Foreign medical and legal specialists yesterday discussed legislative developments in their home countries on regulating organ transplants abroad and urged the Taiwanese government to recognize the seriousness of the organ-harvesting crimes perpetrated in China and to legislate against organ transplants using illicit or unknown organ sources.
In a round-table discussion organized by the Foundation of Medical Professionals Alliance in Taiwan, doctors and human rights advocates invited by the Taiwan International Care Association for Organ Transplants called any organ transplant done at the expense of another person’s life and “organ harvesting” undertaken without the consent of the organ providers “a crime against humanity.”

In the context of the growing global demand for organ transplants in recent years, illegal trafficking and trade of human organs and transplant tourism have raised serious concerns and caused raging controversies.

Among these issues, unethical organ-harvesting practices in China are a major problem that requires wider awareness and attention, the experts said.

This is especially true for Taiwanese, the association said, adding that data from the Department of Health showed that more than 88 percent, or 1,754, of Taiwanese patients who underwent organ transplants went to China for their operations between 2000 and 2011.

Not only do organs that come from questionable origins expose patients in Chinese hospitals to medical and legal risks, they might also have come from prisoners of conscience and executed prisoners, putting the patients in an ethical bind, the care association said.

Killed for Organs: China’s Secret State Transplant Business, a documentary about organ harvesting practices in China, was presented at the beginning of the meeting.

Jianchao Xu (徐建超), director for medical affairs with Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, said there was “an exponential increase [in organ transplants] in China in the first four years of the 1999-2007 period, and after that the number plateaued.”

The Chinese government criminalized Falun Gong and has incarcerated its practitioners since 1999, he said.

David Kilgour, former Canadian secretary of state for the Asia-Pacific and co-author of Bloody Harvest: Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China, referred to a case of a male Taiwanese patient in the book, saying that the patient went through eight antibody cross-matching tests before he finally found a matching pair.

According to the book, the Taiwanese national was aware of the fact that the organ had been taken from an unwilling executed prisoner.

Participants in the discussion expressed the hope that revealing the atrocities perpetrated in China can raise awareness among Taiwanese and that legislation would be passed to prevent unethical organ transplants abroad in the near future.

- taipeitimes.com, Taiwan

More than 100 people signed the open letter urging Beijing to ratify an international human rights treaty.

The letter was posted on several prominent Chinese websites and blogs.
It comes just days before Chinese leaders gather for the annual parliamentary session in Beijing.

At the meeting, new Communist Party leader Xi Jinping will be installed as China’s president, taking over from Hu Jintao, completing the 10-yearly power transition.

‘Feasible goal’

“We solemnly and openly propose the following as citizens of China,” the letter begins, “that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) be ratified, in order to further promote and establish the principles of human rights and constitutionalism in China.”

The ICCPR is part of the International Bill of Human Rights created by the United Nations. It calls for basic civil and political rights of individuals, including freedom of religion, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.

Beijing signed the treaty in 1998 but the Chinese parliament has never ratified the document.

The open letter was signed by many prominent thinkers in China, including economist Mao Yushi, legal scholar He Weifang and Dai Qing, an outspoken political activist.

In December, many of the same people also signed a strongly worded open letter demanding political reform within China, including an independent judiciary and meaningful democratic change.

“If reforms to the system urgently needed by Chinese society keep being frustrated and stagnate without progress,” December’s letter warned, “then official corruption and dissatisfaction in society will boil up to a crisis point and China will once again miss the opportunity for peaceful reform, and slip into the turbulence and chaos of violent revolution.”

The language in the more recent letter was much more conciliatory, acknowledging the difficulties of enacting meaningful political change within China while also emphasising that signing the ICCPR would be a “feasible” goal for Chinese leaders.

In an interview with the BBC, investigative journalist Wang Keqin said he was confident China’s leaders would ratify the ICCPR during the upcoming parliamentary session, a goal he acknowledged was “very mild and conservative”.

“We don’t dare to dream that China will make a lot of progress in one giant leap,” Mr Wang said. “The country develops step by step and our efforts are also aimed at changing things step by step. This is the embarrassing situation we are in now.”

He did not want to identify the person who first wrote the letter and collected the signatures, blaming his reluctance on “China’s special situation”.

According to the China Media Project, a group based at Hong Kong University which monitors the Chinese media, this week’s letter was scheduled to be released on Thursday.

However the authorities reportedly heard about the letter early, leading its supporters to bring publication forward by two days. Mention of the letter has since disappeared from many internet sites within China.

- BBC.co.uk

Chen Zuqian, from the township of Banqiao in Zhejiang province, was one of a number of farmers and business people who publicly offered money to government officials to swim in  rivers to highlight the sorry state of China’s waterways.
Mr Chen had been campaigning to shut the paper mills he said were  poisoning his local rivers, after members of his family fell ill. When a local businessman, Jin Zengmin, posted pictures of a rubbish-filled river in Rui’an city on his microblog last week and offered officials 200,000 yuan (£24,000) to take a dip, Mr Chen followed his lead.

But soon after posting his own offer online, a group of men came to Mr Chen’s home, his daughter, Chen Xiufang, told The Independent.

“While Father was alone at home, at 6am on the 24th, around 40 men and women in plain clothes who were recruited by the government came to the house,” she alleged. “They came in and they started smashing everything.”

Ms Chen said her father suffered injuries to his head and feet and that he was now on a drip.

One-fifth of China’s rivers are so  polluted that the water is too poisonous for human contact, while 40 per cent of all waterways are seriously polluted, according to information released by state media.

Public anger about the country’s polluted rivers is rising, and government sensitivity is increasing as local media start to publicise the problem.

China’s economic boom has been fuelled by factory output. There are stories every year about rivers and lakes throughout the country becoming blocked with algae blooms caused by fertiliser run-off, chemical spills and untreated sewage discharges.

Last month, nine tonnes of the chemical aniline, which is used to make polyurethane and smells like rotten fish, leaked into a river in northern China, contaminating the water supply of a neighbouring province.

In the five years to 2010, China spent 700 billion yuan (£74bn) on water infrastructure, but much of its water remains undrinkable.

Increasingly, the desperate state of China’s rivers is not only an issue for environmental activists. All over the country, entrepreneurs are pushing for a better clean-up of the rivers. Mr Jin’s offer came after he accused a shoe factory of dumping waste water into the river.

- sourece: independent.co.uk

The panel’s findings are also of systemic importance because they highlighted recurrent shortcomings found in trade defence investigations carried out in China. The report sends a strong signal that, while WTO members have the right to use their trade defence instruments, this right cannot be abused and must be exercised in line with WTO rules.

Background

China imposed anti-dumping duties on imports of X-ray security scanners from the EU in January 2011. Ranging from 33.5% to 71.8%, they essentially closed the Chinese market to imports of European X-ray security scanners. The EU saw no justification for the measures, either on substantive or procedural grounds. The Chinese anti-dumping measures were imposed after the EU had decided to introduce definitive anti-dumping duties on a related product, cargo scanners from China in June 2010, making Beijing’s action look more like retaliation rather than an effort to address genuine concerns about “injurious dumping”.

In July 2011 the EU requested WTO consultations on the matter, but these failed to bring about an acceptable solution. Undeterred, the EU challenged, for the first time ever, a Chinese trade defence measure before a WTO panel. Today’s report vindicates the EU’s tough stance.

The panel report can be appealed against to the WTO Appellate Body within 60 days. If no appeal is filed within that deadline the report will be adopted and China will be bound to comply with the recommendation to bring its measure into line with WTO rules.

For further information

Memo/13/137

The EU’s WTO case against China’s anti-dumping duties on x-ray security inspection equipment from the EU

http://trade.ec.europa.eu/wtodispute/show.cfm?id=528&code=1

The WTO Panel Report

http://wto.org/english/news_e/news13_e/425r_e.htm

China’s anti-dumping measures on X-Ray Scanners from the EU

- Source: http://europa.eu

Chinese rights activist Hu Jia obtained footage. He published it on Boxun, an overseas news portal.
In the video, shot between April and June 2011, Xu is stripped naked and hung up, his nose and mouth are bleeding, and a judge is cursing him loudly. His ribs are broken and his teeth knocked out.

[Judge]:
“Are you going to write confession? No?”

[Xu Chongyang, Wuhan Businessman]:
“You want to fabricate evidence by forcing me. I won’t do it… what kind of judge are you?!”

“You know, when I wear this robe I am a judge. When I take it off I am a hooligan. You don’t want to cooperate… you want to see Hu Jintao? You want to go to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs? I will let you walk vertically, but will throw you out horizontally.”

This is just one of multiple instances when Xu says he was tortured. Beijing police and the Wuhan judge were involved. Sometimes dozens of people were present.

[Hu Jia, Beijing Activist]:
“They record this, sometimes for filing, sometimes for watching it themselves, just for fun! Kind of a joy from sadism. This is a common practice among CCP thugs. No matter what position they have—policemen, security guards, judges or staff for dismissing petitioners, they hide such videos very carefully, because once exposed, they become evidence of crimes they committed. To obtain such videos is very, very difficult.”

In April 2011, Xu was detained for exposing forced demolition in the Zhongnanhai area in Beijing. After being tortured and disappearing into secret detention, he was formally arrested.

Police accused him of masterminding the so-called “Chinese Jasmine Revolution” and being a “US spy.” That’s why he was tortured into giving a confession.

Xu says during his 18-month prison term, Beijing police used psychedelic drugs on him, causing his hair to fall out and skin ulcers to form. They locked his feet with chains and handcuffed his hands, continuing to torture him. He still cannot dress himself and has difficulty breathing.

Activist Hu Jia says he wanted to release the video to document the extent of torture and abuse that happens under China’s law enforcement authorities.

- Source: NTD News

On January 5, 2013, his jail service has expired, and he was released.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) alleged him behind the scene of being “Chinese Jasmine Revolution” provocateur and “US spy.” Beijing court sentenced him to 19 months in jail for fraud crime.
After Xu was released, he revealed that in jail he denied his charges, therefore, he was brutally tortured.

His clothes were taken off, he was hung up and beaten, his ribs broken and teeth knocked off.

Not long ago, Hu Jia, a Beijing activist, obtained a video tape showing how Xu was tortured. The video was publicized on the overseas Chinese website Boxun.

In the video, Xu is stripped naked and hung up, his nose and mouth are bleeding, and the judge is cursing him loudly.

Judge: “Are you going to write confession? No?”

Xu Chongyang: “You want to fabricate evidence by forcing me. I won’t do it… what kind of judge are you!” Judge: “You know, when I wear this robe I am a judge, When I take it off I am a hooligan. You don’t want to cooperate…you want to see Hu Jintao? You want to go to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs? I will let you walk vertically, but will throw you out horizontally.”

This is one of the tortures that Xu encountered during his detention in a Beijing secret place from April to June, 2011. Beijing policemen and the Wuhan judge were involved in his torture. Sometimes, tens of people were present.

Hu Jia: “They record this, sometimes for filing, sometimes for watching it themselves, just for fun! Kind of a joy from sadism. This is a common practice among CCP’ thugs. No matter what position they have – policemen, security guards, judges or staff for dismissing petitioners. They hide such videos very carefully, as once exposed, they become evidences of committed crimes. To obtain such videos is very, very difficult.”

Xu Chongyang was a businessman, owning huge assets which were confiscated by the local authorities. Since then, he started to fight for his rights. His wife and sons are US residents, living in the US.

In April 2011, Xu was arrested for suspected disclosure of force demolition evidences in the Zhongnanhai area. After being brutally tortured for several days, Xu was freed temporary. Later on, he went missing for nearly two months. He sent messages from the secret place he was illegally held, asking for help. Then he was rescued by activists, but was arrested again.

Then, Xu was formally arrested on some trumped-up charges by the authorities.

After Xu was released, he told the media details of the torture he had been subjected to.

Xu said, after he was sent to a jail, Beijing police began severe brutal tortures to force him to confess. Beijing police tried psychedelic drugs, like World War II fascist interrogation techniques used by the secret police. From these drugs his hair fell out, and he got skin ulcers. They locked his feet with chains and handcuffed his hands, continuing to torture him, including not allowed him to sleep. They insulted and beaten him.

Xu Chongyang said that his sciatic nerve was injured, and he had three ribs and the sternum broken. He still can’t wear clothes now, and has breathing difficulties.

Hu Jia: “In China, the government mainly uses the triads to apply various torture methods. This was exposed and the public was given credible evidences for that. Torture is commonly used by the Chinese regime, the CCP is a group where torture is a dominating method.”

The police attempted to frame Xu as a member of a political opposition. They said, Xu is a spy and a reporter of anti-revolutionary media. Thus, Xu’s confession was important to them.

Xu said, Fu Zhenghua, Beijing vice director of the Public Security Bureau, led the case. Bo Xilai had promoted Fu, and arranged for Fu to play a major role in Beijing.

Hu Jia: “However, I think that any public servant with a conscience should keep evidences; even if they had committed crimes, including those involved in brutal tortures and forced confessions. No matter what tortures are being used by police, National Security Bureau, Court, Discipline Inspection Commission or judges, one should have a record of it. These are evidences. After you provide these evidences for investigating the top person who gave the orders, you have a chance to reduce your responsibilities. It is like becoming a tainted witness.”

Hu Jia urges Xi Jinping that in order to improve China’s image, to please release all political prisoners.

Hu Jia: “For example, to release all political prisoners. This includes Falun Gong practitioners and petitioners. No matter if they are in labor camps or jails, they are labeled political prisoners, so release them first.”

Hu also said that now people demand to see officials’ properties publicized. And that Xi Jinping should lead the way, as he is the top leader, for whom the chance to be potentially corrupt is high.

- NTD News