Organ Harvesting Witness Faces Deportation to China

8 August, 2010 at 15:25 | Posted in China, human rights, persecution, slave labor camps | Leave a comment
Tags: CCP, China, Falun Gong, human rights, organ harvesting, persecution of dissidents

By Matthew Robertson
Epoch Times Staff

A former member of the Chinese security forces, with highly sensitive information on the state’s practice of harvesting organs from prisoners, is currently stuck in immigration limbo in Switzerland and faces deportation to China, where he may face execution.

While Swiss authorities seek to apply the European Union’s recondite and stiff laws on asylum seekers, advocates say the witness has valuable information and should be granted asylum and an audience with the United Nations.

From 1993-1998, Nijat Abudureyimu, himself a Uyghur, was stationed in the prison of Liuwandao in the Northwestern Chinese province of Xinjiang. His job was to lead prisoners from their cells to their execution.

But often they weren’t normal executions. Police would shoot the prisoner in the head in such a way as not to kill them, so that organs harvested from the body would be in the best condition.

Mr. Abudureyimu’s story of his time in Chinese labor camps has not yet been released in full. Over the last week, however, he has been granting interviews to European media in an effort to secure his stay in Switzerland, and allow him to testify to the U.N. on what he witnessed in China.

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Mr. Gutmann’s earlier “emotionally raw and extensive” interviews with Mr. Abuduremiyu will be released once an appropriate media partner is found.

“This is the tip of a very large iceberg. In my opinion Uyghurs were used as a testing ground for organ harvesting in the same way they were used as a testing ground for nuclear weapons in the 1960s. The flowering of the organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience did not occur in my opinion until the persecution of Falun Gong, in the years 2001 to the present. What this is suggesting is that in Xinjiang no controls were resident—the inhibitions were very low,” Mr. Gutmann said.

Testimony obtained from Uyghurs, including from Mr. Abuduremiyu, confirms earlier allegations from Falun Gong refugees of a massive prison camp in Xinjiang Province that holds hard-core criminals, and Uyghur and Falun Gong prisoners of conscience. “This could be the locus of major organ harvesting activity,” he said.

In Washington, the Uyghur Human Rights Project is also paying attention. “We kindly request the Swiss authorities to grant Nijat asylum as he will face severe persecution including execution if he is returned to China for any reason,” the group’s director, Alim Seytoff, wrote in an e-mail to The Epoch Times.

“We believe his statement that the Chinese authorities harvested organs from executed Uyghur prisoners is credible. … It is our hope that the international community, especially the U.N., could formally investigate China’s organ harvesting. … We hope Geneva will play a proactive role” he wrote.

Yves Brutsch, spokesman for asylum seekers at the Protestant Social Centre in Geneva, echoed many of the same sentiments. “He has important things to inform the international community; this is a special case.”

Read more: Organ Harvesting Witness Faces Deportation to China | Epoch Times

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