University of Sydney Criticized for Giving Degree to Huang Jiefu, Alleged Chinese Organ Harvester
5 May, 2013 at 07:10 | Posted in China, human rights, persecution, slave labor camps, Society | Leave a commentTags: CCP, China, human rights, Kilgour and Matas, labor camps, organ harvesting, persecution of dissidents, Society
By Matthew Robertson
Epoch Times
A prestigious Australian university has come under scrutiny recently for giving an honorary professorship to a former top Chinese health official who has been involved in unethical organ harvesting.
Researchers of organ harvesting in China spoke to the influential Australian news program the “7:30 Report” with information about Huang Jiefu’s involvement in organ harvesting in China; they called on the University of Sydney to rescind the honorary professorship they gave to Huang in 2008 and renewed in October 2011.
Researcher Maria Fiatarone Singh, a member of the faculty of health science at the University of Sydney, regards Huang as one of the former leaders of an unethical system of organ transplantation.
In the 1990s a very special form of lethal injection called slow lethal injection was perfected in China by Chinese officials. – Researcher Maria Fiatarone Singh
“In the 1990s a very special form of lethal injection called slow lethal injection was perfected in China by Chinese officials,” she said to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which produces the “7:30 Report.” This was meant to preserve the organs while the person is anaesthetised.
“They don’t die right away,” Singh said, giving the surgeon time to pull out organs before the lethal injection is finalized. “It’s done in a way that actually allows this very, very unsavoury mix of execution and medical care and treatment to be done by the same team of doctors,” Singh said. “It’s horrific, really.”
Huang was the vice minister of health from 2001 to 2013, and was the point person for international groups to hear the official word on the Chinese regime’s organ transplantation policies. He was also a member of the Party Leadership Group in the Ministry of Health, according to the Ministry’s website; and he is a reserve member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, ostensibly an advisory body for the Communist Party.
Huang also watched over a period of extensive harvesting of organs from prisoners of conscience, according to the research of David Matas, a Canadian lawyer who co-authored the seminal “Independent Investigation Into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China,” first published in 2006.
Practitioners of Falun Gong are suspected of being the preponderant source of illicit organs trafficked through the Chinese system from the early 2000s onwards; tens of thousands may have been killed in that fashion, researchers indicate.
Much of that activity was carried out by the medical-military complex, where military hospitals work with labor camps to source organs and carry out the transplants in secret. Such hospitals are not under the purview of the Ministry of Health—but as head of the transplantation system, Matas holds Huang accountable.
The University of Sydney defended itself with a note from Professor Bruce Robinson, Dean of the Medical School: “Huang Jiefu is recognised internationally for having made significant changes to the regulation of China’s organ transplantation processes in an effort to curb the practice of organ retrieval from executed prisoners.” Robinson listed some of the initiatives that were attributed to Huang, including “publicly stating that executed prisoners are not an appropriate source of organs for transplantation.”
But it’s likely that Huang has himself extracted the vital organs of executed prisoners, says Singh. Singh notes that even up until November of last year Huang was still carrying out liver transplants.
“That would be 100 organs a year,” Singh says. “Using his own figures, 90 to 95 percent of those would have come from executed prisoners.” Huang previously gave estimates that 90 or 95 percent of all organ transplants in China were from executed prisoners.
Before an operation in 2005, he also contacted the Third Military Medical University in Chongqing, which is affiliated with the Chinese military, as well as the Zhongshan School of Medicine located in Guangzhou, to obtain a blood-matched liver. Within about 24 hours, one arrived from Chongqing and he performed the transplant, according to a news report on a Chinese official website, recounting the incident in adulatory terms.
While David Matas, the lawyer and researcher, acknowledges that Huang played a public role in highlighting the need for the People’s Republic of China to reform its organ sourcing system, he said in a previous interview with The Epoch Times that it was far from enough.
“With Huang Jiefu, I mean, he says all the right things, but he’s a fellow traveller. This guy is sitting on top of a system of massive transplant abuse,” Matas said. “What I see is the system playing good cop/bad cop. Huang is the good cop. He has this notion of ‘Let’s change things gradually.’ He’s been saying this for many years now, and I don’t see a lot of changes. They do everything to hide the figures.”
Matas added: “I don’t buy the line that they’re doing what they can. They should stop it.”
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Chongqing Hospital Harvests Organs, Says Former Patient
14 March, 2013 at 09:29 | Posted in China, Falun Dafa/Falun Gong, human rights, persecution, Society | Leave a commentTags: CCP, China, Falun Gong, human rights, Kilgour and Matas, organ harvesting, persecution of dissidents, Society
A former patient of a hospital in China says she saw and heard things during a lengthy hospitalization that makes her believe the hospital was involved in murdering people to harvest their organs.
Ms. Li Jinzhen (not her actual name), a Chinese national, said she has known for some time about allegations that Falun Gong practitioners in China have become involuntary donors of organs for the transplantation trade over the last dozen years.
Li, who asked not to have her identity or location revealed, told The Epoch Times that she wanted to come forward about things she observed and heard during a three month stay at the First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University in the winter of 2006.
“One day I saw seven police cars entering the hospital premises from a side entrance. Getting out of the cars were 20 policemen in plain clothes,” she said, guarding seven handcuffed men and women, of around 30 to 40 years old. “All of them looked very healthy,” Li said.
The individuals were taken into an old two to three story building with a steel gate and two rows of plainclothes officers in front of it, Li recalled. “They were all forced into the building,” she said.
Her knowledge of the allegations of organ harvesting of Falun Gong prisoners, coupled with her observation of the demeanor of the prisoners, led Li to believe that they were Falun Gong practitioners being targeted for organ harvesting. She said their facial expressions appeared to be “peaceful and quiet,” which she associated with practitioners of Falun Gong.
This reporter spent four years in Chinese prisons as a prisoner of conscience and, based on that experience, the prisoner transport described by Li is unusual. Male and female inmates are typically not transported together—they are managed by different prison staffs. Also, sick prisoners are treated in an outpatient unit, not in an old, abandoned building.
A student assistant working in an office in the hospital complex told Li that he believed Falun Gong practitioners were being used for organ harvesting at the hospital and that those seven prisoners locked up in the abandoned building were Falun Gong practitioners meant to be used as live organ donors.
This student also told Li that a fellow student, whom he was close to, was always on operating room duty and had become a “butcher.”
“All he knew now was how to kill people with his scalpel, and he became insensitive,” the student told Li.
The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University is a state-run “Grade A tertiary” general hospital. It states on its web site: “Our hospital is the only local hospital in Chongqing that has the licenses to conduct both liver and kidney transplantation, resulting in advanced and superior technology of organ transplantation.
A member of the cleaning staff at the hospital told Li: “The doctors here aren’t performing operations, they are in fact killing people. The blood is splattered everywhere, all over the floor of the operation room.”
He said they are using hoses, and it still takes two hours to clean an operating room. “How can this be called a medical operation? It seems more like brutal murder to me,” the man told Li.
The man also told Li that operations are performed on the third and fourth floor in the building opposite the Inpatient Department building.
A former Uyghur surgeon in China, Enver Tohti, said in a telephone interview that the idea that there was a lot of blood in the operating room seemed normal. “With a prisoner, there’s no need, and no time for you to care how much blood will come out. What you do is just go straight to the organ and take it, that’s it.” Tohti, however, could not understand why it would take two hours to clean up.
After reviewing the entire witness statement, in its original Chinese, Tohti said that he was not surprised by the scenario depicted. “There are no surprises here,” he said. Tohti was a surgeon in Xinjiang and himself was called on to remove the organs from a recently-executed prisoner, right near the execution ground. “That is something that is haunting,” he said.
Dr. Zhang worked for a long time in the logistics staff of a hospital in mainland China. Now in Bangkok, he told The Epoch Times that it is not common for the operating room floor to be covered by that much blood during an organ transplant.
“Usually that does not happen,” he said. “When performing an operation, the doctors have a hemostatic plan, such as using hemostatic pliers and clips to stop the blood. If the floor is covered in blood, then it is a case of medical malpractice. It definitely does not happen often.”
Forbidden Elevator
Li also said that she repeatedly witnessed four to five men in the middle of the night pushing gurneys with corpses into a restricted elevator.
“Nobody was using that elevator during the day,” Li said. She said she had wondered if there was a secret passageway behind it.
The corpses on these midnight gurneys were tightly wrapped in multiple layers of green blankets, Li said. “Normal” corpses were never wrapped in such a way, and they were always transported on the regular elevator, she said.
“The bodies from the forbidden elevators were not meant to be seen, maybe those were the bodies of the victims of organ harvesting,” she added.
Eyewitness reports of forced organ harvesting in China are difficult to obtain, say Canadian lawyers David Kilgour and David Matas who are the authors of a 2006 independent report into the allegations of organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China.
“There are no surviving victims to tell what happened to them. Perpetrators are unlikely to confess to what would be, if they occurred, crimes against humanity,” the report says.
However, they say they have collected many points of circumstantial evidence, including very short waiting times and a surprising number of admissions through investigator phone calls, that paint a “damning” picture.
“Hospital web sites in China advertise short waiting times for organ transplants. … If we take these hospital’s self-promotions at face value, they tell us that there are a large number of people now alive who are available on demand as sources of organs,” the report says.
Based on their research, Kilgour and Matas estimate that from 2000 to 2005, 41,500 organs were harvested for which the most likely source was Falun Gong prisoners. Kilgour and Matas have each said on various occasions since their report was issued that the practice of organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners of conscience is continuing in China.
via Chongqing Hospital Harvests Organs, Says Former Patient | Regime | China | Epoch Times
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Book Details China’s Nightmarish World of Organ Harvesting
17 December, 2012 at 07:54 | Posted in China, Falun Dafa/Falun Gong, human rights, persecution | 1 CommentTags: books, CCP, China, human rights, Kilgour and Matas, organ harvesting, persecution of dissidents
JERUSALEM—On a recent trip to Jerusalem, lawyer and human rights activist David Matas was in town for merely 48 hours, but still made time for an interview after a long day of meetings. His deep well of energy seems to come in part from his enthusiastic commitment to fighting for human rights.
In 2009 Matas, a Canadian, co-authored Bloody Harvest: Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China with David Kilgour, a former Canadian secretary of state. The book was an updated and extended version of a 2006 report under the same title that horrified the world with its revelations of systematic murder for huge profits from organ transplant sales by China’s medical community. Among other revelations, it established the veracity of allegations that disappeared Falun Gong practitioners were being murdered for the price of their organs.
Each year in China 1,000 death row prisoners are killed for their organs … 500 come from Uyghurs, Tibetans, and Eastern Lightning House Christians, and 8,000 come from Falun Gong practitioners.
Illegal organ transplants from donors of unknown origin purchased for huge sums by foreign patients remains a major human rights crisis in China. Without a national system for voluntary organ donation, China mysteriously has a tremendous number of readily available organs for transplant available on demand. According to research done by the Falun Dafa Information Center (FDIC), of the tens of thousands of organ transplants performed in China annually, records of voluntary donations only number in the hundreds.
That means Matas’s work is far from done.
Having spent the last few years building interest in the subject through “Bloody Harvest” and connecting with professionals in the medical transplant community, Matas published this year a second book on the topic, State Organs: Transplant Abuse in China. He co-edited the book with Dr. Torsten Trey, the founding member and executive director of Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH). The book is a collection of 12 essays by authors from four continents.
Matas is also the author of other books on topics that include anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, as well as Nazi war criminals in Canada. But his two most recent books on illegal organ harvesting in China target a very specific—and urgent—problem.
“What I found was a real community of concern among the transplant profession,” Matas said of bringing together authors for the essays in his new book. He adds that part of that concern stems from the impact that China’s unethical transplant practices have on the worldwide transplant community’s reputation—sometimes impacting funding efforts.
Matas, who travels frequently for both his work as a lawyer and a human rights activist, says he constantly multi-tasks on different issues he is involved with. He sees publishing the new book on organ harvesting as “another way to get the message across.”
His sense of urgency around the issue is well-founded. According to estimates from research he and others have done, each year in China 1,000 death row prisoners are killed for their organs, 500 transplants come from living donor relatives, 500 come from Uyghurs, Tibetans, and Eastern Lightning House Christians, and 8,000 come from Falun Gong practitioners.
To this end, the book’s essays examine China’s systematic abuse of medicine for illegal organ transplants. It includes pieces by Arthur L. Caplan, head of the Division of Bioethics at the New York University Langone Medical Center; Jacob Lavee, director of the Heart Transplantation Unit at Sheba Medical Center in Israel; Gabriel Danovitch, Medical Director of the Kidney and Pancreas Transplant Program at UCLA’s School of Medicine; and more than a dozen others.
One key point Matas wants to make with the new book is that the desire to stop organ harvesting is much bigger than he and his past co-author. “Both David Kilgour and I are not young, (and) are both doing other things,” said Matas. “It [fighting against organ harvesting] cannot rest with us. The message of this book is that the constituency is bigger than us.”
One aim Matas has in continuing to raise the issue is that individual countries will enact legislation to make it either required for doctors to report a patient who got a transplant overseas or for governments to prosecute individuals who got such an operation illegally. So far, attempts at such legislation have been limited, but Israel is one of the few countries where restrictions do exist.
What I found was a real community of concern among the transplant profession.
—David Matas, editor ‘State Organs’
The Israeli Organ Transplant Law forbids transplant tourism (the practice of patients traveling overseas to get organs from foreign donors) from Israel. The law also promotes national self-sufficiency in organ donation. The enactment of the law was a direct result of “Bloody Harvest.”
Today, Matas sees the best place for pressure to come from is inside the transplant profession itself. That includes working on getting the World Medical Association to evict the Chinese Medical Association (CMA). But progress so far is slow, since the CMA consists of every type of medical professional in China, not just those involved in transplants.
“If the transplant professionals in China stopped doing [illegal organ harvesting], that would end it,” he said. “The [transplant] profession [inside and outside of China], through peer pressure, can stop it.”
In the meantime, Matas continues to focus on promoting his new book, which is close to selling out its first print run. He is also encouraging those who read it and others who hear about the issue of organ harvesting in China to “do what they can do.”
“Write a letter, talk to a neighbor, go to a rally,” he said of efforts that individuals can make. “What you’re dealing with is human rights—so you don’t know who it’s going to hit and when.”
As for putting others in the spotlight with his new publication, Matas believes by taking on more on more of a supporting role, it will actually benefit the issue.
“People will say, ‘I saw you on TV, but I can’t remember what you said,’” notes Matas of his work since his 2009 book and the many subsequent congressional hearings, public rallies, and events he took part in to speak on the issue. “Other people need to be involved.”
With additional reporting by Matthew Robertson
via Book Details China’s Nightmarish World of Organ Harvesting | International | World | Epoch Times
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Human Rights Day Commemorated With Screening of ‘Free China’
11 December, 2012 at 16:49 | Posted in China, Culture, Falun Dafa/Falun Gong, human rights, persecution, slave labor camps | Leave a commentTags: CCP, China, Culture, documentary, Falun Gong, film, human rights, labor camps, organ harvesting, persecution of dissidents
Award-winning documentary focus of gathering by human rights groups at National Press Club
WASHINGTON—While China has one fifth of the world’s population, the Chinese regime racks up far more than that proportion of the world’s human rights abuses. Responsible for Equality and Liberty (REAL) and several other human rights groups marked Human Rights Day with that unfortunate fact in mind by screening the award-winning documentary “Free China” and hosting a talk by one of the subjects of the film, in an event held on Dec. 10 at the National Press Club.
“You can’t be a human rights group if you’re ignoring 20 percent of the world,” said Jeffrey Imm, the founder of REAL and master of ceremonies for the event. “It’s in humanity’s interest,” to pay attention to human rights abuses in China, he said.
“Free China” tells the stories of two Falun Gong practitioners who each faced detention and torture for their beliefs and portrays the efforts of people around the world to stop the persecution by the Chinese regime of this traditional spiritual practice.
Dr. Charles Lee is one of the two individuals featured in the film and spoke at the event. Lee is of Chinese origin but held U.S. citizenship when he visited China in 2003. He was thrown into prison for three years.
Lee had returned to China to oppose the regime’s campaign against Falun Gong. He had plans to insert into television broadcasts documentary information about this persecution—information that is heavily censored in China.
Lee explained how this persecution came about. “We found a way of life which is much better than the doctrines given by the Communist Party,” he said, explaining the attraction of tens of millions of Chinese to Falun Gong during the 1990s. That led to paranoia from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Lee says, which was terrified of losing power.
Lee also spoke of the large number of human rights crimes committed by the CCP over its decades of rule, some of them particularly grotesque. These included descriptions of violent torture, public executions, mass starvation, cannibalism, and other atrocities.
This led Lee to a discussion of the most recent round of systematic and concentrated human rights abuses in communist China, carried out against Falun Gong practitioners since 1999. Lee focused in particular on the harvesting of organs from living Falun Gong adherents.
Organ harvesting targets Falun Gong practitioners detained in labor camps and prisons. They are blood-typed and then forced into having their organs pillaged when a matching donor requires an organ.
According to Corinna-Barbara Francis, a senior East Asian researcher at Amnesty International speaking at a recent European Parliament hearing, “Thousands and thousands of organ transplants occur in China… Belatedly, after a number of years of the issue having been exposed, [the regime] stated that the majority of the organs were harvested from executed prisoners.”
Francis said that much more horrifying and disturbing is the “allegation that these organs may be taken from live people. So in other words, individuals in China have their organs harvested and in the process of that they die… There are many groups that these organs may be taken from, the Falun Gong being one of the main groups. There are many things that provide supporting evidence that this may have occurred and may still be occurring.”
Lee not only spoke about the crimes of the Chinese regime, but also about how China could recover from those crimes.
He considers the Tuidang movement the foundation for China’s future. That movement calls for Chinese people to renounce their ties to the CCP and its affiliated organizations.
Lee said the Tuidang movement leads people to understand “the basic principles and moral structures of being a human being,” something that he believes that 60 years of communist rule has distorted.
Other speakers on the day included Niemat Ahmadi of Darfur Women Action Group, Carolyn Cook of United for Equality, a gender rights group, Nathalie Nguyen, with the International Committee To Support The Non-Violent Movement For Human Rights in Vietnam, and Ahmar Mustikhan, Senior Balochistan journalist. Balochistan is a region divided among Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan. The Pakistani part is that nation’s southwestern province and holds rich mineral deposits and a robust nationalist movement.
Mustikhan spoke about the persecution of Balochistani dissidents and the struggle of his people for independence. “China is deeply involved,” he said. “Some of those being tortured report the presence of Chinese intelligence personnel. I hope the U.S. will not be sleepy on this.”
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Body Exhibitions – Disgusting and Unethical
26 November, 2012 at 07:25 | Posted in China, Falun Dafa/Falun Gong, human rights, persecution, slave labor camps, Society | Leave a commentTags: CCP, China, Falun Gong, human rights, labor camps, organ harvesting, persecution of dissidents, Society
There is new evidence that Gu Kailai, the wife of disgraced former Chinese Communist Party CCP politician Bo Xilai, was involved in selling the organs of prisoners of conscience, including adherents of the persecuted Falun Gong meditation practice, according to a report from a human rights organization.
The World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, or WOIPFG, said in a recent report that Gu, who was convicted of killing British businessman Neil Heywood, was profiting from selling bodies to body plastination factories. Body plastination involves replacing body fluids with certain plastics in order to preserve them.
A source previously told The Epoch Times that Gu profited from the plastination of bodies while her husband Bo Xilai was mayor of Dalian. Bo was later made head of the Chongqing mega-city but was sacked earlier this year after his right-hand man Wang Lijun attempted to defect to a U.S. consulate, triggering factional strife in the regime.
Bo advanced through to nearly the top echelon of the Chinese regime by following the charge of former CCP leader Jiang Zemin to persecute Falun Gong adherents, as recalled by journalist Jiang Weiping.
“You must show your toughness in handling Falun Gong much like the toughness shown by Hu Jintao in handling the 1989 Tibetan riot; it will be your political capital,” Jiang Zemin told Bo years ago, according to Jiang Weiping, who was later arrested and sentenced to seven years imprisonment.
Bo was this year stripped of his position and Communist Party membership for corruption and nepotism.
Bo, Gu, and Wang were involved in the selling of bodies and harvesting of organs from Falun Gong practitioners, the WOIPFG report said.
“Falun Gong practitioners were victimized in several ways. One was having their organs forcibly removed, and being killed in the process,” Wang Zhiyuan of the WOIPFG said, according to the New York-based New Tang Dynasty Television.
“Secondly, Wang Lijun had a center to research legal injections where Falun Gong practitioners were experimented on and killed. Also, others were tortured to death, or killed directly so their bodies could be used for plastination.”
Wang cited several pieces of evidence, including taped phone calls that the group says incriminate Gu. An investigator posed as Liaoning Province Communist Party secretary Xia Dereng, calling Dalian police chief Sun Guangtian. Dalian is in Liaoning.
In the recorded phone call exchange, the two said:
Investigator: “A lot of things have happened. No matter what, do not reveal that Bo Xilai’s wife Gu Kailai, was selling bodies of Falun Gong practitioners, in case anyone asks.”
Sun Guangtian, Dalian police chief: “Who are you?”
Investigator: “My surname is Wong.”
Sun Guangtian: “Party Committee Secretary Xia’s secretary is surnamed Wong?”
Investigator: “Yes, I was transferred here recently.”
Sun Guangtian: “Oh.”
Investigator: “Are you able to do this?”
Sun Guangtian: “Oh, go on.”
Investigator: “If other departments ask about this, make sure you don’t reveal anything.”
Sun Guangtian: “Hmm, what else do you want to tell me?”
Investigator: “Also, Secretary Xia wants me to tell you to make sure those from the Dalian Public Security Bureau back then also keep things a secret.”
Sun Guangtian: “Please tell Secretary Xia to trust me; I will make sure this is carried out.”
WOIPFG believes the statements from Sun are a tacit admission to knowledge of the atrocities. Later, the WOIPFG contacted an official with the 610 Office, an organization that was created by Jiang Zemin to enforce the persecution of Falun Gong. The phone call exchange between an investigator and the 610 Office official, who was identified only by the surname of “Zhao,” reads:
Investigator: “Don’t you know you guys are a criminal group? Once the persecution ends, have you thought about what will happen to you? Look at Gu Kailai … on the surface.”
Zhao, the 610 Office official: “Gu Kailai was selling organs of Falun Gong”
Investigator: “What did you say?”
Zhao: “I said, Gu Kailai, she was selling organs of Falun Gong people.”
Zhao: “It wasn’t just Falun Gong either.”
The rights group also contacted Sui Hongjin, the assistant professor with the Dalian Medical University and who set up the Plastination Company of Dalian Medical University, was a former general manager of the Von Hagens Dalian Plastination firm, which specializes in body plastination. He was also part of another plastination company, the Dalian Hongfeng Biological Technology firm.
Sui told the WOIPFG investigator that many of the bodies his companies received are from the Dalian Municipal Public Security Bureau.
The recording reads as follows:
Investigator: “What was the main source of the bodies your company used?”
Sui Hongjin: “We received dozens [of bodies] from the Public Security organs … that was … from the Public Security Bureau.”
Investigator: “From the Public Security Bureau, how many bodies have you received?”
Sui: “I don’t remember. Probably dozens of them.”
Investigator: “What Public Security Bureau?”
Sui: “Dalian City. The Dalian City Public Security Bureau.”
Premier Exhibitions, which receives bodies from Sui’s Plastination Company of Dalian Medical University, issued a warning to visitors of its body exhibitions after the connection was discovered.
Sui Hongjin also did business with more than 100 world-renowned museums and from that, received more than 200 million yuan (US$32 million), reported the Bandao Daily in November 2010.
According to the WOIPFG, Sui Hongjin has exported at least 1,000 plastinized specimens made from Chinese bodies to the United States and Europe for exhibition.
Editor’s Note: When Chongqing’s former top cop, Wang Lijun, fled for his life to the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu on Feb. 6, he set in motion a political storm that has not subsided. The battle behind the scenes turns on what stance officials take toward the persecution of Falun Gong. The faction with bloody hands—the officials former CCP head Jiang Zemin promoted in order to carry out the persecution—is seeking to avoid accountability for their crimes and to continue the campaign. Other officials are refusing any longer to participate in the persecution. Events present a clear choice to the officials and citizens of China, as well as people around the world: either support or oppose the persecution of Falun Gong. History will record the choice each person makes.
via Evidence That Wife of Disgraced Official Traded in Bodies, Group Says | Regime | China | Epoch Times
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Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting – Please Sign the Petition
17 November, 2012 at 11:18 | Posted in China, Falun Dafa/Falun Gong, human rights, persecution, Society | Leave a commentTags: CCP, China, Falun Gong, human rights, Kilgour and Matas, labor camps, organ harvesting, persecution of dissidents, Society
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Please go to http://tinyurl.com/DAFOH-petition (DAFOH – Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting) to add your name to the list of people who want to stop forced organ harvesting in China.
Killed for Organs: China’s Secret State Transplant Business
It’s being called “abhorrent” and a “crime against humanity.” Allegations of forced organ harvesting in China started to surface in 2006. Since then, mounting evidence suggests these allegations are true—and even worse than originally suspected.
Prisoners of conscience—especially Falun Gong—are being killed for their organs.
Starting in 1999, the number of transplant centers in China increased by 300% in just 8 years, even though China has no effective national organ donation system. 1999 was the year the Chinese regime began persecuting adherents of the Falun Gong spiritual practice, sending hundreds of thousands to labor camps. Many of them were never seen again.
Transplant medicine was developed to save lives. But in China, innocent people are being killed for their organs—so they can be sold for profit.
Increasingly, doctors, congressmen, international politicians, human rights lawyers, journalists, and people around the world are raising awareness about forced organ harvesting.
Share this video with your friends, family, and everyone you know:
(English) http://e.ntd.tv/Killed-for-Organs
(Chinese) http://e.ntd.tv/QC20wKSign up for NTD’s newsletter to learn more: http://e.ntd.tv/OH-Newsletter-Signup
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KILLED FOR ORGANS:
CHINA’S SECRET STATE TRANSPLANT BUSINESSA New Tang Dynasty Television Production
Produced by Milene J. Fernandez
Engaging Beijing on Organ Pillaging
Fellow Canadian David Matas and I are here to urge your government, legislators, media and other citizens to join the international campaign to end the inhuman commerce in organs from a large community of peaceful Chinese citizens.
We’re both encouraged that The Traffickers, playing now in theatres across Korea, is bringing public attention to this new crime against humanity. The film was prompted by the tragedy of a Korean couple honeymooning in China. The bride disappeared: her body was later found with many organs missing. It is, however, government-sponsored organ trafficking across China that many of us have been attempting to stop for more than a decade.
The democratic world should be as actively engaged as feasible on human dignity issues during the leadership transition in Beijing. Democracy with Chinese features is probably closer than many now realize. The Chinese people should be encouraged to know that the values we seek to encourage in their new leaders are universal ones, including, the rule of law, dignity for all, and a peaceful world.
Read more: Engaging Beijing on Organ Pillaging | Thinking About China | Opinion | Epoch Times
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Organ Harvesting, Falun Gong, and the Future of China
17 November, 2012 at 07:16 | Posted in China, Falun Dafa/Falun Gong, human rights, persecution, slave labor camps, Society | Leave a commentTags: CCP, China, Falun Gong, human rights, Kilgour and Matas, labor camps, organ harvesting, persecution of dissidents, Society
What impact is the killing of Falun Gong practitioners for their organs having on Communist Chinese Party control of China? Are we seeing now, because of these killings, the end of communism in China?
Falun Gong is a blending of ancient Chinese spiritual and exercise traditions. It was brought out to the public in 1992 by Li Hongzhi and quickly spread throughout China with the encouragement of the government officials who considered the exercises as beneficial to health and to the finances of the health system. By 1999 Falun Gong practitioners were, according to a government survey more numerous than the membership of the Communist Party. At this point, out of fear of losing its ideological supremacy and jealousy of its popularity, former Party head Jiang Zemin declared Falun Gong banned.
Those who did the exercises after 1999 were arrested and asked to denounce the practice. Those who did not were tortured. Those who refused to recant after torture disappeared.
What happened to the disappeared? David Kilgour and I, in two reports dated July 2006 and January 2007 and a book dated November 2009 all under the title Bloody Harvest, concluded that many were killed for their organs used in transplants sold to patients, many of them foreign, for large sums. While it would take me too far afield to go through all the evidence which led us to that conclusion, I will mention a few bits.
Investigators made calls to hospitals throughout China, claiming to be relatives of patients needing transplants, asking if the hospitals had organs of Falun Gong for sale on the basis that, since Falun Gong through their exercises are healthy, the organs would be healthy. We obtained admissions throughout China on tape, and transcribed and translated them.
Falun Gong practitioners who were detained and after torture recanted and who then got out of detention and out of China told us that they were systematically blood tested and organ examined while in detention. Other detainees were not. The blood testing and organ examination could not have been for the health of the Falun Gong since they had been tortured; but it would have been necessary for organ transplants.
Waiting times for transplants of organs in China are days and weeks. Everywhere else in the world waiting times are months and years. A short waiting time for a deceased donor transplant means that someone is being killed for that transplant.
There is no other explanation for the transplant numbers than sourcing from Falun Gong. China is the second largest transplant country in the world by volume after the U.S. Yet, until 2010 China did not have a deceased donation system and even today that system produces donations which are statistically insignificant. The living donor sources are limited in law to relatives of donors and officially discouraged because live donors suffer health complications from giving up an organ.
The Ministry of Health of China accepts that organs for transplants are coming almost entirely from prisoners. The Ministry claims that the criminals sentenced to death not executed prisoners of conscience.
The number of prisoners sentenced to death and then executed that would be necessary to supply the volume of transplants in China is far greater than even the most exaggerated death penalty statistics and estimates. Moreover, in recent years, death penalty volumes have gone down, but transplant volumes, except for a short blip in 2007, remained constant.
Politics of Organ Transplant Abuse
The Ministry of Health acknowledges that sourcing of organs from prisoners is wrong and promises eventually to end the abuse—in five years but not immediately. The reason the Ministry gives for not ending the abuse immediately is politics.
I and others had pressed the World Medical Association to expel the Chinese Medical Association because of organ transplant abuse in China. Dr. Wonchat Subhachaturas, President of the World Medical Association, in a letter dated July 18, 2011, to Dr. Torsten Trey, Executive Director of Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, wrote: “[Deputy Health Minister] Professor Huang … said that he would not get the necessary political support to change the practice of harvesting organs from executed prisoners immediately.”
The use of the word “immediately” is a euphemism. Deputy Minister Huang had been advocating an end to the practice at least since August 2009. Why in the intervening years had the abuse not stopped?
To understand the politics of organ transplant, it is necessary to understand the politics of repression of Falun Gong
And what did politics have to do with it? Organ transplants are done by medical practitioners, not politicians. One could maybe understand Deputy Minister Huang’s pleading economics, that too much money was being made from transplant abuse to stop it. But instead, he pleaded politics.
To understand the politics of organ transplant, it is necessary to understand the politics of repression of Falun Gong. According to an April 9, 2012 Epoch Times article by Cheng Jing, the political dynamic preventing the end to organ transplant abuse was explained in a cryptic nutshell by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in March this year. According to a source, the Premier, at a closed Communist Party meeting in Zhongnanhai on March 14, 2012, stated: “Without anesthetic, the live harvesting of human organs and selling them for money—is this something that a human could do? Things like this have happened for many years. We are about to retire, but it is still not resolved. Now that the Wang Lijun incident is known by the entire world, use this to punish Bo Xilai. Resolving the Falun Gong issue should be a natural choice.”
The Party announced the next day that Bo lost his position as Communist Party General Secretary of Chongqing.
So, the Chinese Premier Wen urged using the Wang Lijun incident to punish Bo Xilai. Live harvesting of organs for money, he was asserting, is tied up with the Falun Gong issue. Resolve the Falun Gong issue, that is to say end the banning of Falun Gong, and the killing of people for their organs, according to Premier Wen, would end.
This statement of the Premier needs unpacking. What does organ transplant abuse have to do with the ban on Falun Gong? A lot, if you conclude, as David Kilgour and I have, that Falun Gong are being killed for their organs.
What is the Wang Lijun incident? On Feb. 6 this year, Wang Lijun, then deputy mayor and police chief in Chongqing, visited the American consulate in Chengdu for a full day. When he left, the Chinese security police arrested him. Wang went on trial for his attempted defection secretly on Sept. 17 and publicly on Sept. 18. He pleaded no contest.
What is the connection between organ transplant abuse and Bo Xilai? That takes a bit of explaining.
Although this is a simplification, the civilian power struggle in China revolves around three factions—the hardliners, the reformers, and the harmonizers. The leader of the hardliners used to be former President Jiang Zemin who led the banning of Falun Gong in 1999. His successor in the current Standing Committee is Zhou Yongkang, the Party head of Chinese security apparatus and also of the repression of Falun Gong. The man designated to replace Zhou Yongkang in the Standing Committee at the 18th National Congress was Bo Xilai.
The position of premier has sporadically been held by a line of reformers—Zhao Ziyang from 1980 to 1987, Zhu Rongji from 1998 to 2003, and Wen Jiabao from 2003 to the present. Before Jiang Zemin began his campaign to ban Falun Gong, Premier Zhu Rongji was encouraging the practice of Falun Gong as beneficial to health.
The harmonizers, exemplified by current Communist Party chief Hu Jintao and his designated successor Xi Jinping, are not trying to keep everybody happy, just the various factions within the Party. They attempt to avoid confrontations and paper over differences.
Bo Xilai was not just tough on Falun Gong. He and his assistant Wang Lijun were central to the killing of Falun Gong for their organs.
The investigation David Kilgour and I did was triggered by a statement by a woman using the pseudonym Annie. She told The Epoch Times in Washington D.C. in a story published in its March 17, 2006 edition that her ex-husband harvested corneas of Falun Gong practitioners in Sujiatun hospital between 2003 and 2005. Annie said other doctors at the same hospital harvested other organs of these victims, that Falun Gong were killed during the harvesting and that their bodies were cremated.
The details of the story Annie told about the work of her husband were not that different from the details of the story Doctor Wang, another speaker here, who told this Congress about his own work, a story which, as you can see, was initially vehemently denied by the Government of China and then years later admitted. The only substantial difference in the two stories, Annie’s and Doctor Wang’s, was a difference in the type of prisoner from whom organs were extracted.
Sujiatun, where Annie’s husband worked, is a district in the city Shenyang. Shenyang is a city in the province Liaoning. Bo Xilai was appointed Mayor of Dalian City in Liaoning Province from 1993 to 2001. He was appointed Deputy Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party for Liaoning Province in 2000. From February 2001 to February 2004 he was Governor of Liaoning Province.
While he was in Liaoning, Bo developed a reputation as a brutal leader of the persecution of Falun Gong. The period that Annie’s husband worked in Sujiatun hospital and the period that Bo Xilai was Governor of the province in which the hospital was located overlapped, for the years 2003 and 2004.
From 2003 to 2008, Wang Lijun was the head of the Jinzhou City Public Security Bureau Onsite Psychological Research Centre (OSPRC), Liaoning Province. He conducted research on a lingering injection execution method which would allow organ removal for transplants before the person died from the injection. He conducted further research to prevent patients who received organs of injected prisoners from suffering adverse effects from the injection drugs.
One of the calls the investigative callers made which we used for the reports and book David Kilgour and I authored was placed to the First Criminal Bureau of the Jinzhou Intermediate People’s Court. The call, dated May 23, 2006, had this exchange:
Investigator: Starting from 2001, we always [got] kidneys from young and healthy people who practice Falun Gong from detention centres and courts … I wonder if you still have such organs in your court right now?
Official: That depends on your qualifications … If you have good qualifications, we may still provide some … .
Investigator: Are we supposed to get them, or will you prepare for them?
Official: According to past experience, it is you that will come here to get them.
In September 2006, Wang Lijun received the Guanghua Science and Technology Foundation Innovation Special Contribution Award for his research and testing of this lethal injection method. In his acceptance speech, he talked about “thousands” of on site organ transplant cases from injected prisoners in which he and his staff participated. He said “to see someone being killed and to see this person’s organs being translated to several other person’s bodies is profoundly stirring,” a remark that would have been worthy of Josef Mengele.
Wang Lijun worked directly under Bo Xilai in Liaoning Province in 2003 and 2004. Bo in February 2004 went to Beijing where he became Minister of Commerce. While Minister of Commerce, Bo traveled around the world to promote international trade with China and investment into China. His traveling gave victims the opportunity to serve him with lawsuits for his role in the persecution of Falun Gong in Liaoning Province. Lawsuits commenced against him in thirteen different countries, including one in Canada in which I am acting as counsel.
The American Consulate in Shanghai wrote in December 2007 to the State Department in Washington: “Gu [Nanjing's Professor Gu] noted that Bo had been angling for promotion to Vice Premier. However, Premier Wen had argued against the promotion, citing the numerous lawsuits brought against Bo in Australia, Spain, Canada, England, the United States, and elsewhere by Falun Gong members. Wen successfully argued Bo’s significant negative international exposure made him an inappropriate candidate to represent China at an even higher international level.”
Bo became a member of the Politburo and went from Minister of Commerce in Beijing to Communist Party head of Chongqing in November 2007.
In 2008, shortly after Bo was moved from Beijing to Chongqing, Bo brought Wang Lijun from Liaoning Province. Wang held various positions in public security in Chongqing and in 2011 became deputy mayor of the city under Bo. Wang attempted his defection from that position in February this year.
Superficially, the attempted defection of Wang Lijun related only to the murder of British national Neil Heywood by Gu Kailai, the wife of Bo Xilai. However, as the remarks of Premier Wen Jiabao at the March Communist Party meeting indicated, there was more going on than that.
What happens in China behind closed doors at Communist Party meetings is, by its very nature, not a matter of verifiable public record. What could be seen though by anyone at this time was the lifting of censorship on the killing of Falun Gong for their organs.
In late March 2012, search results about organ transplants on the officially sanctioned Chinese search engine Baidu showed information about the work David Kilgour and I did, Bloody Harvest and the involvement of Wang Lijun in organ harvesting. There appeared to be an active attempt to discredit the Bo faction through disclosure of organ transplant abuse in which Bo was complicit.
The banning of Falun Gong and their killing for their organs are issues too big for the Party to handle easily.
The focus on the murder of Neil Heywood looks to be the work of President Hu Jintao and Vice President Xi Jinping to minimize the scope of the dispute between the factions. The banning of Falun Gong and their killing for their organs are issues too big for the Party to handle easily.
President Hu and his successor Xi then, in the grab for places in the new Communist Party Standing Committee, were prepared to sacrifice Bo, but wanted to take Falun Gong and organ transplant abuse off the table. I suggest that those of us who are interested in ending organ transplant abuse in China should make every effort to prevent that from happening.
There may be a tendency to watch from the sidelines and speculate on what the future holds. We must not forget that, when it comes to human affairs, we hold the future in our hands. We do not need to sit idly by and predict the future. We can make the future. We should be making effort to fashion the future in a way that respects human rights.
The struggle to shape the new Standing Committee of the Communist Party shows that the Party is far from monolithic. Bo Xilai was moved from the Ministry of Commerce in Beijing to the City of Chongqing because of the lawsuits against him abroad. Foreign resistance to Chinese Communist Party oppression, when it is knowledgeable and directed, has an impact.
Killing innocents for their organs is a tragedy and a disgrace, a delegitimization of the whole Communist Chinese regime. Wen Jiabao used the killing of Falun Gong for their organs to discredit Bo Xilai. In reality, it discredits the whole Communist Party control over China.
Repressive regimes look stable because they are not threatened by elections. However, their repression is brittle. Each human rights tap on the hard shell of a repressive regime may seem to have little impact. The accumulation of these taps over time though leads to the shattering of the shell unpredictably, at any time, all at once.
That is the experience through which we lived with the apartheid regime in South Africa, communist tyranny over the Soviet Union, Soviet control of Eastern and Central Europe, and the national security states of Latin America. Yesterday they were there and looked impervious to change. Now they are gone.
Communist China awaits a similar fate. We can not be sure when it will happen. But we can help to make it happen, accelerate its happening. We should not stand idly by in the face of Chinese Communist Party atrocities, wringing our hands, hoping for the best, when we can actually do something to counter these atrocities.
The book State Organs that Torsten Trey and I have co-edited, which addresses organ transplant abuse in China and which has just been published, begins with a quote from Athenian ruler Solon from the 7th century B.C., almost three thousand years ago. He said: “When will we end injustice? When those who are not victims feel as much outrage as those who are?”
That is a universal truth. Not only will the concerns of outsiders have an impact on the evolution of events in China. Only when those outside China who are not victims of the communist regime show as much outrage at the crimes of the regime as the victims themselves will Communist Party oppression in China end.
This article is an edited version of remarks prepared for delivery at a public forum at the Koreana Hotel, Seoul Korea, October 31, 2012.
David Matas is an international human rights lawyer based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
via Organ Harvesting, Falun Gong, and the Future of China | Thinking About China | Opinion | Epoch Times
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Fighting for One’s Belief: ‘Free China’ at the US Capitol
4 October, 2012 at 11:19 | Posted in China, Culture, Falun Dafa/Falun Gong, human rights, persecution, slave labor camps, Society | Leave a commentTags: CCP, China, documentary, Falun Gong, film, human rights, labor camps, organ harvesting, persecution of dissidents, Society
WASHINGTON—Some lucky people in the nation’s capital had a first look at the documentary Free China: The Courage to Believe, which had a private showing at the U.S. Capitol. The 53-minute documentary has won four international awards.
Directed by Michael Perlman of Tibet: Beyond Fear, and produced by Kean Wong of NTD Television, Free China tells the story of two prisoners of conscience and how they survived against physical torture and enormous pressures to recant their beliefs.
“There are not enough human rights fighters in Congress,” Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett told The Epoch Times. She is the Chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).
Swett said that Free China is “a truth-telling film.” It “lifts the curtain on what is really going on in China—the horrible religious persecution of Falun Gong, the appalling practice of organ harvesting, and the slave labor in [the re-education through labor camps] and prisons. Tragically, we have a Western press that so often turns a blind eye to the stunning revelations of human rights abuses going on in China on an ongoing basis. I think this film can be a powerful tool for telling the truth and spreading the story. I hope it is going to be widely seen.”
Swett is the daughter of the late Congressman Tom Lantos and President of the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice.
After the showing, a panel discussed the film. Sixteen term Congressman Chris Smith (R-N.J.) led off with the statement, “With story-telling of the film, [it] puts a human face on China’s human rights abuse and arbitrary detention of dissidents, harvesting of organs from live prisoners of conscience, and export of products made by prison labor to the West. The film also examines how Chinese citizens are awakening to demand their rights of conscience in the intense Internet censorship and the end of censorship that is so prevalent in China today.”
The sponsor of the film screening at the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 20 was the Congressional-Executive China Commission (CECC).
Rep. Smith is chairman of CECC. The week before, he co-chaired a congressional hearing on “Organ Harvesting by the Chinese Communist Party.” The day before the screening, Smith co-sponsored a Dear Colleague letter with Congressman Robert Andrews (D-N.J.), asking the State Department to release any information it may have that relates to organ transplant abuse in China.
In Free China, Jennifer Zeng, a mother and former Communist Party member, and Dr. Charles Lee, an American Chinese businessman, practice the spiritual beliefs of Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa). Both get caught up in the forced labor camps ubiquitous in mainland China.
There, they have to endure a life of torture of electric batons, forced feedings, risk having their organs harvested, and working all day on products exported to the West. They manage to survive without bitterness and become determined to end the persecution of their fellows and help China become free.
Both Zeng and Lee were in attendance at the Capitol preview. Lee said that in prison he held two letters for two years that sustained him during the time. One was from the late Congressman Tom Lantos and the other from Congressman Smith. Lee said, “I knew so many people were working together to stop the persecution.”
Courage to Believe
In addition to all the physical abuse, Zeng and Lee were subjected to the communist party’s brainwashing techniques to make them renounce their beliefs. If one breaks down, the practitioner will have to write slandering articles in the labor camp that are recorded.
Furthermore, one is used to break the will of other practitioners. One doesn’t have a choice in the matter. Renouncing your beliefs is shown in the film by willingness to “reform” others, especially newcomers, an ordeal that is particularly troublingly to the conscience. Hence, the words in the subtitle of the film “Courage to Believe” were chosen for a good reason.
Zeng is the author of the best-selling book, Witnessing History: One Woman Fights for Freedom and Falun Gong. In the film, she recounts going from being upper class society and Party member to prisoner in one day. On her first day in prison, she was made to squat down and look down at her feet in the hot sun for 15 hours. When she challenged the requirement, she was taken away and tortured with electric batons. Her whole world began to collapse, she said.
After she was released, she fled to Australia, to avoid being detained again. About one year ago Zeng moved to New York, where she is now a New Tang Dynasty news reporter. Later her daughter and husband were able to join her.
As an American citizen, Dr. Lee led a comfortable and secure life. But he wanted to do something to break through the propaganda machine of the regime that brainwashes most of China’s 1.3 billion people. He had an idea on how to do it, but on his second visit to the mainland, he was arrested and sentenced to three years. He was released in 2006. Lee is a medical doctor by training and continued his medical studies at the University of Illinois and Harvard Medical School.
Products Made from Prison Labor
Zeng knitted rabbit dolls, hats and scarves. It took her 10 hours to make one rabbit, for which, of course, she was not paid. Lee was forced to make Homer Simpson slippers for export to the West.
Film director Michael Perlman said the film shows that products illegally made and exported that made him wonder how many other products are out there that we don’t know about. He said he spoke to Congressman Smith about the law that disallows goods made with prison labor, and Smith told him that the law is like Swiss cheese, with many holes.
“No goods made with prison labor should be imported in the United States,” Perlman said. Consumers need to be educated and pressure needs to be brought to get enforcement and legislation to end this, Perlman said.
via Fighting for One’s Belief: ‘Free China’ at the US Capitol | International | World | Epoch Times
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Human Rights Discussed in Geneva: China’s Internet Blockade Strengthens
1 October, 2012 at 11:27 | Posted in China, human rights, IT and Media, persecution, Society | Leave a commentTags: CCP, censorship, China, human rights, IT and Media, organ harvesting, persecution of dissidents, Society
Freedom House recently reported that the Chinese regime has in the past year intensified its efforts to block the Internet. But in the past two weeks, those efforts have become even more vigorous.
Many mainland Chinese who have used software to “climb the wall,” referring to breaking the Internet blockade by the regime’s “great firewall,” have encountered a very slow Internet and difficulty accessing the websites that allow them to surf the Internet freely.
Several things have happened recently in China that might make the regime want to restrict access to the World Wide Web. Xi Jinping disappeared for two weeks, and speculation about that was suppressed.
The controversy over the Senkaku Islands—the Diaoyu Islands as they are known in China—needs to be carefully handled so that the protests instigated by Party officials don’t blow out of control.
And sometime in the next month the 18th Party Congress is expected to take place, at which the once-in-a-decade introduction of the new Party leadership will take place.
But the strengthening of the Internet blockade is most likely related to United Nations’ 21st session of the Human Rights Council at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland.
The Human Rights Council met from Sept. 10 to 28, and the atrocity of forced, live organ harvesting became a hot topic at the meeting.
Meetings in Geneva
On Sept. 18, two non-governmental organizations at the Human Rights Council presented reports on the crime of live organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners in China and asked that the United Nations immediately investigate.
On Sept. 19, Free China: The Courage to Believe and Between Life and Death, two award-winning films that tell of the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners and the live harvesting of their organs for profit, were shown at the venue.
Representatives from a number of countries as well as representatives of non-governmental organizations watched the films and joined discussion after the show.
On Sept. 21, the two films were shown again at the General Assembly of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva during a film show hosted by the Worldwide Organization for Women.
Members of the Human Rights Council and representatives of the NGOs that were present were excited that the atrocity of live organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners has finally been discussed for the first time at the General Assembly of the U.N. Human Rights Council.
Many of those present in Geneva said that in order to pressure the U.N. and the international community to go into China to investigate, more activities exposing the atrocity should be held around the world.
Saving the Party
Meanwhile, the exposing of its crime at the international human rights council to over 200 countries is certainly a blow to the Chinese regime. The high levels of the CCP have no idea what the response of the international community will be.
Various analysts have pointed out that the persecution of Falun Gong is core issue facing the CCP leadership. The forced, live organ harvesting is the cruelest crime used against the Falun Gong practitioners.
The individuals who were recently the most powerful men in China—former Party head Jiang Zemin and members of his faction, including Zhou Yongkang, Zeng Qinghong, Luo Gan, Bo Xilai, and Liu Qi—are implicated in the atrocity, as well as the military, local hospitals, and the public security system.
The involvement of the top Party officials in the forced, live organ harvesting poses a danger to the Party itself.
Ever since the Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun attempted to defect to the United States, a battle for supremacy has raged within the CCP between Jiang’s faction and the current head of the Party, Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao, presumptive next head of the Party Xi Jinping, and their various supporters.
Although Hu, Wen, and Xi have gradually gained the upper hand, they have chosen not to hold Jiang’s faction accountable for organ harvesting. They realized that exposing the atrocity would also forever sink the Party’s chance of ruling China. The Chinese people would discard the CCP.
Hu, Wen, and Xi have chosen to save the Party. We have thus seen lenient sentences given to Bo Xilai’s wife Gu Kailai for the murder to the British businessman Neil Heywood and to Wang Lijun for his attempted defection and other crimes. Neither was charged with their involvement in organ harvesting, which was far-reaching.
Similarly, domestic security czar Zhou Yongkang is still free to speak as he likes on television and to visit foreign countries, even though Zhou’s security forces are deeply implicated in the organ harvesting and he is believed to have plotted to seize power in a coup.
The two factions have reached a compromise to save the Party amid their struggle.
The recent increase in Internet censorship is part of the deal between the factions to hide the organ harvesting.
However, Internet censorship can only go so far, and nothing can stay hidden forever.
With the continuous development of new software that breaks the Internet blockade, more and more people in China will discover the truth. And as the international community becomes more aware of the CCP’s atrocity of live organ harvesting, the CCP will face pressures as it never has before.
Read the original Chinese article.
Latest: After Bo Xilai’s Purge, Web Searches for ‘Organ Harvest’ Suddenly Allowed
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China-Wide Live Organ Harvest Network Busted, Says State Media
2 September, 2012 at 17:27 | Posted in China, Falun Dafa/Falun Gong, human rights, persecution, Society | Leave a commentTags: books, CCP, China, Falun Gong, human rights, Kilgour and Matas, organ harvesting, persecution of dissidents, Society
Experts see report part of attempt to bury bigger state-sponsored crimes
The Chinese Communist Party CCP has indirectly admitted that a large-scale black market and network for live organ harvesting exists in China, according to a report in the state-run media Beijing Times on Aug. 4.
The report says that Chinese police have arrested 28 gangs involved with removing organs from living victims and selling them to patients via hospitals. This is the first time Beijing has officially acknowledged the existence of live organ harvesting in China since it was publicized in 2006. At that time The Epoch Times reported that prison camp and hospitals in Liaoning Province were trafficking in organs from detained practitioners of Falun Gong.
China’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS) said there were 127 individuals and 18 doctors involved, representing 18 organizations, in the recent network. The groups incarcerated their victims, then contacted hospitals to match tissues with patients awaiting transplants before doctors removed organs from the victims, according to the report.
The report said the network spread across 18 provinces and cities, including Beijing, Hebei, Anhui, Shandong, Henan, and Shaanxi. A typical example was given of a young man’s kidney being sold for 35,000 yuan (US$5,500) for which a patient would eventually pay as much as 200,000 yuan (US$31,000).
Since the persecution of this spiritual discipline began in 1999, organ transplants in China increased five-fold between 2000 and 2006.
In 2006, witnesses said communist authorities were mediating between hospitals and prisons that the Party had permitted to harvest organs from Falun Gong practitioners. Since the persecution of this spiritual discipline began in 1999, organ transplants in China increased five-fold between 2000 and 2006.
Live organ harvesting was mentioned for the first time in the State Department’s 2011 Human Rights Report for China. Earlier this year, a question about involvement in organ harvesting was added to the non-immigrant U.S. visa application, Form DS-160.
Experts on CCP politics said that increasing exposure of live organ harvesting in China has led the regime to seek a scapegoat for its crimes.
“Criminal gangs alone cannot handle the whole process,” said commentator Heng He, an analyst with New York-based Chinese-language broadcaster New Tang Dynasty (NTD) Television. “With organ transplants, there must be an organization willing to receive the organs from outside sources. They are the regular hospitals; hospitals in China are often affiliated with governmental agencies, the military, or police agencies. The [organ] transportation itself needs time, and organs have to be provided fresh. So, it cannot be resolved with common means of transport.”
Since February, when Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun fled to the U.S. Consulate and revealed his involvement in organizing organ harvesting, the regime has started to crack down on organ sales.
“The Chinese Communist Party wants to release itself from the crime,” Heng He said. “It doesn’t want to take responsibility. Why was the Ministry of Public Security allowed to crack the case now? It is likely they themselves are part of the criminal system, and now they have exposed some of the things they are accountable for.”
In March, the regime pledged to end organ harvesting from prisoners within five years.
“Before, the Communist Party didn’t admit [the organs were from] executed prisoners. Then it thought using executed prisoners might be the least evil of the sins it had committed, so it started to admit that organs were from executed prisoners,” NTD news analyst Dr. Jason Ma told the Sound of Hope Radio Network.
He continued: “However, the statistics on organs transplanted were not right. So who are the rest of the organ sources? The regime hopes that people will focus on individual cases, such as a homeless person having their organs harvested.”
Read the original Chinese article.
via China-Wide Live Organ Harvest Network Busted, Says State Media | Regime | China | Epoch Times
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Chinese Doctor Admits to Falun Gong Organ Harvest
By Matthew Robertson & Li Wenhui
Epoch Times Staff
A high-ranking retired Chinese military doctor has been caught in a phone call placed by a human rights group admitting that he used the organs of political prisoners in a joint research project with Wang Lijun, the former right-hand man to disgraced Party official Bo Xilai.
Chen answered: “That had been approved by the court.”
Falun Gong is a Chinese spiritual practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since 1999.
The human rights researcher asked again if it had “gone through the court.” Chen affirmed.
The caller, a researcher with the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG), a human rights research and advocacy group, had presented himself as a member of a “cross-department special investigative team” for the Wang Lijun matter.
Wang Lijun is widely known to be under investigation by the CCP. On Feb. 6 he fled to the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu and passed to U.S. consular officials documents that are believed to have detailed crimes by Bo Xilai and Bo’s wife Gu Kailai, including information about organ harvesting. After surrendering to central Party authorities, Wang has been under investigation, was purged from the Party, and is due to be tried for treason.
When the WOIPFG investigator posed a follow-up question, asking about more details about where the Falun Gong practitioners were housed in connection with the organ harvesting, Chen Rongshan balked: “Let me say, I mean, I’m saying, you don’t talk, ask me about this now, OK?”
He added: “If you have to ask, go through the political division of the hospital, OK?”
“We in the military have a code of discipline, there are things that if we are to talk about them, you have to go through our political division, and tell the people in our political division to call me.”
The investigator and Chen tussled for another minute before the latter hung up. But the researcher had already gained the admission.
Human Rights Research Calls
This was not the first such admission. Dozens of calls are available online where the WOIPFG investigator, whose voice in the digital recordings was tweaked to sound as though he had just inhaled helium to protect his identity. In the recordings he elicits admissions from Party officials of participating in these crimes.
Chen Rongshan was most recently targeted because he had worked with Wang Lijun on a “research project” related to organ transplantation. Nearby in Jinzhou City, Liaoning Province, Wang, as head of the Public Security Bureau (PSB), had run the “On-site Psychological Research Center,” a laboratory connected to the PSB. There, according to his remarks in a 2006 award speech, he carried out executions, organ harvesting, organ transplants, and related experimentation.
The award, a “special contribution award,” was given by the Guanghua Science and Technology Foundation in September 2006. Guanghua, according to its website, is a charity that promotes science under the direct leadership of the Communist Youth League, one of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) mass organizations used for recruitment and dissemination of Party dogma to young people.
Wang said in his acceptance speech, which is still available online, that he had participated in “thousands” of on-site organ transplantations.
Wang Lijun was already close to Bo Xilai when he was PSB chief in Jinzhou. Later when Bo was transferred to Chongqing, Wang followed him and was installed as his chief of police. Analysts are confident that Bo was at least intimately aware of Wang’s activities.
Experts interviewed at the time of the discovery of this award understood “on-site” to indicate that the execution and organ removal happens near or at the same site as the transplantation to a new host.
The experts, including Ethan Gutmann, a journalist whose research focuses on the Chinese regime’s abusive organ transplantation practices, and David Matas, a lawyer who co-authored the seminal text on organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners, were also confident that, judging by Wang’s remarks, the prisoners were alive when their organs were removed, and would have died in the process of extraction.
Gutmann and Matas also thought it was probable that many of those thousands of organs were harvested from practitioners of Falun Gong.
Questionable Collaboration
Wang had worked together with the 205 Hospital, Chen’s department, on a “Key Research Project of Trauma-Free Anatomy in the Asia-Pacific Region,” according to the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong.
In the phone call Chen was asked to confirm that collaboration, and he did, before being asked to admit to using Falun Gong organs.
Dr. Torsten Trey, the co-editor of a recently published book on the abuse of organ transplantation in China, State Organs, said that he thought the telephone call and admission were credible, and fit into a broader pattern.
“When Dr. Chen refers to the court that has approved the cases of Falun Gong practitioners as organ source, he actually indicates that the organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners is state sanctioned, as state institutions and courts, are involved in the approval process,” Dr. Trey said in a written response, after being shown a transcript of the telephone call.
“People under the communist rule are usually very afraid of making a mistake, because it could lead to fatal consequences,” Trey said. So by directly referring to the court’s approval of the organ sourcing, “he actually strongly confirms the statement,” Dr. Trey said. “It’s a double-yes.”
The fact of state involvement further indicates, Dr. Trey said, that the harvesting of Falun Gong has not been done by underground syndicates or a few doctors, “but with the full knowledge and approval of the state.”
He says that global health bodies like the World Health Organization and World Medical Association should be inquiring into court records that would have been produced in the course of providing living Falun Gong adherents for people like Wang Lijun and Chen Rongshan.
Dr. Trey also pointed out that the research collaboration between Wang and Chen, involving “organ-transplantation-after-drug-injection” potentially involved human experimentation “in which Falun Gong practitioners were subject to ‘drug injections’ and that after the drug injections, organs were possibly removed while the victims were still alive.”
He added: “This is very likely, because it wouldn’t make sense to inject drugs to a cadaver and then remove organs for transplantation.”
Visa Consequences
Chen’s work has received recognition previously. On May 23, 2006, Liaoxi Economic Daily ran an article on its B4 print edition titled “A Military Doctor’s Noble Realm and Pursuit.”
The article said: “Chen Rongshan, Director of Urology of 205 Hospital of PLA in Jinzhou, has performed as many as 568 kidney transplants in recent years … His reputation drew patients from Taiwan, Korea, and Malaysia.”
With the publication of the recent admission however, Chen may have difficulty getting into the United States, where his daughter currently lives. He last visited her with his wife in early 2012, according to WOIPFG. The group plans to pass the record of their investigation into Chen to “concerned U.S. departments.”
The U.S Nonimmigrant Visa Application Form DS-160, since June 2011, asks whether the applicant “has participated in forced human organ transplantation.” The Visa applicants who answer yes to this question are often denied a visa.
The State Department was not immediately available for comment.
On June 13, 2012, another investigator called Chen pretending to be a secretary for Wang Jia. Wang Jia is the former director of the 205 PLA Hospital, and currently a deputy minister of the Ministry of Health of the Joint Logistics Department in the Shenyang Military Base.
“The former director asks me to send you a message,” the caller said.
After Chen began to engage in the conversation, the investigator said, “No matter which supervising department comes to investigate the removal of organs from Falun Gong practitioners for organ transplants, you must not disclose any secret. Can you do that?”
“Yes, yes, yes,” Chen said. “Just don’t be careless in talking about this and it’ll be fine, right?”
For to see the article and the call transcript: Chinese Doctor Admits to Falun Gong Organ Harvest
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Book Exposes Organized Killing for Organs in China
The question of where China has obtained organs for the tens of thousands of transplants that have been conducted there over the last decade is a vexing, contentious and crucial one. Everyone knows the overwhelming source is “executed prisoners”—but in China, who does that include?
State Organs: Transplant Abuse in China, published in July with contributions from a dozen specialists in the field aims to answer that question and elucidate the broader issue of organ sourcing practices in China. The Epoch Times spoke to Dr. Torsten Trey, the co-editor of the book, with Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas, about the aims of the book and what fresh information and insight it provides to the discussion. Dr. Trey is also the Executive Director of the medical group Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, which holds public forums about the topic.
One of the first strange things to note about the Chinese organ transplantation system, according to Trey, is the way that organs can be obtained on short notice. In the course of his medical advocacy work, Trey found that many doctors in the West did not even know about this irregularity.
“If you just tell them that the Chinese can provide organs within two weeks, and that they can schedule a transplantation for a specific time, then after five to ten minutes most doctors immediately understand that there’s something wrong. That cannot be. How can that be?”
Read more: Book Exposes Organized Killing for Organs in China | Democracy & Human Rights | China | Epoch Times
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Organ Harvesting in China Mentioned in US Human Rights Report
9 June, 2012 at 07:13 | Posted in China, Falun Dafa/Falun Gong, human rights, persecution | Leave a commentTags: CCP, China, Falun Gong, human rights, organ harvesting, persecution of dissidents
Falun Gong and Uighurs mentioned
The U.S. State Department’s 2011 Human Rights Report, published on May 24, 2012, addressed the issue of illicit organ harvesting in China, mentioning Falun Gong practitioners and Uighurs.
The report says: “In response to allegations that the organs of executed prisoners were harvested for transplant purposes, Vice Minister of Health Huang Jiefu in 2009 stated that inmates are not a proper source for human organs and prisoners must give written consent for their organs to be removed. Overseas and domestic media and advocacy groups continued to report instances of organ harvesting, particularly from Falun Gong practitioners and Uighurs.”
Another action taken by the U.S. government to prevent people involved in the crime of forced organ harvesting from entering the country is a new question added last June to the USCIS non-immigrant visa application form DS-160. It asks whether the applicant “has participated in forced human organ transplantation.”
According to a State Department spokesperson, this question is based on Section 232 of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act published on Sept. 30, 2002 (approved by Congress and signed by then president George W. Bush), denying entry to the United States to Chinese and other nationals engaged in coercive organ or bodily tissue transplantation. The same section is included in United States Code 8 USC1182f.
The recent report is the first time the U.S. government’s human rights report has mentioned live organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners and Uighurs.
Editor’s Note: When Chongqing’s former top cop, Wang Lijun, fled for his life to the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu on Feb. 6, he set in motion a political storm that has not subsided. The battle behind the scenes turns on what stance officials take toward the persecution of Falun Gong. The faction with bloody hands—the officials former CCP head Jiang Zemin promoted in order to carry out the persecution—is seeking to avoid accountability for their crimes and to continue the campaign. Other officials are refusing any longer to participate in the persecution. Events present a clear choice to the officials and citizens of China, as well as people around the world: either support or oppose the persecution of Falun Gong. History will record the choice each person makes.
Read the original Chinese article.
The Epoch Times publishes in 35 countries and in 19 languages. Subscribe to our e-newsletter.
via Organ Harvesting in China Mentioned in US Human Rights Report | Regime | China | Epoch Times
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Power Taken From Chinese Security Czar Zhou Yongkang
15 May, 2012 at 10:11 | Posted in China, Falun Dafa/Falun Gong, human rights, persecution, Society | Leave a commentTags: CCP, China, Falun Gong, human rights, organ harvesting, persecution of dissidents, Society
The Chinese regime’s domestic security chief, Zhou Yongkang, has handed over the reins of power of China’s security forces to a deputy, according to The Financial Times, which quoted sources familiar with the matter. The development would be one of the most significant in the current political crisis, which began in February, that has rocked the Chinese Communist Party.
Zhou will retain his figurehead Party position as chief of the Political and Legislative Affairs Committee, but operational control of the security apparatus has been given to Meng Jianzhu, the minister of public security, according to the Financial Times, which cited three senior Party members and diplomats who had been told about the matter.
In the recent instance Zhou’s “effective removal from power” took place some weeks ago, Financial Times reported.
Party leaders acted against Zhou, according to the Financial Times, because of his strong support for Bo Xilai, a renegade Party official who was purged in April. That took place two months after his deputy, the chief of police of Chongqing, attempted to defect to an American Consulate. After Wang’s visit to the consulate on Feb. 6, reports emerged that Zhou Yongkang and Bo Xilai had conspired to seize power of the regime in a meticulous coup d’état that would be orchestrated over the next year.
The two are bound together because of their involvement in the persecution of the popular Falun Gong spiritual practice, including the forced organ removal from living practitioners, information about which has been trickling out of China despite heavy Internet censorship. Jiang Zemin, the former regime leader, initiated the persecution against the population of nearly 100 million adherents in 1999. He promoted both Zhou Yongkang and Bo Xilai because of their willingness to carry out his policies.
The result was bloody, according to the available evidence, which suggests that both Bo Xilai and Zhou Yongkang oversaw abusive organ removal from living Falun Gong adherents. Tens of thousands of individuals are suspected of being victims of organ harvesting.
Sources in Beijing provided The Epoch Times details of a meeting that led up to the decision to relieve Zhou of his duties, pending an investigation.
In the meeting, Wen Jiabao openly argued against Zhou, the source said, questioning his connection with Bo Xilai.
Hu Jintao, the chief of the Communist Party, was silent. He Guoqiang, the head of Party’s internal disciplinary body, then said, “I believe that Comrade Zhou will be found innocent,” but also insisted that an investigation would be necessary.
To do otherwise would be “a hindrance to the Party and the future work of Party Central,” He said. Hu Jintao then reportedly agreed, on the principle that the investigation would be “fair,” but “secret.”
A source characterized this treatment of Zhou as “slow-boiling a frog.”
With reporting by Lin Feng.
via Power Taken From Chinese Security Czar Zhou Yongkang | Regime | China | Epoch Times
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Chinese Doctor Says He Narrowly Escaped Forced Organ Harvesting
4 May, 2012 at 08:16 | Posted in China, Falun Dafa/Falun Gong, human rights, persecution | Leave a commentTags: CCP, China, Falun Gong, human rights, organ harvesting, persecution of dissidents
A Chinese doctor from Liaoning Province says he narrowly escaped becoming a victim of forced organ harvesting in China.
Dr. Zeng, who wished to give only his last name to protect his identity, told The Epoch Times in a recent telephone interview that he used to be the deputy director of kidney surgery at a Chinese hospital. He is also a Falun Gong practitioner. In 2001, because he refused to give up and denounce Falun Gong, he was detained at a labor camp in Liaoning Province.
Once, the camp conducted physical examinations on certain detainees. Zeng said he noticed that most of the detainees selected for health exams were healthy-looking males, himself included. Special attention was given to the lungs; urine testing was also conducted.
Because he was a medical doctor, Zeng was at once alerted. When asked to provide a urine sample, he bit his tongue and put a few drops of blood in the sample. Although he did not know the purpose of the tests or what guided the selection process, his instincts told him that there was a sinister reason behind it. In the end he was not selected because his urine test did not pass the requirements.
It was only years later, when hearing about the allegations of live organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners, that the unusual health exam suddenly made sense to him. “Very likely they were looking for healthy bodies that could provide them organs. I’m lucky to have escaped the ordeal,” Zeng said.
A number of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience, who were also held captive in Chinese prisons and labor camps and who were fortunate enough to get out and escape to the west, have told similar stories. Wang Yuzhi said in her book “Going Through Life and Death” that the reason she is alive today is because none of her organs were healthy when examined by camp authorities.
Bo Xilai, the recently disgraced Chongqing Party chief, was the mayor of Dalian in Liaoning Province, where Dr. Zeng was detained. Bo was a zealous enforcer of the persecution of Falun Gong, which ensured his swift elevation up the Party hierarchy under former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin.
Liaoning Province also became the epicenter of forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners, according to independent researcher Ethan Gutmann.
Wang Lijun, Bo Xilai’s right-hand man, is also implicated in thousands of questionable organ harvesting cases.
The recent Wang Lijun—Bo Xilai scandal, besides triggering a serious political crisis at the Party’s top level, has also brought out sudden discussions in China about the abuse of organ transplantation.
On April 17, state media Guangming Daily published an opinion piece about a Chinese teenager who sold one of his kidneys so he could buy an Apple iPad more than a year ago. Guangming Daily said, “Before there can be an end to the marketing of organs, the profit chain has to be cut.”
On March 23, China’s search engine Baidu temporarily unblocked highly sensitive terms like “Falun Gong” and “Live Harvest,” New Tang Dynasty (NTD), an independent Chinese television station based in New York, reported.
The unusual drop in Internet censorship appeared to reflect the factional power struggle between Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao on one side and Jiang Zemin’s faction, which includes Wang Lijun, Bo Xilai, and Zhou Yongkang, on the other.
It suggests that outgoing leaders Wen and Hu perceive a need to resolve the Falun Gong persecution and organ harvesting issue as to keep from being accused of complicity while they still can, and eliminate their political foes at the same time.
Wan Li, a former prominent figure in the Chinese Communist Party, has been quoted by an insider as saying: “The persecution of Falun Gong isn’t anything new, but live organ harvesting is. If America would accuse China of taking organs, the world would turn against China. Not only would Jiang Zemin be given a death sentence, many Westerners would pressure their governments to cut diplomatic ties with the Chinese Communist Party.”
To contact the author of this article, send an email to goodnin12@gmail.com
Read the original Chinese article
via Chinese Doctor Says He Narrowly Escaped Forced Organ Harvesting | Society | China | Epoch Times
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Medical Community Disturbed by China’s Organ Centers
18 March, 2012 at 16:13 | Posted in China, Falun Dafa/Falun Gong, human rights, persecution | Leave a commentTags: CCP, China, Falun Gong, human rights, Kilgour and Matas, organ harvesting, persecution of dissidents
Report links Wang Lijun with organ harvesting facility
By Pamela Tsai
Epoch Times Staff
A recent report by a human rights watchdog group linking would-be defector and former police chief Wang Lijun with research into organ harvesting has brought outspoken condemnation of Wang’s mixture of police work and medical innovation from members of the medical community within the United States.
The report, released by the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG), shows that while serving as police chief in Jinzhou City, Wang Lijun founded the On-Site Psychology Research Center (OSPRC) on the subject of human organ transplant inside the building of the Public Security Bureau.
Prior to Wang’s research, victims of forced organ harvesting were typically executed with a shot to the head, and then their organs would be harvested. A team working under Wang’s supervision developed an injection method that is claimed to yield organs in better condition for transplantation. Wang, upon receiving an award for this, bragged in a speech that he had overseen thousands of organ harvesting operations.
David Matas, the international human rights lawyer and investigator into forced organ harvesting in China (author, with former Canadian Secretary of State David Kilgour of the 2009 book “Bloody Harvest”) had previously told The Epoch Times that with the injection method, “In effect they’re not killing by injection, but paralyzing by injection, and taking the organs out while the body is still alive.”
‘Terrifying’
Arthur Caplan, professor of Bioethics and director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, reacted to the report, calling it “terrifying.”
“For a research center run by police authorities to study anything regarding how people die—on its face—is ethically, legally, highly suspicious. It makes no sense other than to try and facilitate the immoral practice of killing people to get their [body] parts.”
“I can’t take anything like it,” said Dr. Caplan, who writes a regular column on MSNBC.com and often testifies before Congress on bioethics issues.
The report provides well-sourced materials on OSPRC, mostly from the CCP’s own state-run media reporting. A Chinese state-run newspaper reporter who visited the OSPRC is quoted in the report, saying that he witnessed the entire process of
“executing a death penalty criminal by injection method.” The reporter stated, “The execution site was crowded with experts, making it look like a scientific research lab.”
OSPRC researchers told this same reporter that the data collected would “contribute greatly to the research on subjects like the dying process of the criminal, the physiological changes before and after the injection into a healthy person, the residual toxin in different organs after the injection of the toxin, psychological changes of a person facing death, organ transplant after the injection,” and “on-site rescue from the toxin effect.”
Caplan responded that observing people’s psychological reaction during their dying process is absolutely unaccepted in the international medical community. “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” he said.
When asked if there was precedence historically to something similar to OSPRC, Caplan said the human experiments conducted by Japanese invaders of China during World War II could be a more provocative analogy than Nazi’s concentration camps.
The most notorious Japanese human experiment center in China during World War II was unit 731, located in the Pingfang District of Harbin City in Northeast China. The center was responsible for some of the most notorious crimes against humanity in modern history.
Victims were subjected to such human experiments as being hung upside down to see how long it would take for them to choke to death, having air injected into their arteries to determine the time until the onset of embolism, and having horse urine injected into their kidneys, among other atrocities.
The report also shows Wang Lijun as instrumental in carrying out Bo Xilai’s campaign to eradicate the practice of Falun Gong. According to a policeman who worked under Wang in Linzhou City, Wang gave orders regarding Falun Gong that we must “arrest them all and kill them all,” the report said.
‘Vociferous Condemnation’
Caplan said the OSPRC “requires vociferous condemnation” from the international medical community. “Governments around the world should be condemning such activities, too,” he added.
According to Caplan, not doing so would be simply allowing barbaric practices to be conducted under the banner of science.
The WOIPFG report also indicates that the organ harvesting center is receiving technological support and participation from Western medical institutes in the United States and Europe. Caplan said it is hard for him to imagine that Western medical partners are aware of China’s practice.
He urged the science and medical community to be on guard with China, and any medical collaboration related to human organs.
To raise awareness over China’s organ harvesting practice, Caplan, who served as senior editor of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, jointly wrote an editorial piece with Howard A. Rockman, incoming editor-in-chief, and Laurence A. Turka. The article called on American medical journal editors and editorial boards to boycott research data and papers on human organ studies from China.
Read more: Medical Community Disturbed by China’s Organ Centers | National News | United States | Epoch Times
Related Articles: Wang Lijun Suspected in Falun Gong Organ Harvest, Group Says
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Would-be China Defector, Once Bo Xilai’s Right Hand, Oversaw Organ Harvesting
18 February, 2012 at 15:15 | Posted in China, Falun Dafa/Falun Gong, human rights, persecution, slave labor camps | Leave a commentTags: CCP, China, Falun Gong, human rights, Kilgour and Matas, labor camps, organ harvesting, persecution of dissidents
Former Chongqing vice mayor involved in ‘thousands’ of transplantation operations
The high-ranking Chinese official who sought to defect to the United States last week has a story to tell about his participation in thousands of atrocities—and may have already told it to U.S. consular officials.
Wang Lijun, formerly the director of public security and vice mayor of the southwestern China megapolis of Chongqing, fearing that Bo Xilai, Chongqing’s Communist Party chief, meant to assassinate him, fled on Feb. 6 to the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu, a four-hour drive west.
He spent over 24 hours in the consulate and, according to a Radio France International report, revealed to consular officials details about crimes committed by him and Bo. He then left Chengdu under the protection of Beijing security officials.
Prominent among Wang’s crimes was his participation in forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience, a practice the Chinese regime has denied. Earlier in his career, Wang gave a speech in which he discussed his involvement in organ harvesting.
Wang’s Award
In 2006, three years after becoming director of the public security bureau in Jinzhou City, Liaoning Province, Wang was given an award—but it wasn’t for fighting crime. Wang had done pioneering research on how best to transplant organs taken from prisoners—who were possibly still alive when their organs were removed—and honed his techniques over thousands of on site trials.
Wang received the award in September 2006 from the Guanghua Science and Technology Foundation, a charitable organization meant to promote science and technology to youth. According to its website it is under the direct leadership of the Communist Youth League, one of the Chinese Communist Party’s mass organizations used for recruitment.
For a veteran policeman, to see someone being executed and to see this person’s organs being transplanted to several other persons’ bodies, it was profoundly stirring.
— Former Bo Xilai Right-Hand Man Wang Lijun
In Wang’s acceptance speech, which is still available online (and archived here), he thanks Guanghua Foundation staff for “painstakingly traveling” to Liaoning Province to observe his work.
He notes one time when Guanghua staff had to rush back from overseas to view a trial. “They wanted to witness organ transplantation and examine it from their point of view: organ transplant benefits the public and improves Chinese law enforcement in a humane and democratic way,” Wang said.
“As we all know, the so-called ‘on the scene research’ is the result of several thousand intensive on-site transplants,” he added.
Wang accepted the award as director of the “On-the-Scene Psychological Research Center,” which according to its entry on the website of the Ministry of Commerce is an adjunct of Jinzhou City’s public security bureau. Its brief introduction says it has relationships and scholarly exchanges with universities in over 10 countries. Emails to the research center were not returned, and calls to the number listed did not go through.
In his acceptance speech, Wang said, “For a veteran policeman, to see someone being executed and to see this person’s organs being transplanted to several other persons’ bodies, it was profoundly stirring. This is a great endeavor that involved much hard work from many people. The secretary general of China Guanghua Foundation, Jinyang and his staff were right there at the transplant scene, they have experienced it all with us.”
In a speech given on the occasion of Wang’s award, Ren Jinyang, the secretary general of the Guanghua Foundation, explained that Wang was recognized for his “basic research and on-site experiments” in making transplant recipients more receptive to organs.
“They have created a brand new protective fluid,” Ren said. “After animal tests, out of body tests, and clinical operations, they have achieved an important milestone where the recipients become more receptive to a liver and kidney injected with such protective fluid.”
Execution Site
Researchers investigating China’s organ transplantation practices were troubled by the remarks and what they implied.
“The so called ‘research scene’ that Wang Lijun refers to is either an outright execution site with medical vans, or possibly a medical ward, where peoples’ organs are surgically removed,” said Ethan Gutmann, who has published extensively on organ harvesting from Chinese prisoners of conscience.
He added that the injections that the award refers to are probably “anti-coagulants and experimental medications that lower the chance of immune-system rejection as the organ is passed between one living body—heart still beating, soon to expire from the trauma—to another.” Gutmann added that this is “normal medical practice” in China, where hospitals, military hospitals, and public security bureaus intersect.
“There is zero guarantee that consent was involved,” Gutmann said. “Ample evidence has come to light that the victims could well have been Uyghur Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, ‘Eastern Lightning’ Christians or—exponentially more likely—Falun Gong practitioners. In other words, Wang Lijun received an award for, at best, barbarism.”
It is not possible to know what proportion of victims Wang referred to in his remark about “thousands” of on-site transplants were criminal prisoners and how many were political prisoners or prisoners of conscience, such as Falun Gong practitioners. Further, in China there is a range of nonviolent crimes that can be punished with the death penalty, but the communist state does not publish statistics detailing the numbers of people executed and their crimes.
David Matas, an award-winning Canadian human rights lawyer, and David Kilgour, a former Canadian secretary of state (Asia/Pacific) and crown attorney, co-authored a report on organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China. The pair estimate that in the six-year period 2000–2005, 60,000 transplantation operations were done in China and Falun Gong practitioners were the likely source for the organs for 41,500 operations.
In other words, approximately two-thirds of the organs used in transplant operations during this time period—which in part overlaps the period of Wang’s “research”—came from prisoners of conscience, most of whom would have been Falun Gong.
CQ Global Researcher, a leading global affairs journal, quotes Kilgour and Matas and Gutmann as independently estimating over 62,000 practitioners have been killed for their organs in the period 2000–2008.
Live Harvesting
In the eyes of experts, a significant question left worryingly open in Wang’s remarks is whether the prisoners actually died before their organs were taken from their bodies. Given the reference to drug injections, it is highly possible that the hearts of the victims were still beating when their organs were removed, these experts say.
“It used to be that China would shoot for execution, then they shifted from shooting to using injections,” says Matas. “In effect they’re not killing by injection, but paralyzing by injection, and taking the organs out while the body is still alive.”
When an organ is removed from a still-live body, it is fresher and rejection rates are lower. “It’s possible to source an organ immediately after the victim is brain dead, but much more complicated,” says Matas. “The organ deterioration is more marked once they are brain dead, but if you keep the body alive through drugs you can harvest organs over a longer period of time.”
Wang’s conversations with the U.S. consular officials in Chengdu might shed light on such details as the function of the drugs he used in transplantation operations in Liaoning Province.
In any case Wang’s visit to the consulate provides the best opportunity to date of confirmation from a Chinese official of the ongoing practice of forced organ harvesting in China.
At a press conference on Monday in Washington, D.C., Falun Gong spokesperson Dr. Tsuwei Huang called on the U.S. government to release the contents of Wang Lijun’s conversations.
With research by Sophia Fang.
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Welcome!
Life is important and our choices are important.
On this website I will in different ways express what I think gives meaning to life and also what might be a challenge.
It may include the need for sustainable development for our planet, or various questions about our health and mental well-being.
To be truthful, to be good, to have patience and compassion, are spiritual qualities that are a part of my cultivation of self through Falun Gong /Falun Dafa, the way of insights. To refine and improve myself to a better, more compassionate human being gives my life great meaning.
I also bring up more difficult issues , like the persecution of Falun Gong and others in China and explain more about the mentality of the Chinese regime. We can never forget about the Human Rights!
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