User:PCPP/Falun Gong live organ harvesting allegations

In March 2006, allegations were made that the Chinese government and its agencies, including the People's Liberation Army, were conducting widespread and systematic organ harvesting of living Falun Gong practitioners. It was alleged that practitioners detained in forced labour camps, hospital basements, or prisons, were being blood and urine tested, their information stored on computer databases, and then matched with organ recipients. When an organ was required, it alleged, they were injected with potassium to stop the heart, their organs removed and later sold, and their bodies incinerated.

The first series of allegations were reported by the Falun Gong-linked newspaper The Epoch Times, based on alleged eye-witness testimony of two individuals, and directed specifically at the Sujiatun Thrombosis Hospital in Shenyang, Liaoning province, co-owned by Country Heights Health Sanctuary of Malaysia. The story received some deal of media attention. Within one month, some third party investigators concluded that there was insufficient evidence to support this specific allegation.

The Chinese government denies any mistreatment of Falun Gong practitioners, and rejects their report in its entirety, citing lack of evidence and incapability of the hospital to perform the claimed acts. Three weeks later, upon invitation, the United States Department of State investigated the site, finding no evidence to support the allegations.

Some months after the Sujiatun incident, in July 2006, David Kilgour, a former Canadian Secretary of State, and David Matas, a human rights lawyer, published a report of their investigation into the wider issue of organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners in China. Their report titled "Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China" claimed that large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners are victims of systematic organ harvesting, whilst still alive, throughout China. According to the authors, their report is mostly based on publicly verifiable information and circumstantial evidence, concluding that the practice is ongoing.

Their findings have received mixed responses. The Chinese government categorically denied any mistreatment of Falun Gong practitioners, and rejected their report in its entirety. A Congressional Research Service said that the report’s key allegations appeared to be inconsistent with the findings of other investigations, The authors maintain that their conclusion has not been refuted, while their critics remain unconvinced.

The Sujiatun case
Throughout March, The Epoch Times, a Falun Gong affiliated outlet, published articles by a number of apparent eyewitnesses, most of them anonymous, alleging organ harvesting in Sujiatun and beyond. The case was referred to as the "Sujiatun concentration camp". One apparent eyewitness was said to have worked in the hospital and was aware of Falun Gong practitioners being kept alive in the basement, alleging that Falun Gong practitioners were disposed to be burnt after their organs were extracted. Another anonymous source included an alleged senior military doctor who confirmed the claims, and said that Sujiatun was just one of up to 36 such sites across China. Practitioners were rapidly transferred between camps handcuffed by closed freight train on special routes, he alleged.

The Epoch Times also alleged in addition to Sujiatun, live persons were exported overseas, then Chinese embassies abroad harvested organs and incinerated the bodies. However, this allegation was not translated into English.

International response
On June 13, 2006, Edward McMillan-Scott, vice president of the European Parliament, said he believed that nearly 400 hospitals in China shared the lucrative trade in transplant organs, with websites advertising new kidneys for $60,000.

Falun Gong response
On April 5, 2006, the Falun Dafa Association established the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong in China (CIPFG), a lobby group established in the United States of America, also having offices in Canada, the organization issued the Kilgour-Matas report alleging hospitals and jails throughout China for being involved in organ harvesting.

Chinese government response
The Chinese Embassy in Canada replied to the first version of the Kilgour-Matas report immediately upon its release on July 6, stating that China abided by World Health Organization principles that prohibit the sale of human organs without written consent from donors. The authors were accused of wanting to smear China's image, and accused the report of being based on rumors and false allegations, and is groundless and biased. The Chinese Embassy in Washington also said the allegations were "totally fake" and said the Chinese government had already investigated the claims and found them meritless.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman rejected the claims as a “lie... not worth refuting.” The Chinese government maintains that the hospital is incapable of housing more than 6,000 persons, there is no basement for incarcerating practitioners as alleged, and that there was simply no way to cremate corpses in secret, continuously, and in large volumes. .

Investigations by Harry Wu
Harry Wu, known for his investigations of Laogai, was also skeptical of the claims. He claims to have sent investigators to the Sujiatun scene, on March 12th, 3 days after the story surfaced, but did not find evidence for the alleged concentration camp. He said the story was merely hearsay from two witnesses: "No pictures, no witnesses, no paperwork, no detailed information at all, nothing."

US Department of State investigations
The United States Department of State reported the findings of its investigation in April, stating that U.S. representatives "found no evidence to support allegations... that the site is being used for any function other than as a normal public hospital." US embassy said their staff visited the site twice, the first time unannounced one week after the report surfaced, the second with official cooperation after three weeks.

The Kilgour-Matas investigations


On July 20, 2006, former Canadian MP David Kilgour and Human Rights Lawyer David Matas presented the findings of their two month investigation, conducted in response to a request by the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong:.

The authors claimed that the allegations are true, and there exists a large scale organ havesting operation from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners. The also claimed that the government of China and its agencies has put to death a large number of Falun Gong prisoners since 1999. Their vital organs, including kidneys, livers, corneas and hearts, were seized involuntarily for sale at high prices, sometimes to foreigners, who normally face long waits for voluntary donations of such organs in their home countries.

The report contains 33 strands of evidence which the authors say leads to the positive conclusion. Singularly, the authors maintain, the pieces of evidence do not prove the allegations, but their combination was the deciding factor. In 2007, they presented an updated report under the title: "Bloody Harvest: Revised Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China."

They qualify that there are inherent difficulties in verifying the alleged crimes. For example, no independent bodies are allowed to investigate conditions in China, eyewitness evidence is difficult to obtain, and official information about organ transplantation is often withheld. On July 6, 2006, Matas told reporters that the Chinese government, which has repeatedly denied similar allegations, refused entry visas to China for the pair to investigate further.

On May 20, 2006, David Kilgour conducted an interview in the United States with the ex-wife of a Chinese surgeon, who, according to her statement, was involved in removing corneas from live Falun Gong prisoners of conscience. She claimed that her ex-husband, a neurosurgeon, was involved in removing cornea from more than 2000 live prisoners - from end of 2001 to October 2003. According to her statement, the victims were injected with a drug that caused heart failure and had their organs removed, often, while the patient was not yet brain-dead. Later the victims would be moved to other rooms for extraction of other organs.

Details of alleged organ transplanting


The authors claim that China has no organized donation system, as in western countries, and there is also a cultural aversion to organ donation. The authors say these factors severely limit the availability of voluntarily donated organs for transplant.

According to the authors, organ transplanting is a highly profitable industry in China. The report provides a list of prices in US dollars found on Chinese transplant websites in April, 2006. These range from US$62,000 for a kidney, to US$130,000-160,000 for a heart. The authors write that they have no way of following the 'money trail', but that the lack of transparency is questionable. Healthcare and army facilities in China are self-reliant for funding, and hospitals are known to profit from illegally selling organs of death-row prisoners. The authors allege that this policy might be easily transferred to Falun Gong practitioners

The pair alleged that of the 60,000 organ transplants officially recorded between 2000 and 2005, 18,500 came from identifiable sources; the source of 41,500 transplant organs could not thus be explained. In a later article published in 2007, Kilgour and Matas say that traditional sources of transplants such as executed prisoners, donors, and the brain dead does not match the total number of organ transplants in China, and that the only other source that can explain the rising numbers are Falun Gong transplants."

The authors note the very short waiting times in Chinese hospitals for transplants. One hospital which boasts one week for a transplant, another claims to provide a liver in two weeks. In Canada, the waiting time for a kidney can be up to 32.5 months. The survival period for a kidney is between 24-48 hours, and a liver about 12 hours. The authors contend that only a large bank of living 'donors' could account for the short waiting times.

The authors refer to a number of interviews with organ recipients, who gave similar accounts. The organ transplant surgery is said to be conducted in almost total secrecy, the recipient is not told the identity of the donor or shown written consent, the identity of the doctor and nurses are often withheld, recipients and their families are often told the time of the operation immediately before it occurs, operations sometimes take place in the middle of the night, and the whole procedure is done on a 'don't ask, don't tell' basis.

Falun Gong considerations
Kilgour and Matas claim that one of the most disturbing moments in researching the report was the alleged discovery of a massive population of imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners who remained unidentified. They alleged arrested practitioners may refuse to give their names for fear of repercussions for their families, and thus no one outside the prison system knows their whereabouts. They claim that there is a significant lack of representation among freed Falun Gong practitioners, from those who failed to self identify while they were imprisoned—these alleged disappearances, the authors contend, are ready candidates for live organ harvesting.

The authors also reported that Falun Gong practitioners are systematically blood and urine tested, and have their organs examined while in custody, while other patients, who are not practitioners, are not tested. They also alleges that blood testing is a pre-requisite for organ transplants, and that donors need to be matched with recipients so that the antibodies of the recipients do not reject the organs of the donors.

The authors alleged that practitioners regularly die in custody due to torture or ill-treatment, and that in a few cases, family members of Falun Gong practitioners were able to see the mutilated corpses of their loved ones with organs removed.

Conclusions
The report supports the allegations of China's harvesting organs from live Falun Gong practitioners and calls for a ban on Canadian citizens travelling to China for transplant operations.

Doubt
In 9 August, 2006, Harry Wu questioned the feasibility of the claims. He said a total of 4,500 victims "would mean 1,500 persons per year, or at least 120 persons per month whose organs were removed". He claimed that such acts would be impossible to accomplish in the environment of Sujiatun, and that professional doctors could not kill 4,000 to 5,000 people per year. He also cast doubt on claims that a doctor removed corneas from 2,000 followers in less than two years.

An article by Glen McGregor in the Ottawa Citizen on November 24, 2007, raised a number of apparent inconsistencies or difficulties in the Sujiatun story, doubting that the hospital could have been the site of organ harvesting as alleged. He also questioned the conclusion of the Kilgour-Matas report, and focused on Harry Wu’s doubts. He suggested that the Kilgour-Matas report is either compelling evidence that proves the claims, or a collection of conjecture and inductive reasoning failing to support its own conclusions. He pointed out that Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the UN’s Special Rapporteur on torture have not confirmed the claims of organ harvesting. .

Four days later, Matas and Kilgour published a response to McGregor in the same newspaper. They maintained that the Chinese authorities should not be regarded as guilty based on circumstantial evidence, and emphasized the totality of the evidence they had collected, re-examined the avenues of proof and disproof available, and argued that two other independent reports had come to the same conclusion. They claimed that they came to the conclusion based on the combination of the circumstantial evidence.

A Congressional Research Service report by Dr Thomas Lum considered that the Kilgour-Matas report relied largely on making logical inferences, without bringing forth new or independently-obtained testimony. According to Lum, Kilgour and Matas' conclusions rely heavily upon transcripts of telephone calls with reported PRC respondents, and the credibility of the telephone recordings is questionable, due to the Chinese government's controls over sensitive information.

Kilgour and Matas maintain that they do not base their conclusion solely on the telephone calls. In an interview on Lateline, Kilgour vouched for their veracity, stating that he could make the phone records and digital recordings available on request. He qualified that the caller contacted numerous hospitals across China

Accordin to Amnesty International, there is a widely documented practice of the buying and selling of organs of death penalty prisoners in China. The lack of transparency surrounding such practices makes it impossible to determine whether written consent was obtained, and it is unknown how many Falun Gong practitioners are amongst the statistic. While Chinese authorities conceal national statistics on the death penalty, various sources indicate China may be executing between 10,000-15,000 death-row prisoners a year.

Support
On July 24, 2006, Associate Director of the Program in Human Rights and Medicine in the University of Minnesota, Kirk C. Allison, PhD, MS released a statement on a forum held on the World Transplant Congress in Boston, purporting to corroborate the Kilgour-Matas report and calling for academia and medical circles stop cooperation with China on organ transplantation.

In May 2008 two United Nations Special Rapporteurs reiterated their previous request for the Chinese authorities to respond to the allegations of organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners, and explain the source of organs for the sudden increase in organ transplants in China, which was previously rejected by Chinese authorities.

Changing transplant policies
On June 3, 2007, in response to David Matas' presentation of his study to an organ transplant conference in Jerusalem, the Chinese embassy in Israel responded that there is no live organ bank in China and there is no intention to open one. Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv prohibited Jews from deriving any benefit from Chinese organ harvesting, even in life-threatening situations.

On August 14, 2006, the US National Kidney Foundation released a statement expressing their concerns in response to Kilgour and Matas's report.

In December 2006, the Queensland government of Australia responded to a CIPFG petition by announcing the abolishment of training programs for Chinese doctors in organ transplant procedures in the Prince Charles and the Princess Alexandra Hospitals as well as ending their joint research programs into organ transplantation with China.