Globe: China Organ Harvesting Bits & Pieces
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July 6, Globe, China harvesting organs, Canadians say, (Source).
July 7, Globe, Shadow falls on 41,500 transplants, (Source).
July 6, Globe, China harvesting organs, Canadians say, (Back).
Report says Falun Gong practitioners are targeted for involuntary transplants, Campbell Clark
OTTAWA -- A former federal cabinet minister and a prominent lawyer will report today that they have found credible evidence that the organs of Falun Gong adherents in China are being harvested for paid transplants, and will call for international pressure to stop it.
The report, by former Liberal cabinet minister David Kilgour and Winnipeg immigration and rights lawyer David Matas, will call for international human-rights organizations to take the allegations seriously, and for governments and international bodies to shun China's burgeoning transplant industry until it is stopped.
"Alarming is an understatement," Mr. Kilgour said yesterday. "We simply can come to no other conclusion than that this is going on, on a large scale. That vital organs are being taken from people involuntarily in large numbers.
"All of the 'donors' -- in quotation marks -- are killed in process. Because they don't just take one of your kidneys. From what we've learned, they take both of your kidneys, and anything else that anybody might want."
Many of the alleged victims are in prisons.
Falun Gong practitioners have pressed claims, which China has denied, that their adherents are being used as living organ stocks for transplant centres that offer quick supply of organs to foreign and Chinese people who are willing to pay.
U.S. State Department officials have expressed concern over the allegations, but said they are unable to verify them. The United Nations' Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak, said in April he is trying to investigate the claims.
Mr. Kilgour, Canada's former secretary of state for the Asia-Pacific region, said that he and Mr. Matas conducted their two-month investigation through interviews with people in Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia, but they were not able to get a visa to visit China.
Some interviewees were Falun Gong practitioners, but many others were not, Mr. Kilgour said. One woman reported that her husband, a doctor, had taken 2,000 corneas from Falun Gong practitioners over a two-year period.
The investigation also included recorded phone calls -- something like a sting operation -- in which callers asked officials at Chinese institutions about obtaining a kidney or a liver for a relative.
"Probably our most damaging evidence for the government of China is the conversations that some of their officials in jails, and hospitals, and even one of the courts, had with people . . . about how they could get organs from Falun Gong practitioners," Mr. Kilgour said.
"The person will say yes -- in one case I'm thinking of, they say, we've got five or six of them here available, and they're in their 30s, and they're male, so come and sort of pick one out."
Mr. Kilgour said the report will call for criminal authorities to investigate the allegations for possible prosecution, for human-rights organizations with more resources to conduct their own investigations, and for governments to press for a UN human-rights investigation.
It will also call for governments to shun China's rapidly growing transplant industry, refusing visas to Chinese doctors seeking to travel abroad for transplant training, toughen laws to require doctors to report evidence that patients have received trafficked organs, and prevent or discourage their own citizens from travelling to China for transplants.
The millions of adherents of the Falun Gong movement -- called a meditation practice by some but a religion by others -- are viewed with deep suspicion by the Chinese government.
China denies the many claims of persecution, but its official media portray Falun Gong as a dangerous cult, and Mr. Kilgour said there can be no doubt there has been a massive "propaganda" campaign to discredit it.
July 7, Globe, Shadow falls on 41,500 transplants, (Back).
Report by Canadian lawyers alleges China is killing Falun Gong members for organs, Jeff Sallot
OTTAWA -- An estimated 41,500 transplant operations in China were probably performed using organs of imprisoned Falun Gong members killed by Chinese authorities, says a report released yesterday by two prominent Canadian lawyers.
There is no other possible source for the organs used in transplants between 2000 and 2005, says the report by David Matas, a Winnipeg human-rights lawyer, and David Kilgour, a former prosecutor who was also a federal Liberal cabinet secretary for Asian affairs.
"Where do the organs come from for the 41,500 transplants? The allegation of organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners provides an answer," the report says. The authors say they ruled out all other sources, including the relatively small number of other Chinese prisoners executed for crimes.
A new Chinese law governing organ transplants came into effect last week after reports in Western news media that Chinese hospitals were advertising on-line that they had fresh kidneys, corneas and other organs for foreign customers frustrated with long waits.
The law limits transplant surgery to a relatively small number of Chinese hospitals that must certify that the organs come from "legal sources." Hospital ethics committees must approve all transplants.
The authors say they welcome the new law, but wonder whether it is simply window dressing. Chinese authorities routinely ignore human-rights laws and are known to torture prisoners, Mr. Matas said.
The widespread killing of Falun Gong members for profit to provide organs for transplants is "so shocking that it represents a new form of evil in the world," Mr. Matas said.
"It's hard for anybody in this room to believe it. It was hard for us to believe," Mr. Kilgour said during a news conference.
Yet after a two-month investigation of the available evidence -- much of it admittedly circumstantial -- the two men believe the allegation to be true based on a civil-law standard of "balance of probability."
They acknowledge that they have no direct evidence, but say that putting together the pieces, it is hard to come to any conclusion other than that healthy Chinese are being killed to harvest their organs.
The Washington-based Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong commissioned the report. Other international human-rights groups have said they are concerned by the reports of forced organ-harvesting, but do not have the evidence to prove prisoners are executed for this sole purpose.
Mr. Kilgour said he was shaken after listening to the in-camera testimony of a Chinese woman who said her husband, an eye surgeon, had participated in the harvesting of corneas from about 2,000 anesthetized Falun Gong prisoners in China during a two-year period ending in late 2003. The woman was interviewed in the United States, where she now lives. She does not want to be identified for her own safety.
The report acknowledges the difficulty corroborating the woman's story.
The authors also heard tapes and read transcripts of translated telephone conversations with Chinese medical officials who told Falun Gong members posing as patients that fresh organs were available on short notice at their hospitals.
The pretext calls were made over the past few months. In one call to a hospital in Wuhan, the caller asked whether the kidney suppliers are alive, saying: "We're looking for live organ transplants from prisoners, for example, using living bodies from prisoners who practise Falun Gong. Is it possible?" The hospital official replied, "It's not a problem."
(Back)
July 7, Globe, Shadow falls on 41,500 transplants, (Source).
July 6, Globe, China harvesting organs, Canadians say, (Back).
Report says Falun Gong practitioners are targeted for involuntary transplants, Campbell Clark
OTTAWA -- A former federal cabinet minister and a prominent lawyer will report today that they have found credible evidence that the organs of Falun Gong adherents in China are being harvested for paid transplants, and will call for international pressure to stop it.
The report, by former Liberal cabinet minister David Kilgour and Winnipeg immigration and rights lawyer David Matas, will call for international human-rights organizations to take the allegations seriously, and for governments and international bodies to shun China's burgeoning transplant industry until it is stopped.
"Alarming is an understatement," Mr. Kilgour said yesterday. "We simply can come to no other conclusion than that this is going on, on a large scale. That vital organs are being taken from people involuntarily in large numbers.
"All of the 'donors' -- in quotation marks -- are killed in process. Because they don't just take one of your kidneys. From what we've learned, they take both of your kidneys, and anything else that anybody might want."
Many of the alleged victims are in prisons.
Falun Gong practitioners have pressed claims, which China has denied, that their adherents are being used as living organ stocks for transplant centres that offer quick supply of organs to foreign and Chinese people who are willing to pay.
U.S. State Department officials have expressed concern over the allegations, but said they are unable to verify them. The United Nations' Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak, said in April he is trying to investigate the claims.
Mr. Kilgour, Canada's former secretary of state for the Asia-Pacific region, said that he and Mr. Matas conducted their two-month investigation through interviews with people in Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia, but they were not able to get a visa to visit China.
Some interviewees were Falun Gong practitioners, but many others were not, Mr. Kilgour said. One woman reported that her husband, a doctor, had taken 2,000 corneas from Falun Gong practitioners over a two-year period.
The investigation also included recorded phone calls -- something like a sting operation -- in which callers asked officials at Chinese institutions about obtaining a kidney or a liver for a relative.
"Probably our most damaging evidence for the government of China is the conversations that some of their officials in jails, and hospitals, and even one of the courts, had with people . . . about how they could get organs from Falun Gong practitioners," Mr. Kilgour said.
"The person will say yes -- in one case I'm thinking of, they say, we've got five or six of them here available, and they're in their 30s, and they're male, so come and sort of pick one out."
Mr. Kilgour said the report will call for criminal authorities to investigate the allegations for possible prosecution, for human-rights organizations with more resources to conduct their own investigations, and for governments to press for a UN human-rights investigation.
It will also call for governments to shun China's rapidly growing transplant industry, refusing visas to Chinese doctors seeking to travel abroad for transplant training, toughen laws to require doctors to report evidence that patients have received trafficked organs, and prevent or discourage their own citizens from travelling to China for transplants.
The millions of adherents of the Falun Gong movement -- called a meditation practice by some but a religion by others -- are viewed with deep suspicion by the Chinese government.
China denies the many claims of persecution, but its official media portray Falun Gong as a dangerous cult, and Mr. Kilgour said there can be no doubt there has been a massive "propaganda" campaign to discredit it.
July 7, Globe, Shadow falls on 41,500 transplants, (Back).
Report by Canadian lawyers alleges China is killing Falun Gong members for organs, Jeff Sallot
OTTAWA -- An estimated 41,500 transplant operations in China were probably performed using organs of imprisoned Falun Gong members killed by Chinese authorities, says a report released yesterday by two prominent Canadian lawyers.
There is no other possible source for the organs used in transplants between 2000 and 2005, says the report by David Matas, a Winnipeg human-rights lawyer, and David Kilgour, a former prosecutor who was also a federal Liberal cabinet secretary for Asian affairs.
"Where do the organs come from for the 41,500 transplants? The allegation of organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners provides an answer," the report says. The authors say they ruled out all other sources, including the relatively small number of other Chinese prisoners executed for crimes.
A new Chinese law governing organ transplants came into effect last week after reports in Western news media that Chinese hospitals were advertising on-line that they had fresh kidneys, corneas and other organs for foreign customers frustrated with long waits.
The law limits transplant surgery to a relatively small number of Chinese hospitals that must certify that the organs come from "legal sources." Hospital ethics committees must approve all transplants.
The authors say they welcome the new law, but wonder whether it is simply window dressing. Chinese authorities routinely ignore human-rights laws and are known to torture prisoners, Mr. Matas said.
The widespread killing of Falun Gong members for profit to provide organs for transplants is "so shocking that it represents a new form of evil in the world," Mr. Matas said.
"It's hard for anybody in this room to believe it. It was hard for us to believe," Mr. Kilgour said during a news conference.
Yet after a two-month investigation of the available evidence -- much of it admittedly circumstantial -- the two men believe the allegation to be true based on a civil-law standard of "balance of probability."
They acknowledge that they have no direct evidence, but say that putting together the pieces, it is hard to come to any conclusion other than that healthy Chinese are being killed to harvest their organs.
The Washington-based Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong commissioned the report. Other international human-rights groups have said they are concerned by the reports of forced organ-harvesting, but do not have the evidence to prove prisoners are executed for this sole purpose.
Mr. Kilgour said he was shaken after listening to the in-camera testimony of a Chinese woman who said her husband, an eye surgeon, had participated in the harvesting of corneas from about 2,000 anesthetized Falun Gong prisoners in China during a two-year period ending in late 2003. The woman was interviewed in the United States, where she now lives. She does not want to be identified for her own safety.
The report acknowledges the difficulty corroborating the woman's story.
The authors also heard tapes and read transcripts of translated telephone conversations with Chinese medical officials who told Falun Gong members posing as patients that fresh organs were available on short notice at their hospitals.
The pretext calls were made over the past few months. In one call to a hospital in Wuhan, the caller asked whether the kidney suppliers are alive, saying: "We're looking for live organ transplants from prisoners, for example, using living bodies from prisoners who practise Falun Gong. Is it possible?" The hospital official replied, "It's not a problem."
(Back)
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