Organ Harvesting from Live Falun Gong Practitioners

From as early as December 22, 2000, Clearwisdom Net has reported that Falun Gong practitioners' organs were stolen and sold for profit by the Chinese Communist regime. According to sources, a Chinese medical hospital in Shijiazhuang had already received six quota.

The startling truth of live organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioner only came to receive international attention in March 2006. On March 9, 2006, an informant (journalist) revealed that more than 6,000 Falun Gong practitioners have been detained in a concentration camp in Sujiatun, where practitioners' organs were harvested and bodies cremated.

On March 17, another witness came forth - ex-wife of a former corneal surgeon who was involved in the harvesting activity at Sujiatun. Even more startling facts were brought to light by her. She affirmed the testimony of the previous witness that after Falun Gong practitioners' bodies were harvested of their livers, kidneys, corneas and other organs, the bodies were immediately cremated to destroy the evidence. Moreover, she revealed that the Sujiatun labor camp had begun its inhumane harvesting for profiteering from as early as 2001 and it reached a peak in 2003. Approximately 6,000 Falun Gong practitioners were secretly detained there and no one has come out alive. Victims of cornea removal were mostly elderly people and small children. She said the brutality of the live organ harvesting and the cruelty of immediate cremation caused her ex-husband tremendous guilt and conflict. By disclosing this crime, she hopes to save those who have not met with such ill fate yet, and also help redeem her ex-husband.

Following these two witnesses, a third witness - an elderly military doctor from the Shenyang Military District, stepped forward on March 31 with his testimony: He said the Sujiatun underground labor camp indeed exists, and live organ harvesting is committed on a very large scale. Moreover, the incineration of corpses - even people who are still alive, is also wide spread. However, according to this witness, Sujiatun is just one of at least the 36 similar concentration camps throughout China. He explained that even if one were to enter Sujiatun to initiate an investigation right now, it would be hard to obtain evidence, simply for the fact that transferring thousands of people away from the site is a very simple job; 5,000 people can be relocated in a single day. He also commented that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Government sees Falun Gong practitioners as "class enemies" and the usual procedures and laws do not apply to them; they are treated as a commodity to fulfill economic development requirements, however ruthless it might be.

The Chinese Communist Party strangely remained silent for the immediate two weeks following the appearance of the first witness. On March 27, it announced new “Temporal Regulations on Clinical Use and Management of Human Organ Transplants”. The following day the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied the accusations of illegal organ harvesting and invited the international community to tour and inspect the Sujiatun hospital. Foreign analysts believe that in the more than two weeks' time the CCP had more than enough time to transfer detainees and eliminate all evidence. Moreover, its “Temporal Regulations on Clinical Use and Management of Human Organ Transplants” was only to come into effect on July 1, which gave the regime three months – more than enough time to destroy and eliminate incriminating evidence, and worst of all, speed up their rate of killing Falun Gong practitioners for profit.

Even though the CCP has wholly denied the existence of organ harvesting in Sujiatun and has invited the international community to investigate, three overseas media, The Epoch Times, Sound of Hope (SOH) Radio Station, and New Tang Dynasty TV's visa applications to carry out investigations in mainland China were rejected.

Reporters of SOH made calls to several major hospitals and organ transplant centers in Hubei, Shanghai, Liaoning, Beijing and Shaanxi to investigate. Amongst their findings, all these hospitals had one similarity in their replies: there would be large amounts of donors before the end of April, and the numbers of donors would be drastically reduced after that. They recommended that people seeking organ transplants grab this opportunity fast. Moreover, independent investigations by other groups and human rights organizations have revealed that many hospitals and organ transplant centers in China are speeding up their organ transplant operations, suggesting that the CCP is going all out to destroy all material evidence and witnesses in these three months. A large massacre is taking place, and this calls for no less than an emergency.

To date (August, 2006), more and more clues and evidence suggest that organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners is widely taking place in labor camps, detention centers, prisons, concentration camps, hospitals as well as other locations of imprisonment of Falun Gong practitioners throughout China. The scale and severity is unprecedented.

At the same time, the sharp rise in the number of organ transplants in China and the short waiting time to find a matching donor indicates the presence of a large live organ bank. The recorded number of organ transplants far exceeds the sum total of voluntary organ donation and all death penalty prisoners in China each year. The very large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners who are considered the number one enemy of the state and who have been brutally persecuted by the Chinese authorities for the last seven years, are a most obvious source of this ample, unaccounted for organ supply.

Under the CCP's directive to destroy Falun Gong, policemen have illegally abducted Falun Gong practitioners without having to display any identification. Families have no visitation rights or even remain totally uninformed as to the whereabouts of their detained family members. Some practitioners are imprisoned for prolonged periods of time while being forbidden to write to family members or even meet them when they visit. Also, they are afforded no legal representation or recourse. Under such circumstances, many families are totally unaware of the life and death circumstances of their loved ones in detention. Illegally imprisoned practitioners are also frequently transferred secretly between locations. News of losing Falun Gong practitioners' whereabouts after they have been illegally abducted by the police come forth from within mainland China on a very frequent basis. According the the testimonies of many witnesses and practitioners' family members, many of these practitioners who have been persecuted to death and whose bodies have been returned to their families, have had their organs stolen. Most of the time families only receive their ashes after they have been cremated without the families’ consent. Testimony has also come from many practitioners who had been held in prisons and other camps and who were eventually released or escaped, that they were forced to undergo all kinds of physical health exams and blood tests. This had always puzzled them, because they had been treated so inhumanely, they could not understand why the authorities wanted to know or cared about their state of health.

Judging from the presently available information, it is very possible that the recently exposed live organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners is only the tip of the iceberg of the crimes committed in this massive, state orchestrated genocide. It is not a question of whether the live organ harvesting campaign exists or not, but a question of its scale, severity and widespread nature. Under the airtight information blockade by the CCP, it is hard for outsiders to fully understand the actual situation of this persecution. Much more investigation is badly needed.

On the Falun Gong side, Falun Dafa Association and Clearwisdom Net have started to invite people from all walks of life around the world to join the investigation into the persecution of Falun Gong in China. Related international organizations, NGOs, governmental agencies and media have all been invited to conjoin the “Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong” (CIPFG). The CIPFG has requested to travel to mainland China to undertake an independent, direct, and unhindered investigation of Sujiatun and all other related labor camps, prisons, hospitals, etc. to assess the true extent of the organ harvesting and the persecution of Falun Gong. The CIPFG has already gained much support from VIPs in many countries.

On July 6, after two months of investigation, a Canadian team comprising of former Canadian Member of Parliament and Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific Affairs, David Kilgour, and of international human rights lawyer David Matas, published their own, independent “Report Into Allegations of Live Organ Harvesting from Falun Gong Practitioners in China.” The report states, “The government of China and its agencies in numerous parts of the country, in particular hospitals but also detention centers and ‘people’s courts’, since 1999, have put to death a large but unknown number of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience. Their vital organs, including hearts, kidneys, livers and corneas, were virtually simultaneously seized 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 concludes, based on telephone conversations with doctors and other staff at hospitals in China that organ harvesting from live Falun Gong practitioners is still in operation today (English report; Chinese translation). According to reports by the Canadian Press, the Canadian government is taking these allegations very seriously and considers conducting an investigation.

For more information, please refer to:

Organ Harvesting in China's Labor Camps:

http://www.theepochtimes.com/211,111,,1.html