Chinese army harvesting parts from imprisoned Falungong inmates
Pastor Dale Morgan
Thursday February 1, 5:12 AM
*Chinese army harvesting parts from imprisoned Falungong inmates*
China's military is reportedly harvesting organs from prison inmates,
mostly Falungong practitioners, for large scale transplants including
for foreign recipients, a study said.
Canada's former Secretary of State for the Asia Pacific region David
Kilgour and human rights lawyer David Matas released a report Wednesday
into such transplants after interviewing organ recipients in 30 countries.
They also interviewed Canadian hospital staff who subsequently cared for
hundreds of patients after they underwent dubious transplant surgeries
in China.
"The involvement of the People's Liberation Army in these transplants is
widespread," Kilgour told a press conference.
Like many civilian hospitals in rural China, military hospitals turned
to selling organs to make up for government funding cuts in the 1980s,
the report states.
But military personnel could operate with much more secrecy, it added.
"Recipients often tell us that even when they receive transplants at
civilian hospitals, those conducting the operation are military
personnel," the report states.
It is the second report to be released by the pair, who in July
published the results of a two-month investigation in which they
implicated dozens of hospitals and jails throughout China in the
transplant scandal.
Those allegations were vigorously denied by Chinese officials.
Hospitals in Canada's biggest cities, Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto
meanwhile confirmed "a substantial number" of Canadians had traveled to
China for suspicious organ transplants, Kilgour said.
"We're in the three digits, up over 100 (from Canada each year) and the
trend is accelerating," Matas said.
To curb what they called a "disgusting form of evil," the pair publicly
asked pharmaceutical firms to stop selling organ anti-rejection drugs to
China.
They also urged countries to post travel advisories warning that organs
from China may have been harvested from unwilling donors; asked states
to cease offering follow-up care to patients who had shady organ
transplants in China; and called on foreign doctors to cut ties with
their Chinese counterparts suspected of such practices.
States should also enact legislation to ban their citizens from
traveling to China for organ transplants from forced donors, although
the study's authors admitted such prosecutions would be difficult to prove.
The US-based lobby group "The Coalition to Investigate the Persecution
of the Falungong in China" had asked Kilgour and Matas to investigate
claims by several of their members.
China banned the spiritual group in 1999 and has vehemently denied the
allegations of organ harvesting, accusing the Falungong of spreading
rumors in a bid to undermine the country's international relations and
"social stability."
Kilgour and Matas admitted that many of the claims were second-hand, but
said there was enough evidence to "paint a picture."
They described one man traveling to Shanghai in 2003 for a kidney
transplant at the civilian No. 1 People's Hospital and his convalescence
at No. 85 hospital of the People's Liberation Army.
Eight kidneys were tested, to find a match. Only the last "from an
executed prisoner" was compatible, his military surgeon told him,
according to the report.
Wang Xiaohua, a Falungong practitioner who now lives in Montreal, told
reporters he "suffered inhumane persecution" at a Chinese labor camp
where jailed Falungong practitioners, and not other prisoners, were
systematically subjected to blood tests to match their organs with
recipients.
In their previous report, Matas and Kilgour interviewed several
Falungong members and the former wife of a surgeon who told her he had
removed the corneas from some 2,000 anaesthetized Falungong prisoners in
northeast China in the two years prior to October 2003.
They said they listened, with the help of certified interpreters, to
more than 30 veiled calls made from Canada and the United States to
Chinese officials who admitted to the surgeries.
Dozens more Chinese hospitals and jails were implicated in transcripts
of new telephone calls, including one to an air force hospital in
Chengdu City, in which an official said it would be "no problem" to get
organs from young and healthy Falungong practitioners for a transplant.