much if CMA doctors could claim respect for the agreement simply by turning a blind eye to practices around them. The agreement needs to ensure that Chinese transplant professionals are respecting the substance of the agreement as well as its form.

E. There is no verification system in place to determine whether or not the agreement with the CMA is being kept. Such a verification system needs to be independent from the Government of China and the CMA itself. There has to be transparent documentation of the sources of organs used by CMA doctors in transplant operations. The CMA should make accessible to the World Medical Association and human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as well as human rights lawyer’s organizations, transplantation numbers which involve CMA members, donor names, and the names of the immediate family members who may receive transplants from prisoners.

Regrettably, right now in China there is no publicly available information on numbers of convicts sentenced to death and executed. This information should be publicly available. That would, one would think, be a simple task, now that the Supreme People’s Court in Beijing must approve all death sentences. The CMA should ask the Government of China to make this information available.

F. In China, transplant surgery has become essential for financing the medical profession and hospitals. A dramatic decrease in transplant surgeries would impose a substantial financial burden on the health care system. Without an increase in Government funds to the health care system, it is unlikely that hospitals will cease relying on transplant surgery for funding. While sourcing of organs and payment for organs are conceptually distinct, they are linked in fact. The need for funds pushes doctors and hospitals to increasing transplant numbers and using historically available sources—prisoners.

The CMA agreement does not bind doctors who are not members of the CMA. In particular, it does not bind military doctors who are not members of the CMA or military hospitals. Yet, organ recipients recount that military doctors and hospitals are heavily involved in organ transplant surgery.

H. The agreement with the CMA does not change the Chinese infrastructure for organ transplants. China still does not have a public organ donation program. There is still no law allowing for organ sourcing from the brain dead but cardiac alive. According to Deputy Health Minister Huang Jiefu, ~95% of all organs for transplants come from prisoners. The implementation of the agreement with the CMA, in the absence of an organ donation system and a brain dead law, would mean that organs for transplantation in China would be almost non-existent, an unlikely result.

I. The mere fact that the recipient is an immediate family member of the prisoner does not automatically mean that the prisoner has freely consented to the donation. Our concern about this exception is heightened by the fact that people in China can be sentenced to death for a wide variety of economic and political crimes. We are aware that this exception is found in the World Medical Association’s Policy on Human Organ Donation and Transplantation. However, it is not to be found in the ethical principles of the Transplantation Society. In our view, the prohibition without exception, which the Transplantation Society has adopted, is preferable to the prohibition with the immediate family member exception, which the World Medical Association has adopted. The case of China highlights why this exception is problematic.

We note the statement of the former chair of the WMA, Dr Yoram Blachar, who led the WMA delegation to China, that differences between the two sides remained. We urge the WMA to continue to press the CMA on this issue until this appalling practice in China of killing prisoners for their organs ends entirely.

Sincerely,

Torsten Trey, MD
Chief Executive Director, Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH)

David Matas and David Kilgour, JD
Co-authors of the report Bloody Harvest

Theresa Chu, Carlos Iglesias, Terri Marsh, JD
Executive Directors
Human Rights Law Foundation (HRLF)

- Original letter from David Kilgour’s website