March 13, 2013

[FOFG Editors's note: This is the translation of an article that appeared in the German periodical, Die ZEIT, which was posted on the website of Doctors's Against Forced Organ Harvesting.]

In China body organs are taken from executed prisoners, and for a fee, are then implanted in patients from the West.

When Beijing attorney Han Bing published his latest blog on December 6, 2012, he must have known he was placing himself at serious risk. His report spread like wildfire via the Chinese wire service Sina Weibo. “On this very morning,” Han reported, “a frightful execution took place.” A prisoner sentenced to death was reportedly executed although the highest Chinese court, a few days before, had ordered the case to be reexamined. Apparently, for the responsible parties, this was too long a wait. The prisoner’s body organs were needed and had to be in the best possible condition. There was no other explanation for why the execution took place in a clinic, according to the attorney’s report. “These unscrupulous judges and doctors are transforming a hospital into a place of execution – a marketplace for the organ trade,” Han wrote.

The attorney reports that the condemned man was forced to sign a document affirming his “voluntary” consent of the organ harvesting. His family members were not allowed to see him for a final visit although it was their right to do so. “We plan to appeal,” the attorney announced on behalf of the surviving dependents.

Han’s account was forwarded more than 18,000 times within a single day, and more than 5,600 people posted comments. Then the blog was erased.

This example of an anonymous execution victim is not an isolated case. Statistically China is second worldwide, just behind the USA, for numbers of organ transplants. It is an accomplishment that fills the regime with pride. Every year more than 10,000 kidneys, livers, hearts and lungs are transplanted in China, as reported last year by Vice Minister of Health Huang Jiefu – himself a transplant specialist – in the medical journal The Lancet. His statistics indicate that more than 60 percent of these organs are taken from executed prisoners. The frankness of the report is astonishing. Until a few years ago, the government rejected all foreign reports on China’s questionable transplant practices as propaganda.

A person dies just in time to permit another person to continue living. This is possible in the Chinese transplant system. In the name of progress, in the name of money – including Western money, as will be seen.

The number of persons executed in China is a state secret. It is estimated that approximately 4,000 executions of prisoners take place in China per year. Those convicted are killed by a bullet to the head or by lethal injection. Insiders report that transplant clinics cooperate with prisons and send out their own teams for the organ removal. It is quite possible that physicians take part in executions.

Intensive research is conducted in China on ways to perform lethal injection without damaging the organs. Wang Lijun, the former chief of police of Jinzhou, received a long prison sentence last year following a political scandal. Wang headed a psychological-forensic research institute for several years. In 2006 Wang’s studies of execution methods brought him the country’s prestigious Guanghua Innovation Special Contribution Award. The award is the equivalent of about 200,000 Euros. The citation stated that he had developed a “brand-new protective fluid” for organs, ensuring successful transplants from executed prisoners despite lethal injection. In his acceptance remarks, Wang said he had conducted his execution experiments “on several thousand persons.” He called the experience “heart-wrenching.”

Elsewhere in the world, such reports trigger outrage. But there is one thing that scarcely anyone knows: The west is deeply implicated in the unethical Chinese system. Patients in western countries have to thank Chinese execution victims for their new kidneys, livers and hearts. Pharmaceutical firms supply the Chinese market with anti-rejection drugs, and conduct research on transplantation practices that in all likelihood have come from the use of organs from executed prisoners. Western clinics and doctors support China’s transplant centers, no questions asked. Western consultants to the Chinese government claim to be encouraging change in transplant practices, while at the same time they pursue business interests in China. Vehicles from the West are converted into mobile medical execution units. A Chinese car dealer, for example, offers a European-brand vehicle with medical monitoring equipment and infusion devices for sale on the Internet – a grisly symbol for the hand-in-hand work between executioners and doctors.

The various participants of China’s transplant industry and the physicians who violate the most basic ethical principles of their profession and prefer to stay silent, and cross the moral line between cooperation and complicity, make up the basis for this story. The question is: What is the impact of deteriorating medical ethics, the impact of ambitious research for personal gain and the impact of financial profit? And where must the West draw the line to avoid complicity, to avoid the guilt?

Attorney Han Bing and his clients do not know who received the organs from the man who was executed in December, but there are patients who do come forward and speak of their transplant surgery in China. Mordechai Shtiglits lives with his wife in Petach Tikwa, near Tel Aviv. At age 63, despite his 120 kilos, he is a healthy man who loves steaks and is the happiest when spending time with his family. While his wife serves coffee in the living room, he pulls a photograph album out of a drawer. It documents his trip to China, one that for Shtiglits could have been his last.

In November 2005, when he was pushed on board an airplane in a wheelchair, Shtiglits could scarcely put one foot in front of the other. His wife and elder daughter accompanied him to Shanghai. On the day they arrived, Shtiglits was brought to Zhongshan Hospital, one of the largest transplant centers in China. He was given a room in the modern wing, reserved for foreigners and wealthy Chinese patients. There, Shtiglits met patients from Canada, Australia and Hong Kong. Like him, they were waiting for a life-saving operation.

Shtiglits’s own heart was failing, and he was facing the end of his life with just 10 percent functional capacity. With luck, that was just enough to keep him alive. Shtiglits suffered from frequent near fatal cardiac arrests, but each time he was able to be revived. He spent some nights sitting in an upright position in an effort just to breathe.

For a year and a half he lay in the Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv awaiting a new heart. But in Israel, organs are donated even less often than anywhere else in the world. So his family members took matters into their own hands. Shtiglits’s son went on the Internet in search of a new heart for his father. Everywhere he heard the same response, “Yes, you can come, but for a heart you have to reckon with waiting several months.”

But that, the family believed, was time that Shtiglits did not have. Therefore the choice fell on China. Since the state has drastically curtailed its subsidies to hospitals in China, many of them shore up their budgets with organ sales. In China you can receive a new heart within two or three weeks. If you are lucky, like Mordechai Shtiglits, the process can go even faster.

A week after his arrival in Shanghai, his Chinese surgeon informed him that he would receive his new heart on the following day. Shtiglits learned that the donor was 22 years old. He did not ask what had happened to the man. “I was ill, I was at death’s gate,” he says today. “They indicated that he was the victim of a traffic accident.”

That is extremely unlikely. It’s true that more than 60,000 persons die in road accidents each year in China. But even Chinese doctors do not know in advance when someone will die in an accident. And so far there is no central distribution system in the country for quick organ distribution.

Organ harvesting from executed persons is universally frowned upon. Transplants are based on the principle of voluntary organ donation, while prisoners have no freedom of choice. This is the view of the World Medical Association as well as that of The Transplantation Society. But that is not the end of the moral problem with China’s practice. If wealthy patients are to be supplied quickly with an organ, it is not sufficient to wait until a suitable donor happens by chance to be executed or die at the right moment. “Prison officials have to target potential donors on the basis of health, blood and tissue type, and execute them while the tourist is in China,” writes the renowned New York bioethicist Arthur Caplan in the 2012 book State Organs: Transplant Abuse in China: “This is nothing else but killing on demand.”

The history of this gruesome practice is thought to have started in the 1980s. At that time the Chinese transplant system was still in its infancy. But then a marked uptick began. Vice Minister of Health, Huang Jiefu, documented this trend in a presentation he made in Madrid in 2010, stating that the number of transplanted kidneys rose between 1997 and 2005 from 3,000 to 8,500 annually, while the figure for livers increased from 2,000 to about 3,000 a year. The prerequisite for this boom was new and improved anti rejection medications. These are medications that came from the West.

Cyclosporin A, a product of the Swiss Sandoz Corporation, is essential to the survival of transplant patients and has been supplied to China since the mid-1980s. Later, other Swiss firms, Roche and Novartis began to supply life sustaining transplant drugs. Today the owners of Sandoz, as well as the Japanese Astellas Corporation, sell their anti-rejection drugs in the People’s Republic of China. Since 1994, at the latest, these firms would have known about these accusations against China. At that time, the non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch had published a detailed report.

In late 2005, Roche even began producing the anti rejection drug Cellcept inside China. At the opening ceremony for the production center in Shanghai, Roche CEO Franz Humer, according to a report in theHandelsblatt, justified the decision to begin production specifically in China. “Unlike Japan,” he said, “the country has no ethical or cultural barriers to transplantation medicine.”

The Chinese government has no such inhibitions. Citizens, on the other hand, are anxious. They show scarcely any willingness to donate organs voluntarily. Between 2003 and 2009 only 130 organ donors were registered in the entire country. Many Chinese distrust the health care system. They are afraid of being declared dead too early or of being abused by the organ business by donating their organs.

The Western pharmaceutical industry shares responsibility for scientific research in China. Research records list nine clinical studies in China with about 1,200 transplant patients, with whom Wyeth and Pfizer from the USA, Novartis and Roche from Switzerland, and Astellas from Japan have all tested their transplant drugs. Altogether the corporations have cooperated with 20 hospitals in China for these studies.

Die ZEIT asked the pharmaceutical companies how they ensured that no organs from executed persons were included in these studies. A few companies did not respond at all, while others avoided the concrete question. Roche and Pfizer only affirmed that the standards of the World Health Organization (WHO) had been met.

The WHO requires that organization and performance of transplant operations must be “transparent and accessible to scrutiny.” Human rights organizations have often complained that China consistently violates these rules.

It has been seven years since Mordechai Shtiglits received his new heart. Seven years of the gift of life. Shtiglits has to take a quantity of tablets daily, and not just to prevent rejection of his new heart. “My whole body gives me trouble, my kidneys, my legs, my head…But my heart is fine, it works 100 percent.” He laughs. “I have a young heart and an old body.”

Shtiglits spends his afternoons in a small shop at a tennis center where he and his wife sell drinks and sports equipment. While Shtiglits talks about his illness, his 2 1/2-year-old grandson romps around on a toy horse.

Shtiglits says: “Since the transplant operation, my children have married, I’ve experienced the birth of several grandchildren, and more grandchildren are on the way. I thank God – I can’t complain.” If organs of executed prisoners in China were transplanted, it’s all right with him. “The Chinese kill prisoners. That means that a person dies, no matter whether he gives away his heart or not.”

Mordechai Shtiglits’s old heart was removed on November 22, 2005, as is stated in the skimp discharge document issued to him by the doctors of Zhongshan Hospital. It contains only Shtiglits’s clinical condition upon his admission, a few laboratory figures along with data on the administered and recommended medications. Not a word about the donor or the transplanted organ, as is customary in such documents. By the year 2011, 300 hearts had been transplanted at Zhongshan Hospital. In an inquiry from Die ZEIT asking what institutions the hospital collaborated with in organ transplants the clinical leaders did not reply. This is not medical practice that is “transparent and accessible to scrutiny,” as required by the WHO.

The family commemorated the day of the transplant operation with a photograph: Shtiglits in his yarmulke, in prayer with a close friend who lives in Shanghai. At about two o’clock in the afternoon, Shtiglits was moved into the operating room. Shtiglits’s wife Ida and his daughter Osnat waited in the lobby. “In the middle of the operation, the doctor came out and handed me a plastic glove with something bloody in it,” Osnat recalls. “He said: Here’s your father’s pacemaker.”

By the next day, mother and daughter were already able to wave to Shtiglits through a window. He felt better with each passing day. “You could see the color returning to his face,” Osnat says. Her father had a nurse who looked after him around the clock. “The staff was always available. We got the best possible treatment.”

In fact, a few of the large Chinese transplant centers have medical outcomes today that are comparable to those of Western hospitals. But, as Vice Minister of Health Huang stated in the journal Liver Transplantation, “success was not quick and not easy.” Huang, who expresses himself willingly and often in professional circles, left questions from Die ZEIT unanswered. He specializes in transplant surgery in the complex field of liver transplantation. “Entire transplant teams from the People’s Republic have been trained abroad,” he writes. He burnished his skills in Australia.

Huang would probably not be allowed to take part in a transplant operation in Australia today. Medical centers there now impose regulations during the training of Chinese surgeons. Stephen Lynch, chief physician at Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane, requires that applicants submit a written confirmation from their clinical director, or a responsible person in the provincial government, “that the capabilities acquired from us shall not be applied in transplant programs that use executed prisoners as donors.”

German doctors are less scrupulous. At the German Heart Center in Berlin nearly 2,300 hearts have been transplanted since its founding in 1986. The Center cooperates with more than 30 hospitals in the People’s Republic, including transplant centers. As early as 2005, the personal assistant to medical director Roland Hetzer proudly reported on the Radio China International network that the Center had “nine ongoing collaborations with a cooperative agreement or a sign on the door.” This collaboration was initiated by Hetzer’s representative of many years standing, Weng Yuguo, a cardiac surgeon from Sichuan Province who held a German passport. Hetzer stated in May 2012, at a heart surgery conference in Shanghai that, “more than 500 physicians…from China have taken part in our work in Berlin over the years. A few of the surgeons have completed a full training program lasting five years. All of them have done good work after returning to their home country.”

This could be expressed differently. In Germany, Chinese doctors are receiving the skills that allow them to transplant organs from executed prisoners in China. Skills used for human rights violations.

Surgeon Liu Zhongmin is among the physicians who have worked for several years in Berlin. Today he is executive director of the Chinese-German Heart Institute in Shanghai, which was founded in 2000 by the German Heart Center and Shanghai East Hospital. The hospital is the closest cooperative partner of Germans in China. Liu’s qualifications can be found on the Heart Institute’s website. He is said to be responsible for clinical research for heart transplants, artificial hearts and combined heart-lung transplantation.

How many hearts in total have been transplanted at the Chinese-German Heart Institute? Where do these organs come from? To these questions submitted in writing by Die ZEIT, Liu has given no response.

Weng, who has represented Hetzer for many years and is senior chief physician at the German Heart Center, is, like the surgeon Liu, an executive director of the Chinese-German Heart Institute. He travels to China several times a year. He directed the operation in which China’s first artificial heart was implanted in 2001. Like Hetzer, Weng failed to respond to Die ZEIT.

In the summer of 2012, in conjunction with a medical congress, we questioned Hetzer about removal of organs from executed prisoners in China. He stated, “Of course I don’t support that, but it’s not the case that anyone can simply say that it’s wrong. Someone is executed and takes his organs with him to the grave. How would you decide, if you knew you were going to be beheaded tomorrow?”

Jacob Lavee, who is Mordechai Shtiglits’s physician, considers it unethical even to raise this question. It is a question, he believes, that a doctor may not want to ask himself. But then, one day in the autumn of 2005, Lavee opened the door to a hospital room at the Sheba Medical Center that was occupied by his critically ill patient.

Shtiglits had been treated by Lavee for years. Lavee, director of the Heart Transplant Department at the hospital, had long since stopped holding out any hope for him. But on that day he found Shtiglits in good spirits. He announced that he was flying to China and would have a heart transplant operation in two weeks. “I smiled at him and said that was impossible,” Lavee recalls, “but he was in dead earnest.” A kidney or part of a liver can be removed from live donors. Lavee had heard of patients who went to China for a kidney, but this was a new dimension. “If you receive a heart, it means that someone else has to die.”

Shtiglits was the first, but not the last, of Lavee’s patients who traveled to China for a heart. The transplant specialist is aware of a dozen cases. One or two patients died, while others like Shtiglits, returned home in stable condition. As a doctor, Lavee wants the best for his patients, but not at any price. “Even for myself,” he says, with conviction, “I would not go to China. Even if I had to die.” But Lavee also says,“I don’t blame the patients. When your life is in danger, you grasp at any straw.”

After Shtiglits returned from China, Lavee continued to treat him as a patient. The heart specialist is happy about the progress Shtiglits is making. At the same time he is beginning to campaign politically against other patients receiving heart transplants from China.

An unusual situation in Israeli precipitated Shtiglits’s journey to China. The costs of all foreign transplant operations were, at the time, assumed by medical insurance up to the customary rates in Israel. Shtiglits said that in his case the entire package had cost about $170,000 in U.S. dollars including the first-class flight with his wife and daughter, hotel costs in Shanghai, an interpreter and a personal guide for the duration of the six-week stay, the medical treatment and medication.

$170,000 is not a great amount in the organ market line – and China is among the cheapest suppliers in the field. But Shtiglits alone could scarcely have raised such a sum. Even the $65,000 for a kidney would not have been affordable for most of the 250 Israelis treated in China. Lavee decided that the reimbursements must come to an end.

He published articles in medical journals that were picked up by the Israeli press. He took part in televised discussions with Shtiglits, always on friendly terms as patient and physician, but irreconcilable on this subject. He organized a conference under the auspices of the Israeli Transplant Society. And Lavee succeeded. The Israeli transplant law, which took effect in 2008, forbids cost reimbursement for foreign transplant operations if organ purchases are involved. At the same time, the law includes provisions to help increase Israeli citizens’ chances for getting an organ in their own country. Anyone possessing an organ donation pass receives preferential treatment from now on if he or she should need a transplant.

Lavee reports that since the law took effect not one more Israeli patient has traveled to China for a transplant. In such a small country, a specialist such as he can have a good overview of the matter. In Internet forums, Lavee is now attacked as a physician who blocked patients’ access to China.

“It’s an accusation I’m very proud of,” Lavee says.

Yet, his mission is not complete. The international problem of organ tourism continues, even as the Chinese leadership officially strives for reforms, and more needs to be done.

Since 2007, organ trade in China has been forbidden by law. This does not mean that organs can no longer be removed from prisoners – this practice continues to be tolerated. The new laws state that organs, irregardless of origin, can no longer be provided for money, for example to rich Chinese or Europeans. From time to time, publicity

generating actions occur. In August 2012, for instance, in a raid against alleged organ dealers, Chinese police arrested 137 persons including 18 doctors. Yet at the same time, websites like chinahealthtoday.com, placidway.com and novasans.com openly court transplant clients from all over the world, with ads like: “Heart transplantation overseas – Clinic managers and medical tourism facilities in China.” And the government? For the most part, it lets the hospitals that are behind these messages continue their efforts.

Organ trade is tolerated by the Chinese government. Executions supply organs and materials for transplant operations. This is frightful, but it’s not the whole story. There is another suspicion, which is even worse: Forced organ harvesting from spiritual prisoners of conscience. You might dismiss it as a fantasy by an author of thrillers, doing a remake of the shocker known as Spare Parts (Fleisch, Meat, in German), if it weren’t for the Canadian attorney David Matas and Canada’s former Secretary of State, David Kilgour. Both men were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. With painstaking care they have been collecting facts and reports since 2006. The results of their efforts were considered by the U.S. Congress last autumn.

Matas and Kilgour’s material suggests that in China prisoners from labor or reeducation camps are also killed. Their research involved practitioners of Falun Gong, who practice Buddhist meditation techniques – people not sentenced to death but who allegedly must die because their organs are suitable for a patient.

Is this possible? It’s a fact that practitioners of Falun Gong are persecuted in China. It’s also a fact that the Falun Gong movement answers every bit of propaganda from the Chinese government with smart counter-propaganda, especially overseas. This is why the two Canadians, Matas and Kilgour, tried to keep their research independent from statements from Falun Gong practitioners. They not only collected material on Falun Gong prisoners who were subject to medical examinations while in custody, but also those who disappeared without a trace from camps, or whose bodies were found to be missing certain body parts. They also interviewed non-Chinese patients who received a kidney or liver transplant in China. They even succeeded in questioning former co-perpetrators about organ removal from Falun Gong prisoners. They documented telephone calls from investigators who presented themselves as patients or relatives and inquired at Chinese transplant centers about organs from Falun Gong practitioners. Falun Gong practitioners are considered especially suitable donors due to their general good health, while criminal inmates are often infected with hepatitis B.

A telephone call to the Zhongshan Hospital was also tape-recorded in March 2006 – four months after Mordechai Shtiglits received his new heart there. When the caller asked whether organs from Falun Gong practitioners were also transplanted, a doctor answered, “Ours are all of that type.”

The two Canadians’ accusations are “well researched and very decisive,” says Manfred Nowak, Professor of Civil Law at the University of Vienna, and former (2010) United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture. One important clue is that the strong rise in transplantation figures in China coincides with the dates of the persecution of Falun Gong in particular. In the name of the United Nations, Nowak called upon the Chinese government and in U.N. jargon, “made urgent appeals” for precise data on the sources of all transplanted organs. Novak reports that the People’s Republic of China always dismissed all charges as propaganda, but never rebutted them.

Afterwards the U.S. Congress considered Matas and Kilgour’s research and heard further reports. Almost one-fourth of the members of the House of Representatives signed a letter to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In it they urged the State Department to make public any further information that it might possess on the “unbelievable abuse of organ transplants.”

Michael Millis, Chief of Transplantation Services at a renowned Medical School in Chicago, does not appear particularly curious about the Chinese transplant system. He says that he “deliberately did not enter into details on the prisoner donor system.” This is remarkable, since Millis has been advising the Chinese government for more than a decade on transplantation matters. He is even a friend of Vice Minister of Health Huang. According to his own words, Millis knew from the beginning that in China organs are removed from executed prisoners, although the government officially denied this during the early years of his consulting activity. However, he stated that he has never done a transplant in China. Millis emphasizes that he restricted himself to giving only speeches and lectures there. In China he wants “to develop an internationally accepted and ethically irreproachable transplantation program.” He says that he foresees a “voluntary system,” one “that eliminates incriminations.”

In Millis’ waiting room, photo albums testify to the chief’s enthusiasm for China: Son Andrew diving in China, father and son at a Chinese hospital, the whole family in a group photo with the Vice Minister of Health. Millis, his son and Huang have co-published articles together in the medical journal The Lancet.

Asked about the alleged removal of organs from incarcerated Falun Gong practitioners, Millis says: “That is not my sphere of influence. There are many things in the world that are not my focus or interest.”

Millis believes that important steps have already been taken. Since organ sales are forbidden in China, transplantation centers require a license from the Ministry of Health. However, military hospitals go their own way and are subject to scarcely any controls even by the party and the government. Meanwhile, Vice Minister of Health, Huang, calls the removal of organs from executed prisoners an “ethical problem.” It is not clear whether he is speaking here simply from conviction or if international pressure has grown too big. In any case, he does not want to completely ban the use of organs from executed prisoners. The Chinese government merely wants to reduce the dependency on donations from prisoners – in fact, the number of executions has been decreasing for the past few years. Therefore, a pilot project was started with the Chinese Red Cross to encourage voluntary organ donations.

And chief transplanter Millis? He has business interests in China. Millis is a member of the board of directors of Vital Therapies Inc. He wants to see the company put an artificial liver on the market. The so-called ELAD System is supposed to stabilize people with liver failure until their organ has regained function, or a new one can be transplanted. A pilot study for ELAD began seven years ago in China with 49 patients, and the year after that Vital Therapies applied for licensing in China. The potential market there is huge: 300,000 patients in the final stages of liver disease.

In July 2012 Michael Millis paid a visit to Berlin. The 24th Congress of The Transplantation Society was taking place there. More than 5,000 visitors from all over the world exchanged information on the latest developments in transplantation medicine. Roland Hetzer, medical director of the German Heart Center, was also present. Falun Gong practitioners were also there and had set up a stand in front of the International Congress Center. An attractive Asian woman offered flyers to visitors. Her name was Liu Wei. Flyers, she recalled, were also what caused her much trouble back in September 2001 in China. Then it was leaflets of her Falun Gong group, which she had forgotten to conceal that led to her arrest. She spent 16 months in custody. Liu states she was beaten and tortured by sleep deprivation in the prison camp. Now, at age 40, she had been employed at the Company for Technical Cooperation (CTC) in Beijing.

One day during her time in custody Liu Wei tells of how a team of ten doctors and ten policemen entered the prison to examine her and other prisoners. “Only Falun Gong practitioners were called up,” she says. They took a blood sample from her and her internal organs were subject to ultrasound scanning. The doctors asked about previous illnesses in her family. Such examinations occurred, she says, five or six times. She never heard anything about the results.

The continuous pressure in the prison camp was too much for Liu. She made a show of starting to separate herself from Falun Gong. “I felt as if I had died,” she says. “But I was still young, and wanted to live.”

When Liu was released from detention at the end of January 2003, the CTC hired her back. A year later she moved to Germany. Today she says: “I had great luck that at that time apparently none of my organs were needed by a patient.”

While Liu distributed leaflets outside, the Congress president, Peter Neuhaus of the Charité University Clinic, opened the press conference.

He was especially pleased that 160 Chinese colleagues have found their way to Berlin. Asked by a journalist about organ removal from executed prisoners in China, Neuhaus replied, “There is no question that this was the case.” However, he said that China’s Vice Minister of Health had assured him two or three years earlier that the state wanted nothing of this kind to occur again.

The Chinese government is “seeing to” many things – including the disappearance from the Internet of reports like the one by Beijing attorney Han Bing.

May 14, 2013

Seven Chinese rights lawyers were assaulted outside an illegal “black jail” reportedly used to detain members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement, one of the lawyers and rights groups said on Tuesday.

Beijing-based lawyer Liang Xiaojun said the lawyers were released from police custody on Tuesday after they were assaulted and detained outside the compound near Ziyang city in the south-western province of Sichuan.

“We seven lawyers heard that there was a ‘legal education centre’ in Ziyang where they lock up Falun Gong believers for a long time without any legal procedure,” Liang told dpa by telephone.

“So we just wanted to go there and have a look and take some pictures to post online, calling for people’s attention,” he said.

The Hong Kong-based China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group said it “condemns the violent act and demands Ziyang police investigate the incident and prosecute those who are held responsible.”

The assault was “one of the many incidents” this year of public officials attacking Chinese lawyers, the group said.

Liang said six of the seven lawyers were injured in the assault, which was one of several reported by lawyers while helping Falun Gong practitioners in recent weeks.

Liang witnessed a police assault on lawyer Cheng Hai last month when they and other lawyers represented practitioners facing criminal prosecution in the north-eastern city of Dalian.

On Monday, in Ziyang, the seven lawyers had started taking photographs when a car without licence plates approached and people inside asked them to stop, Liang said.

“They threatened us and we had an argument,” he said. “We asked them to show their credentials but they refused.”

Local police arrived and demanded to see the lawyers’ identity cards.

Lawyer Tang Tianhao handed his over but was attacked after he tried to get it back.

Liang said he and the other lawyers suffered minor injuries when they tried to help but were pushed back. Tang was left with a gash on his head and mark on his face, he said.

Tang and two other lawyers were forced into a police car, so the rest of the group went with them to a police station. They were all released by Tuesday morning, he said.

The police briefly detained four more lawyers who went to help Liang and the others after they were attacked, US-based Human Rights in China said.

Human Rights in China quoted sources as saying the Ziyang Legal Education Centre held some 260 people in February, including several who were detained for up to six years without trial.

China’s ruling Communist Party banned Falun Gong, branded it an “evil cult” and launched a crackdown on the group in 1999 after thousands of adherents staged a sit-in outside the party’s leadership compound in Beijing.

International rights groups and Chinese rights lawyers still highlight Falun Gong practitioners as one of China’s most persecuted groups.

The movement once had up to 70 million members according to official reports. Its founder, Li Hongzhi, lives in the United States.

Original article

May 6, 2013

Liu Hua spent three years at the Masanjia Women’s re-education through labor facility outside the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang for lodging persistent complaints against the government. In a recent documentary directed by Du Bin and screened this month in Taipei for the first time, Liu talks about her experience and the lengths she went to to get her account to the outside world:

A graveyard was demolished and the Masanjia labor camp was built on top of it, so the land cost virtually nothing. The police in the camp told us that under the ground were ghosts, and above ground were the women sentenced to re-education through labor. But the women in the camp used to say that the ghosts lived above ground, while we in the labor camp lived in the underworld, in Hell. We were the women living above the ghosts’ heads.

The re-education through labor system is the most evil system in the world, and an insult to humanity, and the Masanjia Women’s Re-education Through Labor Camp in Shenyang, Liaoning, is one of these evil places. In there, were weren’t treated like women, but as slaves and hostages of this evil system.

Pens and paper were forbidden in the labor camp, as if they were loaded guns used by frontline troops. No one was allowed to have them. But I had a little pen there in the camp, only so big, that I could hide in my pockets or shove it inside my shoe, where I’d made a slit in the sole. I suffered three or four beatings at the hands of the camp bosses for writing.

There were times when I couldn’t sleep at night, and I’d cover my head with the quilt and write, right there in bed, with my butt stuck up in the air, so they couldn’t see what I was doing. Then I would hide it, and I’d be terrified that they would come across it. This is my diary that I wrote during the three years that I was in the labor camp. Everything that happened, in every minute of every day, I wrote it down. I made a record of all the evil things they did, and the torture we suffered, the beatings, the hanging and stretching, the dead person’s bed and the tiger bench.

I wrote it all down, piecemeal, and it was smuggled out by women in their vaginas. Every time they let a bunch of people out, I would give it to them.

There were three different production brigades…. The Falun Gong practitioners would wear black. The three brigades all had different color uniforms and different quotas and production targets…. I brought my uniform out. It was bought for me by my fellow prisoners inside there. My husband and I have both been sent to labor camp…. I wanted the world to know about our suffering in there, and the dark truths about it.

Reported by Lee Tung for RFA’s Mandarin Service. Translated by Luisetta Mudie.

Original Article

By the Falun Dafa Information Center

29 Apr 2013

NEW YORK—Five new petitions for individual Falun Gong practitioners—some with over 10,000 signatures—have been reported over the past two months, continuing a growing trend across China.

While some of the petitions are new initiatives—including ones in Hubei and Hebei Provinces—others are ongoing efforts to rescue local residents who practice Falun Gong, despite official repression.

Notably, in Hebei Province, residents of Zhengding County near Shijiazhuang have been undeterred by a crackdown that followed a petition for Mr. Li Lankui. In June 2012, Li was abducted by the local 6-10 Office and secretly sentenced to fifteen months of forced labor, amidst a city-wide “cleanup” ahead of Iowa governor Terry Branstad’s trade visit to the region.

Li’s abduction raised the ire of friends and neighbors, who, in a matter of weeks, recorded hundreds of signatures on a petition for his release. Local authorities responded to the petition with dozens of physical assaults and at least 16 arrests. One police raid killed another Falun Gong practitioner, Ms. Yang Yinqiao, who allegedly “fell” from a five-story window.

Undeterred by the violence and obvious risk of reprisals for their activism, local residents recently added to the petition the name of another elderly Falun Gong practitioner who has been detained and tortured for allegedly helping circulate the petition for Li. They have continued to collect more signatures and as of mid-March, nearly 11,000 had been recorded, a significant increase from the 700 signatures collected on the initial petition.

Such petition drives for individual Falun Gong practitioners are on the rise across the country. The Falun Dafa Information Center has learned of nearly three-dozen since 2008, with the majority having occurred in the last two years.

Four additional petitions from three provinces surfaced in the month of March, including one that recorded over 5,000 signatures. In almost all cases, the signatures are marked with a red thumbprint, a practice historically used for legal documents.

“The growing number of petitions demonstrates that the regime’s endless stream of propaganda vilifying Falun Gong is not having the effect it once had,” said Levi Browde, director of the Falun Dafa Information Center. “People are seeing through it.”

Husband urges release of wife who rescued him

Catalyzing another petition—Mr. Zhou Xiangyang—wrote an open letter about his young wife, Ms. Li Shanshan from Hebei Province. An Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, Li is currently being held in a labor camp after advocating for her husband’s release.

“Only when I walked out of the prison did I find out that my wife was again arrested for appealing for my case,” wrote Zhou, who was released in April 2012 thanks to international advocacy and a petition circulated by local residents.  “I didn’t expect to have to appeal for my wife after I was released.”

“I hope that this letter will make more people understand our sacrifice and perseverance in defending the universal values of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance and understand why [Falun Gong practitioners] are going through such hardship and suffering in this country,” he wrote. “I hope that such suffering will never have to be repeated…”

Another petition was for Ms. Cui Aijun, abducted from her home in Shuangshanzi County in Hebei Province on December 11, 2012. It was widely known that Ms. Cui was the sole caretaker for her in-laws, who are 81 and 91 years old respectively. Her mother-in-law is blind.

One signatory wrote, “I am signing for Falun Gong. The Communist Party is just so bad….What’s wrong with being a good person? Release her immediately.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT THE FALUN DAFA INFORMATION CENTER
Contacts: Gail Rachlin (+1 917-757-9780), Levi Browde (+1 845-418-4870), Erping Zhang (+1 646-533-6147), or Joel Chipkar (+1 416-731-6000)
Fax: 646-792-3916 Email: contact@faluninfo.net, Website: http://www.faluninfo.net/

Original Article

Chinese Communist Party influence suspected in campaign to stop protests

By Sherry Lin, Epoch Times | May 3, 2013

A Falun Gong practitioner is surrounded by members of the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, along with police, outside the Central Government Complex at Tamar in Hong Kong on May 2. The authorities arrested the practitioner, an unusual action, after she refused to yield a fourth banner. (Bill Cox/The Epoch Times)

HONG KONG—On May 2 a new line was crossed in the Hong Kong government’s recent attempts to shut down protests by Falun Gong practitioners, when a 56-year-old housewife was detained after she refused a police order to surrender a banner she had displayed outside the Central Government Complex. The detention followed a direct warning given to the practitioner by Hong Kong’s chief executive.

Ms. Pan Lianhua and another practitioner have displayed banners, passed out leaflets, and performed Falun Gong’s meditative exercises outside the government building that houses the office of Hong Kong’s chief executive since mid-October 2012, every Monday through Friday, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. On the morning of May 2, Ms. Pan was manning the location alone, with four banners displayed on a fence beside the street.

According to Ms. Pan, six members of the Hong Kong Food and Environmental Hygiene Department approached her and began removing the banners. Ms. Pan tried to stop them from taking the banners while explaining that she had a legal right to protest.

After the agents succeeded in taking down three of the four banners, Ms. Pan grabbed the last one and refused to relinquish it. The agents then called police. Ms. Pan was in a stand off with the crowd of Food and Environmental Hygiene agents and policemen for approximately 40 minutes.

Finally, Ms. Pan was escorted with some resistance to a police car and taken to the Central District Police Station in Sheung Wan. She had to submit to questioning and then paid HK$1,000 (US$129) to be released. Ms. Pan was not charged, but must report to the police at the end of May to find out whether there will be a hearing.

The scene outside the government building followed a conversation Ms. Pan had with chief executive Leung Chun-ying on April 30.

According to Ms. Pan, she had attempted to deliver a petition letter to the chief executive asking that the Hong Kong government stop confiscating the materials of Falun Gong practitioners.

On Tuesday mornings Leung regularly goes to the courtyard outside the government building where he will speak to constituents and receive letters through a security fence.

When Ms. Pan attempted to pass her letter to him, Leung told her not to put up banners outside his office any longer, and said if she would stop doing that, he would accept her letter.

Ms. Pan tried to tell Leung about how the Chinese Communist Party persecutes Falun Gong practitioners in the mainland. Leung then warned Pan not to put up banners outside his office any longer, repeated that if she stopped, he would accept her letter, and walked away.

On the same morning that agents of the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department removed Ms. Pan’s banners, they also confiscated banners and other materials from Falun Gong practitioners at several sites in Hong Kong.

This round of raids is the latest action in a campaign launched on April 12 by the Hong Kong government to shut down Falun Gong information sites.

The events outside the Hong Kong government building on May 2, however, marked a new stage in this campaign: the government had not previously detained any practitioners.

Since 1999, after the persecution of Falun Gong began in China’s mainland, Hong Kong Falun Gong practitioners have maintained sites at which they display banners and provide materials that tell the public about what Falun Gong is and how it is persecuted. Often it is possible at these sites to formally renounce all association with the Chinese Communist Party, an action called “tuidang” in Chinese.

These sites have been a sore point for CCP officials. Hong Kong is a popular destination for mainland tourists—15 million came in the first six months of 2012, according to the South China Morning Post. And the mainland tourists, who have been steeped in virulent propaganda attacking Falun Gong, are often interested in the information provided at these sites, and in withdrawing from the Party.

Once before, in 2004, the Hong Kong government tried to arrest Falun Gong practitioners for protesting, but the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal affirmed the practitioners’ right to protest.

The recent actions by the Hong Kong government follow hard upon a ten-month long effort by a group called the Hong Kong Youth Care Association, Ltd., to obscure the Falun Gong sites with banners whose slogans were drawn from Communist Party propaganda vilifying Falun Gong, blanket the city with the same banners, and otherwise disrupt the Falun Gong practitioners protests, sometimes with physical abuse.

Hong Kong media discovered that the Youth Care Association has close ties with the Communist Party organ tasked with eradicating Falun Gong.

On April 1, the government forced the Youth Care Association to take down its banners.

Democratic dissidents and some members of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council have said that the government’s long toleration of the Youth Care Association’s actions and the recent efforts by the government to shut down Falun Gong information sites are both inspired by the CCP.

In a recent interview, Legislative Council member Albert Ho Chun-yan said, “Our government is under pressure from the CCP,” Ho said. “It has taken some actions against dissident groups, and it is clear that they are targeting Falun Gong.”

Corrections: Hong Kong chief executive Leung Chun-ying spoke with Ms. Pan Lianhua through a security fence in a courtyard outside the government building. Ms. Pan, when arrested was taken to Central District Police Station in Sheung Wan. The Epoch Times regrets the errors.

Original article

Communist Party front group assists government in effort to silence Falun Gong

By Hao Feng, Epoch Times | April 30, 2013

Individuals not wearing the regular uniform of the Hong Kong Food and Hygiene Department are seen removing Falun Gong materials from the information site in the neighborhood of Tsim Sha Tsui, on April 15. In the background to the right, the two individuals wearing green shirts and sashes are members of the Hong Kong Youth Care Association. In line with Epoch Times policy of not publishing hate speech, the words on their sashes, which repeat Communist Party propaganda attacking Falun Gong, have been blurred. (Epoch Times)

HONG KONG—Falun Gong practitioners in Hong Kong breathed a deep sigh of relief on April 1 when the Hong Kong government forced a Communist Party front group to take down banners slandering the spiritual discipline. The feeling of relief did not last long.

On April 12 officials from the Hong Kong Food and Environmental Hygiene Department suddenly showed up at an information site run by Falun Gong practitioners at the government housing complex Ka Wai Chuen.

The practitioners had for years set up banners and poster boards there telling about Falun Gong and its persecution in China. They liked the spot because of the nearby gold shops, which are frequented by mainland Chinese tourists.

The Food and Environmental Hygiene officials were not proud of what they had been sent to do. According to practitioners at the scene, when asked what they were about, the officials explained they were just following orders. And then began removing the practitioner’s banners and poster boards.

When the practitioners objected that they were conducting a legal protest, the officials replied that protests were not their responsibility. Tell it to the police, they said, as they continued carting away the practitioners’ possessions.

After that first raid, the Food and Environmental Hygiene department established a special task force and hired contract workers to begin confiscating Falun Gong materials at sites throughout the Special Administrative Region. Those efforts are ongoing, as practitioners refuse to stop activities they say are legal and began almost 14 years ago.

Youth Care Association

In shutting down the Falun Gong sites, the department appears to be doing the dirty work of a group called the Hong Kong Youth Care Association.

The Youth Care Association appeared seemingly out of nowhere on June 10, 2012, when its members, dressed in uniform polo shirts, began attempting to cover up the Falun Gong information site at the Hung Hom train station with giant banners bearing Chinese Communist Party propaganda attacking the practice.

Soon, the Youth Care Association struck at other information sites. Hong Kong media investigated this mysterious group and discovered it had close ties with the CCP Party organ called the 610 Office.

Then-Party head Jiang Zemin created this extra-constitutional organization on June 10, 1999 to eradicate Falun Gong. Jiang feared the popularity of the practice and wanted to use his suppression of it, which officially began on July 20, 1999, to enhance his own power.

The Association members attempted to wall off Falun Gong sites from the public with their banners, which also began blanketing the city. They surrounded the practitioners at the sites and used megaphones at close range to insult and threaten them.

According to media reports, the Hong Kong police did nothing to protect the Falun Gong practitioners’ rights to assemble and protest. When the police weren’t looking, the association members would physically assault the practitioners, according to the Falun Gong adherents.

‘Like Gangsters’

Some members of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council, or LegCo, on seeing this unbridled assault on Falun Gong, expressed concern that Hong Kong chief executive Leung Chun-ying had planned all along to shut down the Falun Gong sites.

In an interview with The Epoch Times in early April, LegCo member Lee Cheuk-yan said, “The Leung government wanted to use the Hong Kong Youth Care Association banners to clear up Falun Gong information sites.

“The strategy was to have the Hong Kong Youth Care Association harass Falun Gong, and the purpose was to cooperate with the Hong Kong Youth Care Association to suppress Falun Gong,” Lee said. “I’m very displeased with what they have been doing.”

LegCo member Albert Ho Chun-yan said, “It is obvious that the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department took the opportunity of the Hong Kong Youth Care Association’s attack to clear up Falun Gong.”

When the Hong Kong Youth Care Association was given orders on April 1 to begin taking down their banners, practitioners report the Association members saying to Hong Kong officials that if they were forced to take down their banners, so too should the Falun Gong. The practitioners see the Hong Kong government’s orders to shut down their information sites as fulfilling what the Association had sought all along.

Now, according to practitioners, the Youth Care Association is working hand-in-glove with the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department.

“The people of the Hong Kong Youth Care Association are watching the Falun Gong practitioners,” said Mandy Liu, who is involved with several of the Falun Gong information sites in Hong Kong.

“When the practitioners begin to display any materials, the Youth Care Association members call the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department,” Liu said. “After the officials come, the Youth Care Association tells us, ‘we called them on you.’”

“The Food and Environment Hygiene Department, when they come, they confiscate any Falun Gong materials they see. It doesn’t matter whether the practitioners have displayed anything or not, they just snatch the materials out of our hands,” Liu said. “They are like gangsters, not like security people maintaining order.”

Ms. Liu said the practitioners are taking photos and trying to collect evidence of what the Youth Care Association and the Hong Kong government are doing.

CCP Pressure

“We are engaged in legal protests, and the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department is taking illegal actions,” said Mr. Kan Hung-cheung, the spokesperson for the Hong Kong Falun Dafa Association.

Albert Ho Chun-yan, who, in addition to being a LegCo member, is a lawyer, stressed that the government has no right to intervene in a normal protest, and cannot remove materials from an ongoing activity. “If someone is simply looking at the banners, that is an ongoing activity,” Ho said.

The right of the Falun Gong practitioners to protest in Hong Kong was affirmed by the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal in a 2004 decision concerning the arrest of Falun Gong practitioners who had been protesting outside the People’s Republic of China Liaison Office.

“The Hong Kong Falun Gong practitioners do not rule out legal action as a possible means,” Mr. Kan said. “But there are other means they are also considering, such as appealing to LegCo.”

According to Albert Ho Chun-yan, Falun Gong’s difficulties in Hong Kong originate with the Chinese Communist Party. “The reason the Hong Kong government tolerated the Youth Care Association was because it belonged to the CCP,” Ho said.

“Our government is under pressure from the CCP,” Ho said. “It has taken some actions against dissident groups, and it is clear that they are targeting Falun Gong.”

Translated by Lu Lu and Arlenn Wu. Written in English by Stephen Gregory.

Read the original Chinese article.

Original article

Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 29/04/2013
Reporter: Adam Harvey

An Australian university is under fire for honouring a Chinese professor linked to China’s controversial organ transplant program.

Transcript

LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Every year in China thousands of prisoners are executed and their deaths provide kidneys, lungs and livers for the country’s organ transplant program.

The practice is hugely controversial. Human rights campaigners have long condemned the link between executions and organ harvest.

For more than a decade, one of the key figures behind the program was an Australian-trained doctor. Huang Jiefu has since been honoured by his alma mater, the University of Sydney.

Now, a coalition of academics, doctors and lawyers say the university must strip Huang of his honorary professorships.

Adam Harvey has this exclusive report.

ADAM HARVEY, REPORTER: These are the gulags of China where people spend years for crimes like speaking against the Government. Many never leave here alive. China leads the world in executions, thousands killed each year, according to human rights group Amnesty. And when those prisoners die, their organs live on.

DAVID MATAS, AUTHOR, BLOODY HARVEST: They do a lot of organ sourcing for transplants. They’re number one in the world after the United States in terms of volume. And until this year, they haven’t had a functioning donation system and the numbers they’re generating are very small for donations, so the organs are coming from prisoners.

MARIA FIATARONE SINGH, FACULTY OF HEALTH SCIENCE, SYDNEY UNI.: In the 1990s a very special form of lethal injection called slow lethal injection was perfected in China by Chinese officials as a way to preserve the organs so that the person is basically anaesthetised, they don’t die right away, gives the surgeons the time to take out as many organs as they would like to and then the lethal injection is finalised. So, it’s done in a way that actually allows this very, very unsavoury mix of execution and medical care and treatment to be done by the same team of doctors. It’s horrific, really.

ADAM HARVEY: For years, recipients from all over the world have bought organs from Chinese authorities. A prisoner’s body can be worth as much as half a million dollars when it’s broken down into parts like kidneys, liver and lungs. China says the prisoners donate their organs, but the practice is condemned by the UN, the World Health Organization and international medical bodies.

DAVID MATAS: It’s a cause of environment, it’s not a meaningful consent when you’re in prison and sentenced to death and all the medical profession, The Transplantation Society, the World Medical Association, the World Health Organisation say you cannot source organs from prisoners sentenced to death, even with consent.

ADAM HARVEY: China’s transplant program has sparked protests around the world. In Sydney last week, members of the Falun Gong group, which is outlawed in China, took a stand against so-called transplant tourism where Australians travel to China to receive organs.

DAVID MATAS: We’ve talked to lot of patients, transplant tourist patients. They’re told there’s consent, but there’s no documentary record of consent. There’s no paper trail of consent. It’s verbiage without substantiation.

DAVID SHOEBRIDGE, NSW GREENS MP: That’s why we should amending our laws in Australia and making it a crime for someone to engage in this unethical practice, whether it’s in Australia, or China, Philippines or India.

ADAM HARVEY: The head of China’s transplant program for more than a decade was this man, Huang Jiefu, who trained at Sydney’s Prince Albert Hospital and was a visiting scholar at the University of Sydney.

DAVID MATAS: He’s a Western-trained transplant doctor. He became Deputy Minister of Health in the Chinese system and was responsible for the transplantation system for 12 years and he was doing transplants at the same time as he was an administrator in the system.

MARIA FIATARONE SINGH: He himself is a liver transplant surgeon and he has stated as recently as November, 2012 that he continues to perform about two liver transplants every week – so that would be 100 organs a year, and using his own figures, 90 to 95 per cent of those would have come from executed prisoners.

ADAM HARVEY: He’s been lauded by the university with an honorary professorship and that title was recently extended for another three years.

Now, Maria Fiatarone Singh, a professor of Medicine at the university, wants him stripped of that honour.

MARIA FIATARONE SINGH: We shouldn’t be giving him any publicity or honour for the kind of things that he’s done. He can’t possibly be adhering to the dictum that we all take an oath of, which is “first, do no harm”, because there’s no way that you could consider using people the way he has as transplant donors as being concordant with that philosophy.

ADAM HARVEY: She’s petitioned vice chancellor Michael Spence to take back Huang’s honours. Co-signatories include surgeons and medical professors from the United States, Germany and Israel and NSW Greens MP David Shoebridge.

DAVID SHOEBRIDGE: This is one of our most prestigious institutions, the University of Sydney. It’s meant to stand up for the best ideals of our society – democracy, academic freedom. And for it to be awarding some of its highest honours on a medical practitioner who for year after year benefitted from transplanting the organs of executed prisoners is a betrayal of those key ideals that the university should be standing up for.

ADAM HARVEY: But Huang Jiefu has his defenders who say he’s worked to end China’s reliance on prisoners’ organs.

Professor Bruce Robinson authorised Huang’s appointment to honorary professor.

BRUCE ROBINSON, PROFESSOR: Huang Jiefu’s a great leader. He’s led the reform of the organ donation system in China.

PROFESSOR RICHARD ALLEN: Huang Jiefu, to his great credit, has developed (inaudible) trials and protocols and has demanded that every hospital that is involved in transplantation in China have a deceased organ donor program that involves the use of donors who have died as a result of circuitry death. In the transplant clinical setting around the world, we see him as a champion, an absolute champion and a hero… I’ve known Huang since 1987, and in discussions with him when he was in Sydney at the time, he knew at that stage that the use of organs from deceased – from executed prisoners was wrong. At the time he was a junior surgeon and he was part of the system and he did what his seniors did.

ADAM HARVEY: But despite his efforts, China’s transplant program remains heavily reliant on the organs of executed prisoners.

DAVID MATAS: And that’s my view, that Huang Jiefu, by being responsible for an ethical system and himself participating in transplants, which, as far as I’m concerned, are more than likely to be unethical themselves, has engaged in unethical behaviour and therefore the professorship should be revoked for that reason.

MARIA FIATARONE SINGH: We should be the first, we should step up as the oldest university in Australia, as a beacon of intellectual freedom and those kinds of things, we should lead the way and say it’s wrong, it’s inappropriate. We shouldn’t be honouring this – we shouldn’t be putting him shoulder to shoulder with Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It’s wrong.

LEIGH SALES: Adam Harvey with that report.

Original article

April 25, 2013

Standing on the sidewalk, reading books, doing qigong exercises—(practitioner at zhongnanhai reading exercising clarifying truth.mov)this is the site of an appeal outside China’s government ‘s headquarters, Zhongnanhai. On April 25, 1999, an estimated ten thousand practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual practice gathered silently outside the compound. They were appealing against a seemingly sudden suppression by authorities.

[Daphne, Falun Gong Practitioner]:
“I simply thought that it was wrong for the police to arrest people just because they practice truth, compassion and tolerance. It was wrong for sure, so I had to go [to the appeal], I said I was going.”

Their request was simple: release detained practitioners and allow Falun Gong to be freely practiced in China. Their requests were initially granted, but what ensued was a persecution that went far beyond anyone’s expectations.

[Levi Browde, Executive Director, Falun Dafa Information Center]:
“Most people think this is the event that created the persecution. Falun Gong had the audacity to surround the central leadership and so the persecution started because of that. Actually that wasn’t true. There’s a lot of evidence that indicate that the leaders were building up to suppress Falun Gong for even years before that.”

Shortly after this, at least 70 million Falun Gong practitioners became subjects of a systematic persecution headed by former Communist Party chief Jiang Zemin.

According to the Falun Dafa Information Center, practitioners make up the largest group of prisoners of conscience in Chinese labor camps today.

59-year-old Wang Chunying was arrested in 2002 for practicing Falun Gong. She was held at the Masanjia Labor Camp in Liaoning province for more than five years.

[Wang Chunying, Former Masanjia Detainee]:
“Two male police, Zhang Liang and Peng Tao, dragged me to confinement in a small room, and hung me up.”

On April 6, Chinese state-run Lens magazine ran an exposé on the inhumane treatment of inmates at Masanjia–NOT mentioning Falun Gong. It prompted an investigation by Liaoning officials, which many discredited because of its biased team.

While the investigation denied the claims made in Lens Magazine, it made a surprising admission.

[Heng He, NTD Senior China Analyst]:
“Their investigative report mentioned Falun Gong, said this is all the Falun Gong’s, you know, slam to Masanjia labor camp. But at least they admitted Masanjia was used for persecution of Falun Gong. That actually, the last paragraph about Falun Gong they described actually, make people believe that torture really happened.”

While the Lens Magazine article was shortly removed, Masanjia’s exposure could be a sign that political winds are changing. Cases of both individuals and groups standing up for Falun Gong practitioners have also recently increased .

[Levi Browde, Executive Director, Falun Dafa Information Center]:
“But clearly there are people in China that are ready and willing to expose the persecution of Falun Gong and that’s never been the case before.”

Holly Kellum, NTD News

Original article

Foreword

Masanjia Labor Camp is located in Masanjia Township, Yuhong District, Shenyang City, Liaoning Province. It was established on March 9, 1956 (1). On October 29, 1999, in order to implement Jiang Zemin’s campaign against Falun Gong, Masanjia Labor Camp’s 2nd Female Division was set up specifically to detain Falun Gong practitioners. Su Jing was named head of the 2nd Female Division (2).

In October 2006, the 2nd Female Division was merged with the 1st Female Division to become Masanjia Female Labor Camp. On Feb. 6, 2001, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Liaoning provincial Committee and the provincial government established the “Liaoning Province Ideological Education School” (3) inside Masanjia Labor Camp to specialize in “transforming” Falun Gong practitioners (4). Su Jing was named the headmaster of the “School” (5), which became notorious for its inhumane treatments to Falun Gong practitioners.

As early as 1999, Falun Gong practitioners had exposed the gruesome tortures they suffered in Masanjia Labor Camp. Over the last decade, reports about tortures in Masanjia Labor Camp have been continuously occurring. In order to fend off criticism and mislead the public opinions, on May 22, 2001 Masanjia Labor Camp invited Singapore Zaobao Daily, Associated Press and NBC of the United States, ABC Radio Australia and Japan’s NHK Television for a public tour. Zhang Chaoying, then director of Masanjia Labor Camp, falsely claimed in front of the foreign media that there were no male detainees in Masanjia Labor Camp (6). Thereafter, organizing media tours has become an annual event, which happens every May.

On April 7, 2013, LENS magazine published a report titled “Out of Masanjia.” The report exposed the inhumane torture methods female detainees in Masanjia Labor Camp have been subject to. It proves that Falun Gong practitioners’ claims are all true. Two days after the report was published, Liaoning provincial Party Committee and government announced the formation of an “investigation team,” which consisted of officials from the provincial Bureau of Justice, provincial Bureau of Reeducation through Labor, local prosecutors. The media, representatives of the local People’s Congress and members of the local Committee of the People’s Political Consultative Conference were invited (7). According to an unconfirmed internal document leaked on the Internet, the head of the investigation team is director of the provincial Justice Bureau, Zhang Fan. The deputy heads are Cui Kebing (Counsel of the provincial Justice Bureau) and Zhang Chaoying (Bureau chief of Reeducation through Labor) (8). Although the article was unconfirmed, the names and their titles match the official announcement.

Zhang Fan is former deputy head of the Bureau of Justice and director of the Bureau of Prison. Zhang is responsible for the persecution of Falun Gong (9). Cui Kebing is deputy head of the Bureau of Justice. Zhang Chaoying was director and Party chief of Masanjia Labor Camp when the 2nd Female Division was setup. Since then, Masanjia Labor Camp had detained exponential amount of Falun Gong practitioners. In 2004, Zhang Chaoying became the director of the Bureau of Reeducation through Labor of Liaoning province (10).

This report is limited to providing evidences from Chinese Communist Party’s official documentation. Masanjia Labor Camp is directly controlled by Jiang Zemin and the CCP Central as an important location to carry out the persecution of Falun Gong. Its persecution methods have been promoted nationwide. In order to see the true nature of the Masanjia issue, one must face the Falun Gong issue.

Masanjia Labor Camp is a Major Site for Jiang Faction to Carry out the Persecution of Falun Gong

Masanjia Labor Camp is no ordinary labor camp. Although officially at the provincial level, Masajia has been directly controlled by the Chinese Communist Party Central since its 2nd Female Division was setup. Li Lanqing (team head of the “CCP Central Leadership Team to Handle Falun Gong Issue”), Luo Gan (head of Political & Legal Affairs Committee (PLAC), vice team head of the “CCP Central Leadership Team to Handle Falun Gong Issue”), Wang Maolin (director of CCP Central “610 Office”), Liu Jing (director of CCP Central “610 Office”), CCP Central Organization Department and the Ministry of Justice all directly commanded, supported and promoted the persecution in Masanjia Labor Camp.

The persecution of Falun Gong is the persecution against people’s belief. Therefore, brainwashing and transformation are at the core of the persecution. In order to force Falun Gong practitioners to give up their belief, so as to reach the “transformation rate,” all sorts of torture methods have been designed, implemented and promoted.

On August 29, 2000, the Ministry of Justice “Education and Transformation Experience & Award Meeting” was held. Li Lanqing sent letter (11) to the meeting, while Luo Gan (12) and Wang Maolin gave speeches recommending Masanjia Labor Camp’s experience to be copied nationwide. The “five transformation criteria” developed by Masanjia Labor Camp became the nationwide standard to transform Falun Gong practitioners (13).

On September 22, 2000, the CCP Central “610 Office” issued a document about “transforming and attacking firm believers.” The document reiterated that the “transformation standard” originated from Masanjia Labor Camp (14).

According to a secret document issued by the Central “610 Office” and the Ministry of Justice, by November 2000 there had been 31 groups of total 500 people from 25 provinces traveled to Masanjia Labor Camp for study tours (15). Han Guangsheng, former head of Shenyang City Justice Bureau, also confirmed that tours to Masanjia Labor Camp were routinely organized for local officials to study how to use torture methods (16).

The “Year 2000 Summary Report of Judicial Administration System” said that the judicial administration system was a vital part in CCP’s “struggle against Falun Gong” and that a number of “highly accomplished” organizations and individuals have appeared, with Masanjia Labor Camp and its head Su Jing being the most noteworthy of all. “The Ministry of Justice Party Group gathered the Masanjia Labor Camp experience in a timely manner and propagated it throughout the country (17).”

On Feb. 26, 2001, the Organization Department, Department of Propaganda, PLAC of the CCP Central Committee, Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Civil Affairs, Ministry of Personnel, and CCP Central “610 Office” jointly organized a “Struggling against Falun Gong Experience Report Meeting” at Beijing People’s Hall. Su Jing, then head of the 2nd Female Division at Masanjia Labor Camp gave a speech about its “transformation experiences.”(18)

On April 25, 2001, the Organization Department of the CCP Central Committee issued a notice requesting all Party committees nationwide to learn from the experience of struggling against Falun Gong from the Party committees at Masanjia Labor Camp, Beijing Reeducation through Labor Bureau and Qitaihe City, Heilongjiang Province (19).

The Crimes of Masanjia Labor Camp Have Been Commended by Central and Local Party Authorities

Masanjia Labor Camp has been granted the title of “National Advanced Unit against Falun Gong” by seven central state departments, ministries and offices, including the Organization Department of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee. It has been given the first-class merit by the the Ministry of Justice (20).

Masanjia Labor Camp’s Second Female Division (i.e. Liaoning Province Ideological Education School) has been granted the titles of “Shenyang City Female Civilization Model Post”, “National Advanced Unit against Falun Gong”, “Provincial Advanced Unit against Falun Gong”, provincial “Red Flag Excellent Female Unit” and “Advanced Education and Transformation Work Unit in the National Judicial Administration System”. It has also been given the collective second-class merit by the Provincial Justice Bureau.

Head of Masanjia Labor Camp’s 2nd Female Division, Su Jing, has also been recognized with the following titles: “Department of Justice Outstanding Education Expert” (second-class model hero), provincial “Red Flag Excellent Female Worker” (21), provincial political & legal system “People Satisfied Police Officer”, as well as Liaoning Province’s “Excellent Government Employee” of 2003 (22).

On December 19, 2011, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and the Ministry of Justice commended model workers and model units within the national judicial administration system. Director of Masanjia Labor Camp, Ren Wenfu was awarded “advanced worker” within the national judicial administration system (23).

During the 7th Police Ranking Promotion Training Session of 2011 organized by Liaoning provincial judicial administration system, Masanjia Labor Camp was named “Advanced Work Unit”; Jin Shan and Wang Xue who work at Masanjia Labor Camp were named “Outstanding Trainees” (24). They both have tortured Falun Gong practitioners (25).

During the 2nd Police Ranking Promotion Training Session of 2012 organized by Liaoning provincial judicial administration system, Masanjia Labor Camp was named “Advanced Work Unit”, and Gao Hongchang was named “Outstanding Trainee” (26). Gao Hongchang was the head of Masanjia Labor Camp’s 1st Division 3rd Brigade. He later became the head of the 1st Division. The 3rd Brigade is dedicated to the persecution of male Falun Gong practitioners. Gao has directly commanded the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners and directly involved in the tortures of Falun Gong practitioners (27).

Conclusion

Masanjia Labor Camp and Liaoning Province Ideological Education School are no ordinary labor camps. Masanjia Labor Camp is a typical institution used in the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners, under the direct control of Jiang Zemin faction. Under the direct command and intervention of the Central Organization Department, the Central “Leadership Team to Handle the Falun Gong Issue,” the Central Political & Legislative Affairs Committee, the Central “610 Office” and the Ministry of Justice, Masanjia Labor Camp designed and implemented various brainwashing and torturing techniques against the Falun Gong practitioners. Through the aforementioned central state ministries, these techniques have been propagated to the entire nation. The techniques used on Falun Gong practitioners later extended to petitioners.

Over the years, the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong has been tracking the crimes of Masanjia Labor Camp. We have conducted investigations on individuals involved and their crimes. We have published a series of investigative reports. All evidences have been documented.

Note: Zhou Kaidong, Beijing Reeducation through Labor Bureau Chief and Party Secretary, has initiated the brainwashing of Falun Gong practitioners within the Beijing reeducation through labor system. In January 2003, Zhou was sentenced to 10 years in prison for bribery (28).

Reference

1. www.11467.com, Masanjia Labor Camp, Liaoning Province
2. www.sina.com.cn, “Story about Su Jing, Head of Masanjia Labor Camp 2nd Female Division” June 15, 2001, source Legal Daily, reporter Huo Shiming
3. Legal Daily, Feb. 7, 2001, “Special base to transform Falun Gong – Liaoning Province Ideological Education School is Established”
4. Liaoning Province Chronological Events (1949-2009)
5. Liaoning Provincial government website, “List of Liaoning province model government employees” (2003) Vol. 14
6. Singapore Zaobao Daily, May 23, 2001, “Masanjia Labor Camp Open to Foreign Media” Reporter: Zhou Ruipeng
7. People’s Daily website – legal channel, April 8, 2013, “Liaoning formed team to investigate Masanjia Labor Camp”, by He Yong, Liu Hongchao
8. “Investigation Plans on “Masanjia Female Labor Camp Tortures” published on the Internet”
9. www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2012/8/20/261685p.html Aug. 20, 2012, “List of Liaoning provincial officials participated in the persecution of Falun Gong”
10. Liaoning Daily, Dec. 13, 2001
11. WOIPFG Archive: Li Lanqing’s Letter to the Ministry of Justice “Education and Transformation Experience & Award Meeting” Aug. 23, 2000
12. WOIPFG Archive: Luo Gan’s speech on the Ministry of Justice “Education and Transformation Experience & Award Meeting” Aug. 29, 2000
13. WOIPFG Archive: Wang Maolin’s speech on the Ministry of Justice “Education and Transformation Experience & Award Meeting” Aug. 29, 2000
14. WOIPFG Archive: CCP Central “610 Office” document on “transforming and attacking firm believers” Sept. 22, 2000
15. WOIPFG Archive: CCP Central Leadership Team to Handle Falun Gong Issue and Ministry of Justice Notice about “Controlling tours to Masanjia Labor Camp” Nov. 16, 2000
16. http://www.soundofhope.org/node/215408/print
Sound of Hope Radio Network, “Interview of Han Guangsheng”
17. Wenmingfeng website, Introduction of the judicial administration system (2000)
18. People’s Daily Overseas Edition, Feb. 27, 2001, page 4
19. WOIPFG Archive: April 25, 2001, CCP Central Organization Department Notice to Learn from the experience of struggling against Falun Gong from the Party committees at Masanjia Labor Camp, Beijing Reeducation through Labor Bureau and Qitaihe City, Heilongjiang Province.
20. Liaoning Daily, Dec. 13, 2001, “Masanjia Labor Camp’s education and transformation…” by Zhu Hongwei, Bi Yucai
21.Shenyang Women Magazine, “Red Flag Excellent Female Worker Su Jing”
22. Liaoning Provincial People’s Government’s Decision on the Recognition of the State Civil Servants with Outstanding Contributions. (The Liaoning Provincial People’s Government 2003, No. 14)
23. The Decision on the Recognition of Advanced Workers, Advanced Work Units And Labor Models within the National Judicial Administration System by the Departments of Human Resources and Social Security and Ministry of Justice. List of advanced workers within the national judicial administration system (December 26, 2011). Legal Daily.
24. The list of Outstanding Students and Work Units within Liaoning Province’s Judicial Administration System in the 2011 Seventh People’s Police Ranking Promotion Training Session.
25. Case Overview of Falun Gong practitioners from Qingyuan County, Liaoning Province, Having Been Persecuted (3) (Zhao Liankai) (2008). Retrieved April 20, 2013, http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2011/12/13/ Falun Gong practitioners have been persecuted Case Overview-3 – 250392.html
On October 28, 2008, Zhao Liankai was sent to Masanjia Labor Camp to be persecuted. Masanjia Labor Camp’s vicious prison guards include Liu Jun, Wang Hanyu, Wang Xue, Su Junfeng, Jin Shan and others, led by Gao Hongsheng and Yu Jiang. These guards have shocked Zhao Liankai’s exposed face, neck, hands and feet with the multiple electric batons at the same time…
26. The list of Outstanding Students and Work Units within Liaoning Province’s Judicial Administration System in the 2012 Second People’s Police Ranking Promotion Training Session.
27. http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2012/12/30/ -267159.html
The Persecution of Falun Gong Practitioners in Masanjia Labor Camp Witnessed by Me (2008) Retrieved on December 30, 2012
On the evening of October 1, 2008, Gao Hongchang, Yu Jiang and another guard kept on shocking a Falun Gong practitioner surnamed Yu with two 800,000-volt electric batons.
28. Procuratorial Daily, Dec. 19, 2007, “the ‘top boss’ level is still highly corrupted and extremely dangerous” by Xiao Rong, Zhao Xiaoxing

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April 15, 2013

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