User talk:Dilip rajeev/Kilgour-Matas reports

The Kilgour-Matas report is an independent investigative report by Canadian MP David Kilgour and Human Rights Lawyer David Matas into the allegations of organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners in China. The investigation was initiated upon a request by the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong. The first report, released on 6th July 2006, concluded that the allegations are true and the practice is ongoing. A revised report was published in January 2007.

In March 2007, U.N. special rapporteur Manfred Nowak, said "The chain of evidence they [Kilgour and Matas] are documenting shows a coherent picture that causes concern." In November 2008, the United Nations Committee Against Torture made a strong statement on the matter, citing Nowak's note that an increase in organ transplant operations coincides with “the beginning of the persecution of [Falun Gong practitioners]” and who asked for "a full explanation of the source of organ transplants." The Committee stated that it is concerned with the information that Falun Gong practitioners "have been extensively subjected to torture and ill-treatment in prisons and that some of them have been used for organ transplants." They called for the state to immediately conduct or commission an independent investigation of the claims of organ harvesting, and take measures to ensure that those responsible for such abuses are prosecuted and punished.

Independent investigations as by Ethan Gutmann and another by European Parliament Vice President Edward McMillan-Scott arrived at similar conclusions as Kilgiour-Matas'. A Congressional Research Service report said that some of the report’s key allegations appeared to be inconsistent with the findings of other investigations, though did not provide details. The US state department maintains that "[i]ndependent of these specific allegations, the United States remains concerned over China’s repression of Falun Gong practitioners and by reports of organ harvesting."

The Report
The allegation of organ harvestation from Falun Gong practitioners was first raised in March 2006 by The Epoch Times which published a number of articles alleging 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, they were injected with drugs to stop the heart, their organs removed and later sold, and their bodies incinerated.

Kilgour and Matas conducted the investigation in response to a request by Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong. The investigation was done voluntarily and independent of any organization, or government.

Elements of Proof
The report analyzes 33 independent strands of evidence, the consideration of which as a whole, the authors say, lead to their conclusion.

The method of proof they employ, the authors state, are both “deductive” and “inductive,” taking into consideration evidence which directly suggest an ongoing practice of organ harvesting, analyzing if the statistics available are consistent with the allegations, why Falun Gong could be specifically target,  absence of preventive mechanisms, in addition to considering the elements of disproof available.

The clampdown on human rights reporting in China, absence of an access to information legislation in China and the impossibility of directly accessing crime scene evidence constituted difficulties of proof. International Committee of the Red Cross and other organizations concerned with human rights of prisoners having no access to prisoners in China cut off another potential avenue of evidence. Kilgour and Matas sought to visit China for further investigation but were denied entry.

General Considerations
The authors bring to attention the general history of human rights violations in China - the widespread abuse of human rights, extensive use of torture, arbitrary death penalty, absence of Rule of Law mechanisms to prevent human rights violations such as an independent judiciary, and a regime which has a history of engaging in “massive, jaw dropping cruelty towards its own citizens”, killing more than “Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia combined.”

Transplant centers and general hospitals in China are often military institutions, operating independently from the Ministry of Health, financed almost entirely by organ transplant recipients. The financing they earn from organ transplants pays the costs of the facilities and is also used to finance the overall military budget. The Organ Transplant Center of the Armed Police General Hospital in Beijing states: "Our Organ Transplant Center is our main department for making money. Its gross income in 2003 was 16,070,000 Yuan. From January to June of 2004 income was 13,570,000 Yuan. This year (2004) there is a chance to break through 30,000,000 Yuan."

The military have access to both prisons and prisoners. They are impervious to the rule of Law and their operations are more secretive than that of the civilian government.

Kilgour and Matas state that corruption in rife in the system and that the sale of organs from unwilling donors “combines hatred with greed. A state policy of persecution is acted out in a financially profitable way.”

Profiteering hospitals take advantage of a defenseless captive population, “in prison without rights”, at the disposition of the authorities. The incitement to hatred against groups and their dehumanization means that they can be killed without qualms by those who buy into this official hate propaganda. There has been a state wide propaganda campaign dehumanizing Falun Gong practitioners, since the onset of the persecution against the group in 1999.

Absence of a system for organ donations
China has no organized system for organ donations, unlike other countries engaged in organ transplant surgery. Because of a cultural aversion to organ donation, even an active organ donation system would have difficult supplying the volume of transplants currently occurring in China. The authors note the absence of any active effort to encourage organ donations in China, combined with exceedingly short waiting times, suggests that a plethora of organs available for transplants without voluntary donation.

Exceedingly short wait times
Kilgour and Matas point out that the waiting times for organ transplants in China is the shortest in the world. They document publicly verifiable evidence: The China International Transplantation Assistant Centre website says, "It may take only one week to find out the suitable [kidney] donor, the maximum time being one month... If something wrong with the donor's organ happens, the patient will have the option to be offered another organ donor and have the operation again in one week." The site of the Oriental Organ Transplant Centre claims that "the average waiting time [for a suitable liver] is 2 weeks." The website of the Changzheng Hospital in Shanghai says: "...the average waiting time for a liver supply is one week among all the patients".

Median waiting time in Canada for a kidney was 32.5 months in 2003 and in British Columbia it is 52.5 months. The survival period for a kidney is between 24-48 hours and a liver about 12 hours. They point out that the presence of a large bank of living "donors" is the only way China's transplant centres can assure such short wait times.

''He was admitted to the No 1 Peoples' Hospital‑a civilian facility‑and during the ensuing two weeks four kidneys were brought for testing against his blood and other factors. None proved compatible because of his anti‑bodies; all were taken away.” He returned to the hospital two months later. “Another four kidneys were similarly tested; when the eighth proved compatible, the transplant operation was successfully completed... His surgeon... Dr. Tan Jianming of the Nanjing military region... carried sheets of paper containing lists of prospective 'donors', based on various tissue and blood characteristics, from which he would select names.The doctor was observed at various times to leave the hospital in uniform and return 2‑3 hours later with containers bearing kidneys. Dr. Tan told the recipient that the eighth kidney came from an executed prisoner.

Use of prisoners sentenced to death as a source of organs
China has acknowledged use of executed prisoners sentenced to death as a source of organ transplants. Deputy Health Minister Huang Jiefu, speaking at a conference of surgeons in the southern city of Guangzhou in mid November 2006 stated that "Apart from a small portion of traffic victims, most of the organs from cadavers are from executed prisoners."

China has the death penalty for a large number of offenses including those of a strictly political and economic nature. “To go from executing no one to killing Falun Gong practitioners for their organs without their consent is a large step. To go from executing prisoners sentenced to death for political or economic crimes and harvesting their organs without their consent to killing Falun Gong practitioners for their organs without their consent is a good deal smaller step,” Kilgour and Matas state.

Other avenues of proof
Extensive interviews with recipients and their families suggest the operations occur in secrecy. Recipients are not told the identity of the donors. They were never shown written consents from the donors or their families. The identity of the operating doctor and support staff itself are often not disclosed, despite requests for this information. Recipients and their families are commonly told the time of the operation only shortly before it occurs. Operations sometimes occur in the middle of the night. The whole procedure is done on a "don't ask, don't tell" basis.

They also analyze other avenues of proof as absence of Transplant ethics in China, Chinese and foreign transplant Laws, pharmaceutical exports, and the profit to be made which range from $62,000 to $180,000 for a transplant. They note that while the supply comes from China, from prisoners, the demand, in large part, comes from abroad, that no restriction is imposed on this by foreign transplant laws and that no advisories exist to warn recipients that the organs may come from unwilling “donors”.

Persecution as state policy
An estimated two thirds of the torture victims in Chinese prisons and the overwhelming majority of prisoners of conscience in Chinese prisons are Falun Gong practitioners. The documented yearly arbitrary killings and disappearances of Falun Gong exceed by far the totals for any other victim group.

They note that persecution of Falun Gong exists as an official policy of the Chinese Communist Party. An extrajudicial body called the 6-10 office exists for the sole purpose of overseeing the persecutory campaign. A government directive in persecuting practitioners, announced verbally by the 6-10 office head, was "defaming their reputations, bankrupting them financially and destroying them physically.”

Deaths and physical persecution
Kilgour and Matas note that December 22, 2006, they had identified over 3000 Falun Gong practitioners who died as a result of persecution. They believe that the toll could be much higher as practitioners often refuse to identify themselves for fear of persecution to their families. They state that a ‘chilling moment’ in their investigation was the “the discovery of this massive prison/detention/labour camp population of the unidentified. Practitioner after practitioner who eventually was released from detention told us about this population.”

Kilgour and Matas note that a large number of Falun Gong practitioners killed by the authorities through torture supports the allegation: “If the Government of China is willing to kill large number of Falun Gong practitioners through torture, it is not that hard to believe they would be willing to do the same through organ harvesting.”

According to Amnesty International, the Chinese Government adopted three strategies to crush Falun Gong: violence against practitioners who refuse to renounce their beliefs; "brainwashing" to force all known practitioners to abandon Falun Gong and renounce it, and a media campaign to turn public opinion against Falun Gong.

Incitement to hatred
Falun Gong practitioners in China are dehumanized by government propaganda, “both in word and deed. Policy directives are matched by incitement to the population at large both to justify the policy of persecution, to recruit participants, and to forestall opposition.”

Local governments were authorized to implement Beijing's orders, the implementation of which involved, in part, staged attempts to demonstrate to China's population that practitioners committed suicide by self-immolation, killed and mutilated family members and refused medical treatment.

This incitement to hatred, while not specific enough to indicate the form that persecution takes, promotes any and all violations of the worst sort against practitioners. Such dehumanization, makes it plausible that that people would engage in such behavior against the Falun Gong.

Routine Blood Testing
Practitioners in detention are systematically blood tested and organ examined, while other prisoners are not. The practitioners themselves are not told the reason for the testing and examination.

Kilgour an Matas note that it is unlikely the testing and examination serves a health purpose. “For one, it is unnecessary to blood test and organ examine people systematically simply as a health precaution. For another, the health of the Falun Gong in detention is disregarded in so many other ways, it is implausible that the authorities would blood test and organ examine Falun Gong as a precautionary health measure.”

Blood testing is a pre‑requisite for organ transplants. Donors need to be matched with recipients so that the antibodies of the recipients do not reject the organs of the donors.

Unexplained Increase in transplants following 1999
The number of yearly transplants done in China undergo a sharp increase following 1999, when the persecution of Falun Gong began. The source of 41,500 transplants for the six year period 2000 to 2005 is unexplained.

They note that identifiable sources of organ transplants have remained largely the same in the pre-1999 period and post-1999 period, and that improvements in transplantation technology does not offer an explanation either. No other country has the number of transplants increased such.

Corpses with Missing Organs
Family members of Falun Gong practitioners who died in detention report seeing corpses of their loved ones with surgical incisions and body parts missing. No coherent explanation was given for these mutilated corpses.

Kilgour and Matas rule out the explanation that the organs were removed for autopsy, “ the suggestion that Falun Gong practitioners who are tortured to the point of death are blood tested for their health or that practitioners who are tortured to death are autopsied to determine the cause of death belies the torture experience. “

They note the case of Wang Bin: Beatings caused the artery in Mr. Wang's neck and major blood vessels to break. As a result, his tonsils were injured, his lymph nodes were crushed, and several bones were fractured. He had cigarette burns on the backs of his hands and inside his nostrils. There were bruises all over his body. Even though he was already close to death, he was tortured again at night. He finally lost consciousness. On the night of October 4, 2000, Mr. Wang died from his injuries.

The purpose of an autopsy report is to determine the cause of death when the cause is otherwise unknown. But in the case of Wang Bin, the cause of death was known before his organs were removed. The suggestion that Wang Bin would be autopsied to determine the cause of death after he was tortured to death is not plausible. There was no indication that the family of Wang Bin was asked for consent before the organs of the victim were removed nor provided an autopsy report afterwards. The suggestion of an autopsy is not a tenable explanation for the stitches on Wang Bin's body.

Admissions on Phone
Mandarin speaking investigators, presenting themselves as potential recipients or relatives of potential recipients, called in to a number of hospitals and transplant doctors to ask about transplants. The calls resulted in a number of admissions that Falun Gong practitioners are the sources of organ transplants.

Transcripts of a number of such calls are laid out in an appendix to the reports.

A particular investigator called about 80 hospitals, asking for specific doctors in the called hospitals. “10 hospitals admitted they use Falun Gong practitioners as organ suppliers. M also called back to talk to the doctors. 5 hospitals said they can obtain Falun Gong practitioners as organ suppliers. 14 hospitals admitted they use live organs from prisoners. 10 hospitals said the source of organs is a secret and they could not reveal it over the phone.”

The typical response another investigator got was that “the caller did not expect this question at all, and would pause for a while to think how to respond. After the pause, about 80% did not admit that they used Falun Gong practitioners' organs. About 80% of those who did not admit to using Falun Gong practitioners' organs did admit that they use live bodies who are prisoners. Less than 10 people simply hung up the phone once they heard the question about Falun Gong practitioners.”

Confession
Kilgour and Matas interviews a woman using the pseudonym Annie, who, in an earlier interview with the Epoch Times said her husband surgeon had removed the corneas from approximately 2,000 anaesthetized Falun Gong prisoners in Sujiatun hospital in Shenyang City in northeast China during the two year period before October, 2003, at which time he refused to continue. The surgeon made it clear to his wife that none of the cornea "donors" survived the experience because other surgeons removed other vital organs and their bodies were then burned.

In an appendix Kilgour and Matas analyze in detail her testimony, finds it consistent with other evidence,  going “a long way to establish, all on its own, the allegation.”

Further Evidence
Other avenues of proof considered in the report include corroborating studies, and the response to the report from the Chinese government

Corroborative reports
In April, 2007, a PhD Thesis from Yale University pointed out that the "exceedingly short waiting times, batch transplants, surging transplant volume and the lack of demand-induced upward pressure [in China's organ transplant industry] on price and waiting times could not be explained by a demand-driven market model." The thesis concluded: "analysis shows that they can be explained by a supply-driven model with a large inventory of unwilling living organ suppliers selected from detained Falun Gong practitioners. There is no group in China’s prison system other than Falun Gong practitioners that has the requisite population size, health and intensity of persecution to explain the rapid growth in the organ industry from 2000 to 2005. An accumulating number of non-economic evidence supports the conclusion of this analysis."

Ethan Gutmann, adjunct fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, states based on his analysis that the number of practitioners killed for organs could be as high as 162,000, with 13,500 being the low-end estimate, and 87,750 being the median. 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, reinforcing the findings of the Kilgour-Matas report and calling for academia and medical circles stop cooperation with China on organ transplantation. Th report which independently arrived at a similar conclusion as the Kilgour–Matas report said: "Given the evidence at hand, international transplant patients who obtain organs in China do so at the cost of benefiting from, and tacitly supporting, the continuance of an ongoing lethal violation of human dignity and human rights. Prospective patients should be informed of this fact and actively discouraged from pursuing this avenue of treatment." Allison states that the "short time frame of an on-demand system [as in China] requires a large pool of donors pretyped for blood group and HLA matching. It is consistent with execution timing. Given a 12-24 hour window for kidney tissue, and a 12 hour window for liver, matching for transplant tourists cannot be assured on a random-death basis." Kilgour and Matas note that Allison had arrived independently at the same conclusion as theirs, shortly before their initial reports were released.

Professor Tom Treasure MD MS FRCS F, of Guy's Hospital, London, in a March 2007 article entitled "The Falun Gong, organ transplantation, the holocaust and ourselves," published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, confirms the plausibility, from a medical standpoint, of the allegations. He analyzes some of the events leading to the Holocaust in which medical personnel were involved and compares these to the circumstances surrounding the Falun Gong persecution, statistics on transplantation in China, and general practices related to transplantation. "As the allegation unfolds, the story seems horrific to the point of being beyond belief. So alarmed was I on learning of this allegation that I struggled to make sense of it. The element of the story that horrifies me most, if it is true, is that it is my medical colleagues, the doctors, who perpetrate these acts." On the substance of the conclusions of the Kilgour-Matas report, he says: "What makes it credible are the numerical gap between the reported number of transplants compared with what is possible in other countries, the short waiting times and the confidence with which operations are offered in the global health market, and the routine blood testing of the Falun Gong."

In May 2008 two United Nations Special Rapporteurs reiterated their previous request for the Chinese authorities to adequately respond to the allegations of organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners. They also asked the authorities to explain the source of organs for the sudden increase in organ transplants in China since 2000. The request was a follow-up to previous communication on August 11, 2006, made with Sigma Huda, UN Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons. In 2006 the three Special Rapporteurs drew on information submitted by individuals and volunteer groups, including FalunHR, raising questions about the identifiable sources of organs, the short waiting times for finding perfectly-matched organs, and the correlation between the sudden increase in organ transplants in China and the beginning of the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. In 2006 Chinese authorities responded only with categorical denials, and failed to address the critical issues raised by the Special Rapporteurs, according to a syndicated MarketWire report. The follow-up communication by Ms. Jahangir and Mr. Nowak, sent on January 25, 2007, also called on the authorities to address the issues. In November 2008, the United Nations Committee Against Torture made a strong statement on the matter. The Committee, citing the UN special Rapporteur's note that the increase in organ transplant operations coincides with “the beginning of the persecution of [Falun Gong practitioners]”, stated that it is concerned with the information that Falun Gong practitioners "have been extensively subjected to torture and ill-treatment in prisons and that some of them have been used for organ transplants." The Committee called for the state to immediately conduct or commission an independent investigation of the claims of organ harvesting, and take measures to ensure that those responsible for such abuses are prosecuted and punished.

Another investigation was independently undertaken by European Parliament Vice President Edward McMillan-Scott. Mr. McMillan-Scott was able to go to China on a fact finding mission on May 19-21, 2006 where had the opportunity to interview two witnesses Cao Dong and Niu Jinping. About his meeting with Cao Dong, Mr. McMillan-Scott reports that on being enquired "whether he was aware of any organ harvesting camps in China, he said he definitely knew of them and knew people who had been sent to them. He had seen the cadaver of one of his friends, a Falun Gong practitioner, with holes in his body where the organs had been removed." Shortly following his meeting with McMillan Scott, Cao Dong was arrested. The authorities transferred him to Gansu province and issued an arrest warrant. He was prosecuted in December on four alleged charges. The judges ruled that the case could not go to trial because the case fell within the jurisdiction of the 610 Office in Beijing [the office charged with persecution of the Falun Gong].

Response
Amnesty International stated that it is "continuing to analyze sources of information about the Falun Gong organ harvesting allegations, including the report published by Canadians David Matas and David Kilgour." Amnesty points out that there is "a widely documented practice of the buying and selling of organs of death penalty prisoners in China." The report from Amnesty continues to say that while "it is unknown how many Falun Gong practitioners are being executed by the Chinese authorities...various sources indicate China may be executing between 10,000-15,000 people a year."

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.

David Ownby, a noted expert on Falun Gong, said "Organ harvesting is happening in China, but I see no evidence proving it is aimed particularly at Falun Gong practitioners." Glen McGregor of theOttawa Citizen said "Depending on who you believe, the Kilgour-Matas report is either compelling evidence that proves the claims about Falun Gong... or a collection of conjecture and inductive reasoning that fails to support its own conclusions". He said he was one of the few journalists who had not treated the report as fact, and that he had for this reason been compared to holocaust deniers by Matas and Kilgour. McGregor said that the allegation is "a substantial escalation that none of these groups [Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the UN's Special Rapporteur on torture] have confirmed".

The Christian Science Monitor says the report’s evidence is circumstantial but persuasive.

Impact on international transplant policies
On August 14, 2006, a statement from the US National Kidney Foundation (NKF), referring to the Kilgour Matas Reports, stated that the foundation "is deeply concerned about recent allegations regarding the procurement of organs and tissues through coercive or or exploitative practices" and that "any act which calls the ethical practice of donation and transplantation into question should be condemned by the worldwide transplantation community." The statement from NKF also condemned organ transplant tourism in general.

In December 2006, the Australian Health Ministry announced the abolition of training programs for Chinese doctors in organ transplant procedures in the Prince Charles and the Princess Alexandra Hospitals and the banning of joint research programs with China on organ transplantation. .

The Medical Post, on March 11, 2008, reported that a petition signed by 140 Canadian Physicians "urging the Canadian Government to issue travel advisories warning Canadians that organ transplants in China are sourced almost entirely from non-consenting people, whether prisoners sentenced to death or Falun Gong practitioners", was submitted to the Canadian House of Commons. In February 2008, Canadian Member of Parliament Borys Wrzesnewskyj introduced a bill that would make it illegal for Canadians to get an organ transplant abroad if the organ was taken from an unwilling victim. Wrzesnewskyj states that the final impetus to introduce the bill was the findings of the Kilgour-Matas report. .

In early 2007, Israeli health insurance carriers stopped sending patients to China for transplants. This was in part related to an investigation in which Israeli authorities arrested several men for tax evasion in connection with a company that mediated transplants of Chinese prisoners’ organs for Israelis. One of the men had stated in an undercover interview that the organs came from “people who oppose the regime, those sentenced to death and from prisoners of the Falun Gong.”

Rabbi Yosef Shalom Eliashiv prohibited Jews from deriving any benefit from Chinese organ harvesting, "even in life-threatening situations". OtherRabbis oppose the use of Chinese organs for transplants. In October 2006, the Chairman of the Taiwan Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), Joseph Wu, stated that Taiwan condemned, "in the strongest possible terms", China's harvesting of human organs from executed Falun Gong practitioners. In August 2007, a statement from Hou Sheng-mao, Director of Taiwan's Department of Health, urged Taiwanese Doctors to not encourage patients to get commercial organ transplants in mainland China.

Response of Chinese authorities
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. "[T]he so-called 'independent investigation report' made by a few Canadians based on rumors and false allegations 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.

Amnesty International, responding to statements from the Chinese government, stated: Amnesty International has noted the response of the Chinese authorities to the Canadian report, which states among other things that China has 'consistently abided by the relevant guiding principles of the World Health Organization endorsed in 1991, prohibiting the sale of human organs and stipulating that donors' written consent must be obtained beforehand'. Amnesty International considers this statement to be at odds with the facts in view of the widely documented practice of the buying and selling of organs of death penalty prisoners in China.

The January, 2007 revision of the Kilgour-Matas reports state that the Chinese government claim of having "consistently abided" by the relevant World Health Organization principles is unsubstantiated by facts. They note that the Chinese Transplantation Network Assistance Centre Website until April, 2006 carried a price list for transplants, archived version of which are still available online and also that many individuals can attest to paying for organ transplants in China. They state that the Chinese government's claim of written consent being obtained beforehand is also belied by the facts. They note Human Rights Watch documenting that consent is obtained from executed prisoners in only a minority of cases and that "the abusive circumstances of detention and incarceration in China, from the time a person is first accused of a capital offense until the moment of his or her execution, are such as to render absurd any notion of "free and voluntary consent.""

Matas told the United States Committee on International Relations that he and Kilgour are reinforced in their conclusions by "the feeble response of the Government of China." He says that despite their resources and inside knowledge, they have not provided any information to counter the report. "Instead," he said, "they have attacked us personally and, more worrisome, attacked the Falun Gong with the very sort of verbal abuse which we have identified as one of the reasons we believe these atrocities are occurring."

David Matas says that he and Kilgour find it hard to take the Chinese government's line seriously, "China will deny all abuses of human rights in the most frivolous manner imaginable," he said at a public forum in Brisbane. "David Kilgour and I have been around the world talking about our report, and have engaged with the government of China on human rights abuses. And the types of response we get are silly in the extreme," Matas said. According to Matas, the Chinese government claimed the report is "filled with rumors," though "every single piece of evidence in the report is independently verifiable." He said that the Chinese government "very often... manufacture[s] quotes. They say we said something, put it in quotation marks, and then disagree with this manufactured quote... our report is on the website, and you can word check it and see that these manufactured quotes are not real. So it’s hard for us to take these kinds of opposition seriously..." What they’re engaged in is propaganda and disinformation, rather than real debate."