In March 2006, Falun Gong affiliated media The Epoch Times 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.^[1] 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.^[2] 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.^[2]

The first series of allegations were based on apparent eye-witness testimony of two individuals, and directed specifically at the Sujiatun Thrombosis Hospital in Shenyang, Liaoning province.^[3] 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.^[4]

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" stated that large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners are victims of systematic organ harvesting, whilst still alive, throughout China.^[5] According to the authors, their report is mostly based on publicly verifiable information. The report concluded that the practice is ongoing.^[5]

Their findings have received mixed responses. Sources such as investigative reports from Sky News ^[6] corroborated the findings of the Kilgour-Matas reports. 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, ^[7] while the Christian Science Monitor says the report’s evidence is circumstantial but persuasive.^[8] The authors maintain that their conclusion has not been refuted.

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.^[1] 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, "After their organs were cut out, some of these people were thrown directly into the crematorium to be burnt," she alleged.^[3] Another anonymous source included a 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 by closed freight train on special routes, "handcuffed like rotisserie chickens," he alleged.^[9]

On May 20, 2006, Mr. 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 stated 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.^[10]

According to a US congressional report, these witness has refused to speak with government investigators. [4]

The Washington Times also reported on the case. A journalist seeking political asylum in the United States, "Jin Zhong", also claimed knowledge of the harvesting operation, and added that hospital workers had taken jewelry and watches from the dead and sold them.^[11]

International response

On Apr 19, 2006, Sky News went undercover with cameras inside Chinese hospitals where nurses and doctors confirmed readily-available organs are taken from prisoners, and that the hospital's abundance of donors is due to its close connections with Chinese security forces. Sky News' Website says that "China has been accused of taking organs from executed prisoners to supply the international transplant market. British surgeons say there is evidence that prisoners are being selected as potential donors before they are killed."^[12]

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.^[13]

Doubts

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.^[14]. Amnesty International, responding to Chinese government's statements on the issue, pointed out that it considers them 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."^[15]

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.^[16] He said the story was merely hearsay from two witnesses: "No pictures, no witnesses, no paperwork, no detailed information at all, nothing."^[17]

David Kilgour accounted for Wu's apparent lack of evidence by contending that by March 9 “the whistle was blown.”^[18] Kilgour and Matas later accused Wu of bad faith for drawing his conclusions without interviewing the witnesses, though Wu maintained that he was denied access to them.^[5]

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.^[4][19]

However some news reports, including by The Epoch Times, focused on the publicly announced investigation by the State Department, which took place three weeks after the initial allegations came to light. They alleged that by then the Chinese government had cleaned up.

The Kilgour-Matas Report

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:^[20].

Based on our further research, we are reinforced in our original conclusion that the allegations are true. We believe that there has been and continues today to be large scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners.

We have concluded that the government of China and its agencies in numerous parts of the country, in particular hospitals but also detention centres 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 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 presents 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. “Where every possible element of disproof we could identify fails to disprove the allegations, the likelihood of the allegations being true becomes substantial.”^[5]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.^[5] On July 6, 2006, Matas told reporters that the Chinese government, which has repeatedly denied similar allegations,^[21][22] refused entry visas to China for the pair to investigate further.^[23]

The pair say that corruption is rife in China, which provides an incentive to break the law and make profit from selling organs, and that there is no self-governing body for transplant ethics.

Details of alleged organ removal

China has no organized donation system, as in western countries. There is also a cultural aversion to organ donation, such that even if there were a system in place, donations would be scarce. The authors say these factors severely limit the availability of voluntarily donated organs for transplant.

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 Falun Gong constitutes an additional prison population which the authorities vilify and dehumanize even more than executed prisoners sentenced to death for criminal offences."^[24]

Of 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.^[25] 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 "come nowhere near to explaining the total number of transplants across China." They said that "the only other identified source which can explain the skyrocketing transplant numbers is Falun Gong practitioners."^[24]

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 “astonishingly short” waiting times.

The authors refer to a number of interviews with organ recipients, who gave similar accounts. The organ transplant surgery is “conducted in almost total secrecy,”^[5] 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.”^[5]

They recount the anecdote of an individual who received an organ from a military-run hospital.

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.

The military have access to prisons and prisoners. Their operations are even more secretive than those of the civilian government. They are impervious to the rule of law.

Chinese transplant websites

Kilgour and Matas regard the information found on Chinese hospital websites “incriminating.” They refer to one site which claims that internal organs can be found 'immediately!'; the FAQ section on denies that organs come from “brain death (sic)” patients. Another shows various graphs with soaring organ transplantation figures—these start going up after 1999, when the persecution of Falun Gong began.

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.

They also state that China is a huge buyer of anti-rejection drugs for transplants, as with the use of these drugs it is not necessary to tissue-match.

Falun Gong specific considerations

Their report gives background to human rights violations in China, in particular the persecution of Falun Gong, including the campaign to incite public hatred toward the group, and the widespread torture of practitioners in custody.

Kilgour and Matas state that one of the “most disturbing” moments in researching the report was the discovery of a massive population of imprisoned Falun gong practitioners who remained unidentified. Falun Gong prisoners of conscience may refuse to give their names for fear of repercussions for their families. In these cases, no one outside the prison system knows their whereabouts. They state 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 'disappearances', the authors contend, are ready candidates for live organ harvesting.^[5]

The authors also point to evidence that Falun Gong practitioners are systematically blood and urine tested, and have their organs examined while in custody, while other prisoners, who are not practitioners, are not tested. "This differential testing occurs in labour camps, prisons and detention centres. We have heard such a large number of testimonials to this effect that this differential testing exists beyond a shadow of a doubt."^[5]

Practitioners are not told the reason for being tested or examined; Kilgour and Matas write that it is not for health purposes, "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."^[5]

They also point out 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."^[5]

This is also an avenue of proof/disproof, according to Kilgour and Matas, because "The mere fact of blood testing and organ examination does not establish that organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners is taking place. But the opposite is true. If there were no blood testing, the allegation would be disproved. The widespread blood testing of Falun Gong practitioners in detention cuts off this avenue of disproof."^[5]

Practitioners regularly die in custody due to torture or ill-treatment, "In a few cases, between death and cremation," Kilgour and Matas say, "family members of Falun Gong practitioners were able to see the mutilated corpses of their loved ones. Organs had been removed."^[24]

Recommendations

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.^[26][27][28]

Reception of the Kilgour-Matas report

Doubt

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 doubted the strength of some of the evidence. McGregor referred to Harry Wu’s doubts, complaining of the lack of official paperwork, and lack of people who have emerged to talk about the issue. McGregor wrote: "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 said he was likened to a holocaust denier by Matas and Kilgour. 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.^[29].

Four days later, Matas and Kilgour published a response to McGregor in the same newspaper. The reporter, they wrote, maintained that the Chinese authorities should not be regarded as guilty based on circumstantial evidence, "no matter how overwhelming." They rhetorically suggested that only if McGregor saw "a smoking scalpel, a confessing surgeon or a surviving organ 'donor'" would he support the conclusion of their report. They 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. "It is easy to take each element in isolation, and say that this element or that does not prove the claim. It is their combination which led us to the chilling conclusion to which we came," they said.^[24]

McGregor admitted that he had been flown to China to inspect Sujiatun on a trip sponsored by the Chinese Medical Association (CMA); in his article he defended this by characterizing it as a non-government organization which has criticized Beijing’s policies. A letter by the Falun Dafa Association was later published in the Ottawa Citizen, saying that the CMA receives its funding from the communist regime, that more than half of its presidents have also been Chinese minister or deputy minister of health, and that the association had years earlier taken an active role in the persecution of Falun Gong, which made “any investigation arranged or sponsored by this organization immediately lose… its credibility.”^[30]

Amnesty International states that they are "continuing to analyse sources of information about the Falun Gong organ harvesting allegations, including the report published by Canadians David Matas and David Kilgour." Apart from this they concede "a widely documented practice of the buying and selling of organs of death penalty prisoners in China." Amnesty says the lack of transparency surrounding these practices make it impossible to determine whether written consent was obtained. They state that Falun Gong executions by Chinese authorities are unknown. "While Chinese authorities conceal national statistics on the death penalty as a 'state secret', various sources indicate China may be executing between 10,000-15,000 people a year."^[31]

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.^[4]

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.^[32] He qualified that the caller contacted numerous hospitals across China, "and... many of the people were smart enough to say they shouldn't say this, but about 15 across the country people were either vain enough, or foolish enough or honest enough, to fess up to what was available..." "China is such a big country and the system is so massive, they weren't able to tell everybody, 'Don't say a word'... as recently as June... these calls were being put through and in some cases these extraordinary admissions were being made."^[32]

Corroboration

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. He writes: "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."^[33]

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 concludes: "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."^[34]

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.^[35] 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.^[35] The follow-up communication by Ms. Jahangir and Mr. Nowak, sent on January 25, 2007, also called on the authorities to address the issues.

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 said: "There is no live organ bank in China and there is no intention to open one."^[36] Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv prohibited Jews from deriving any benefit from Chinese organ harvesting, "even in life-threatening situations". Other Rabbis oppose the use of Chinese organs for transplants.^[37]

On August 14, 2006, the US National Kidney Foundation released a statement expressing their concerns in response to the "Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Practitioners in China" by Kilgour and Matas.^[38]

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. "[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.

The 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.^[39]

David Matas says that he and Kilgour find it hard to take 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.^[40] "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."^[40]

References

External links

• The Kilgour and Matas report

See also

• Wenyi Wang
• Persecution of Falun Gong