Calls for action against live organ harvesting of Falun Gong

Thousands of Falun Gong practitioners are said to die each year in China. Evidence reportedly indicates these prisoners are also victims of having their organs harvested by force. Calls for action are being voiced from various corners of the world.

China Chemical Plant Exploded On the Same Day State-run Newspaper Claimed It’s Safe

BEIJING, China – An explosion Tuesday at a Chinese plant that produces the toxic chemical paraxylene has added fuel to a growing movement opposing such plants, on the same day that a state-run newspaper prominently urged the public to accept the industry as safe.

China’s Organ Trade – Heart per Order

By Martina Keller, Die ZEIT –

In China, body organs are taken from executed prisoners, and for a fee, are then implanted in patients from the West.

Excess heavy metals in 10% of China’s land

BEIJING — About 10 percent of China’s farmland contains excessive levels of heavy metals due to contaminated water and poisonous waste seeping into the soil, state media said Monday, citing a government survey.

Pollution from heavy metals such as lead, mercury and cancer-causing cadmium is often blamed for poisoning entire villages and crop-growing land in China as factory bosses flout environmental laws and farmers use toxic fertilisers.

The report in the Southern Metropolis Daily said the survey organised by the environmental protection ministry found about 10 percent of farmland had “striking problems of heavy metal levels exceeding (official) limits”.

“Heavy metal pollution incidents have occurred repeatedly in recent years,” Wan Bentai, chief engineer at the ministry, was quoted saying.

Greenpeace Finds Toxic Chemicals NPE in Top Clothing Brands in China, including Adidas and Li Ning

(Epochtimes)- Traces of toxic and hormone-disrupting chemicals have been found in clothes bearing 14 top manufacturing brands, Greenpeace said in its report released on Tuesday in the Philippines and China, where many of the clothes are made.

Nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPE) were found pervading clothing and fabric-based shoes sold internationally by brands such as Adidas, H&M, and Abercrombie & Fitch. NPE breaks down to form nonylphenol, which interrupts biological endocrine functions and harms the reproductive system.

“Scientific research has shown that NPE have direct correlation with premature puberty,” Zhang Kai, who was in charge of the investigation, told Chinese business daily Changjiang Daily. “Experiments have confirmed that these environmental hormones could induce male fish to transform into female fish.”

Tens of thousands protest against chemical plant in northern China

(Guardian)- Tens of thousands of protesters marched through the streets of Dalian on Sunday to demand the relocation of a chemical plant that has been constructed on the coast of the port city in northeast China.

The demonstration – one of the biggest in a series of recent NIMBY rallies against potential polluters in China – was sparked by the news last week that a protective dike around the Fujia factory in the Jinzhou industrial complex had been breached by rain and high waves ahead of the approach of Typhoon Muifa.

Organ harvesting Conference calling on Taiwanese to pay more attention to human rights issues in China

(Taipei Times)– Despite economic growth, the condition of human rights in China is still very bad — especially when it comes to the persecution of religious and minority groups by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) — participants at a conference on human rights in China said yesterday, calling on Taiwanese to pay more attention to human rights issues in China.

“Taiwanese are not paying enough attention to issues related to human rights and democracy in China, and I think the first thing we can do to help China democratize is show more concern,” said Maysing Yang (楊黃美幸), deputy executive director of Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, a sponsor of the conference organized by the Association for Free Communication.

Chinese Version of ‘Bloody Harvest’ Released in Taiwan

The two authors of the book Bloody Harvest, who were also 2010 Nobel Peace Prize nominees, attended the launch for the Chinese translation of Bloody Harvest, held at the Legislative Yuan (the national legislature) in Taiwan on June 28.

Each of the two authors, David Kilgour, who was the former Canadian Secretary of State (Asia-Pacific), and David Matas, the award-winning international human rights lawyer, spoke.

David Kilgour said that since 2006 he and David Matas had traveled to four continents and more than 40 countries, breaking through various obstacles to collect evidence, and arrived at the conclusion that large-scale live organ harvesting from Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) practitioners did happen and continues even today.

Beijing Rights Lawyer Suffers Memory Loss After Ten-Day Detention

A Beijing human rights attorney who had been missing for ten days, was released by authorities from a mental hospital in an extremely weak physical and mental state. He couldn’t walk, had pain all over, and couldn’t fully remember what had happened to him.

What Jin Guanghong, a Beijing rights lawyer, could recall after his ten-day ordeal, was that on April 8 or 9, while walking on the street, he was abducted and taken to a detention center, and later a mental hospital. He said he was beaten and vaguely remembers being tied to a bed and given injections and medicine. He then held a hunger strike but was fed through a tube in his nose, according to an April 22 report by China Rights Defense Alliance.

Fraud Fuels China’s Underground Organ Industry

To find clients, Cai Shaohua would hang out outside dialysis units at major hospitals in Beijing. A kidney broker in China’s Wild West organ transplant market, it was up to him to find the recipient, while another broker rustled up donors. If the donor passed the physical, Cai would then falsify documents for 400 yuan ($61).

Cai, now a disgraced organ broker who is telling it all, explained to Chinese Life Week magazine that recipients pay between 110,000 and 120,000 yuan ($16,858 to $18,390) for a kidney. He, the other broker, and the donor each get a third.

Propaganda and cover-up: Chinese State Media Says AIDS-Like Disease is in the Head

For the last week the Chinese media has been abuzz with talk of an unknown, highly contagious AIDS-like disease, termed “HIV-negative AIDS,” that has allegedly been spreading in China for several years and infecting thousands. Now official media have stepped in to put the matter to rest: there is no such disease, and people claiming to be sick from it need psychological help.

In a widely circulated statement, Chinese Health Ministry spokesperson Deng Haihua announced on April 4 that “HIV-negative AIDS” is just “AIDS-phobia.” On April 11 he elaborated, saying that “there is no so-called phrase ‘HIV-negative AIDS’, and there is no such ‘HIV-negative AIDS’ virus.”

China Hit By Pork Scandal – pigs in several farms test positive for a banned drug

Authorities in central China detained three officials and launched a probe into hundreds of pig farms on Friday after animals there tested positive for a banned chemical that can be dangerous to humans.

The latest food safety scandal in China emerged as the official Xinhua news agency said it had found that 52 out of about 1,500 pigs in nine farms in Henan province had tested positive for clenbuterol, a drug used by farmers to bulk up livestock.

The report prompted supermarkets to pull from the shelves Shineway brand meat products belonging to the country’s largest meat processor, Henan Shuanghui Investment and Development Co.

Source of Organs for Transplants a Mystery in China- No voluntary donations in Nanjing City for a year

Each year 1.5 million people in China need an organ transplant, but no one wants to donate. This was shown in a recent study reported by the Yangtse Evening Post. After one year, a pilot organ donation program in Nanjing City found zero volunteers.

The Feb. 24 piece in the Post said Nanjing was one of the ten cities chosen for the 2010 pilot because of its rapidly expanding population of 6.3 million. Not only were there no takers last year, but over the past 20 years there were only three voluntary donations, the article said.

Chinese family of patient who died wound six people in Shanghai hospital rampage

A family armed with knives rampaged through a Shanghai hospital , wounding six people and trying to throw a doctor out of a window after a relative died there.

Twenty relatives of the patient, identified as Liu Yonghua, stormed through the Xinhua hospital’s thoracic surgery department after Liu died yesterday, the Eastnet website and Dragon TV reported.

Family members tried to throw the department’s deputy director from an eighth floor window but other employees stopped them, Eastnet reported.

Organ Transplant Expert Refuses China’s Invitation

By Robin Kemker, Epoch Times Staff, Dec 30, 2010-

TORRANCE, Calif.— Dr. Eric J. Goldberg has been researching organ harvesting allegations since attending a conference on transplantation in Boston in 2006. He is the chief medical research director of a major international clinical research corporation.

Dr. Goldberg discussed and answered questions on Dec. 22 on the issues of organ harvesting and transplantation in China with Dr. Dana Churchill, the Southern California spokesperson for Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH). It is a non-profit founded by medical doctors to inform the medical community and the public with findings of unethical and illegal organ harvesting.  The non-profit was the organizer of the discussion and press-conference.

Doctor warns medical community about China’s organ harvesting

By Melissa Evans Staff Writer, Dec. 22, 2010 –

For Dr. Eric Jay Goldberg, an international organ transplant expert, the math doesn’t add up.

In the United States, those who need kidney transplants wait between three to five years for donor match to surface; for those who need a liver, the wait is about seven years.

But for paying customers, China will perform kidney transplants in a week, and can find a liver in about a month.

“You would have to have thousands and thousands of donors to satisfy that demand,” said Goldberg, who spoke Wednesday at a medical center in Torrance. “China can hardly account for that kind of supply.”

China’s AIDS epidemic caused by rural blood-selling, two of the country’s top leaders should be held to account, says retired senior health official

Radio Free Asia, Dec. 1, 2010 –

China’s AIDS epidemic has been largely fueled by rural blood-selling in poverty-stricken areas, and two of the country’s leaders should be held to account, according to a retired senior health official.

Chen Bingzhong, 78, a former head of the China Health Education Research Institute, published an open letter to President Hu Jintao online ahead of World AIDS Day calling for disciplinary action against propaganda czar Li Changchun and vice-premier Li Keqiang.

Tainted Milk Scandal Shows Danger of Seeking Justice in China

By Huang Tianchen, Epoch Times Staff, Nov. 22, 2010 –

According to a joke, a tourist accidentally fell into a construction pit. He became enraged and told the tourist guide, “In our country, a red flag would have been put up wherever it’s dangerous, but yours doesn’t.” The tourist guide smiled and replied, “When you entered customs, didn’t you see a giant red flag fluttering in the wind, clearly giving you a five-star index warning?”

Unfortunately, in China today this is more of a daily reality than a joke.

Bird Flu Case Pops Up in Hong Kong: First in Seven Years

By Jack Phillips, Epoch Times Staff, Nov 21, 2010 –

Bird flu has seemingly disappeared from the media spotlight over the past several years but a case was diagnosed in Hong Kong on Thursday, according to the Hong Kong Department of Heatlh.

A 59-year-old woman was diagnosed with influenza A (H5N1), developing a fever and a productive cough—the first diagnosis in seven years.

As a result, Hong Kong raised its alert level to “serious.”

China: Tainted Milk, Tainted Government

Wall Street Journal, N0v.11, 2010 –

When Chinese milk tainted with the industrial chemical melamine killed at least six infants and made 300,000 others sick in 2008, authorities moved to contain the damage, arresting dozens of dairy producers and local officials and executing two of them. But they also muzzled activists who publicized the problem and sought justice for the victims’ families.

On Wednesday, the most prominent of these troublemakers, Zhao Lianhai, was sentenced to 2½ years in prison for “inciting social disorder.” Mr. Zhao, whose son fell ill from drinking baby formula laced with melamine, created a web site to help other families with sick children share information about suing the government. Police harassed him for months and then took him into custody in November 2009, where for three months he was denied access to lawyers. Even when he was finally allowed counsel and a trial, Mr. Zhao and his legal team were not allowed to call witnesses in his defense.

China jails father of tainted milk victim for two and half years

By Jamil Anderlini in Beijing, The Financial Times, Nov. 10, 2010 –

A Chinese activist who organised a support group for parents of children affected by one of the country’s worst food safety scandals has been sentenced to 2½ years in prison on a charge often used to silence government critics.

A Beijing court on Wednesday handed down the unusually harsh sentence for “disturbing social order” on Zhao Lianhai, whose young son fell ill in 2008 after drinking baby formula tainted with melamine, an industrial chemical.

At least six children in China died after drinking melamine-tainted milk and more than 300,000 were left with kidney problems.

The scandal was initially ­covered up by the local authorities and, allegedly, also a central government ministry to ensure that it did not overshadow the Beijing Olympic Games, which opened at about the same time.

Plague came from China: scientists

AFP, Nov. 1, 2010 –

PARIS — The first outbreak of plague occurred in China more than 2,600 years ago before reaching Europe via Central Asia’s “Silk Road” trade route, according to a study of the disease’s DNA signature.

The findings flesh out long-held suspicions about the Chinese origins of the plague, which killed an estimated third of Europe’s population in the Middle Ages.

China reports first three cases of South Asian superbug

AFP, Oct 26, 2010 –

BEIJING — China said Tuesday it had detected the nation’s first three cases of a multi-drug resistant superbug that surfaced in South Asia and has triggered a global health alert, state media reported.

The nation’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention said that bacteria carrying the NDM-1 gene were found in samples taken from two babies born in March in the northern region of Ningxia, the official Xinhua news agency said.