News: Headlines

Former Chinese Minister of Commerce Bo Xilai talks to reporters during a break at a 2007 economic meeting. (AP)

Editorial

The Olympics, Dehumanization, and Organ Harvesting

April 24, 2008, 5:15 pm

In 2001, when bidding to host the 2008 Olympic Games, the People's Republic of China pledged to improve human rights—and won the bid. Many Chinese people were excited, but not all.

One of the most barbaric human rights violations of the 21st century had begun: Prisoners of conscience—Chinese people—were being used as living organ banks and their organs harvested for transplantation. They were being slaughtered like animals.

Only in 2006 did the world learn of these atrocities after witnesses fled China in order to tell of them. A doctor's wife risked her life in early 2006 when she publicly stated that her husband—then a surgeon in China—had removed corneas from 2,000 Falun Gong practitioners. A journalist likewise risked his life to report of Falun Gong practitioners detained near a hospital, where they were held until used for organ harvesting.

An investigative report by David Kilgour, the former Canadian secretary of state (Asia-Pacific) and David Matas, an international human rights lawyer, followed. That report estimated that over 40,000 adherents of the Falun Gong movement had been killed for their organs since 2001.

Kilgour and Matas recorded phone conversations with surgeons in multiple hospitals in China with shocking results.

Excerpts of one call in May 2006 read like a shopping trip to a mall: "Do you have organs from Falun Gong practitioners?"

Answer: "Yes."

Question: "Was it from healthy Falun Gong practitioners?"

Answer: "Correct. We would choose the good ones. ... It is very easy to get them."

Many Falun Gong practitioners who survived being held in the labor camps, where they were subjected to torture and brainwashing, reported being systematically blood tested. The good health of the victims is of no concern to the torturer.

Blood tests are expensive. Who pays for them? What is the payout? A transplantation will amortize the investment. A kidney transplant is offered for US$60,000 on the Web sites of some Chinese hospitals.
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Bush Backs China


Related story: Beijing Olympic Chief Linked to Torture

The Bush administration is trying to scuttle a federal human rights lawsuit that threatens to embarrass one of China’s top political leaders. The administration says the case could jeopardize trade and “has already had a chilling effect on U.S.-China relations,” documents show.

The lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. district court, accuses Bo Xilai—a member of China’s elite Politburo and until recently the country’s trade minister—of controlling and directing forced labor camps where inmates were beaten, suffocated and killed.

The abuses occurred while Bo was governor of Liaoning province between 2001 and 2004, before he was named China’s minister of commerce, according to the complaint.

If the lawsuit goes forward, the Bush administration argues it could create a “diplomatically undesirable inquiry”—into Bo’s—“responsibility for alleged torture and extrajudicial killing,” according to court filings. These “difficult and sensitive questions,” the administration said, “need not be confronted at this time.”
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2008 Beijing Olympics
Falun Gong Deaths Escalate as Olympics Approach

NEW YORK -- The Falun Dafa Information Center is alarmed at a series of reports indicating adherents in China are being killed in custody within days, or even hours, of being detained by authorities. The Center expressed today that the escalating maltreatment is a direct result of efforts to “stamp out” Falun Gong prior to the summer Olympics.

“The speed with which Falun Gong adherents are being seized by police, abused, and turning up dead is alarming and reprehensible,” says Falun Dafa Information Center spokesperson Ms. Gail Rachlin. “These are people who never should have been arrested in the first place. Arbitrary arrests, torture, and extrajudicial executions are no way to ‘prepare’ for the Olympics.”

“If China’s communist authorities wish to hold a truly 'successful' Olympic Games, rounding up and killing those who might remind us that ‘all is not well’ is not the way to go about it. The artificially sterile, silent streets of Beijing should give visitors the chills.”
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Reports About China's Suppression of Falun Gong
Organ Harvesting Confirmed By a Former Detention Center Prisoner

In early 2006, The Epoch Times first exposed the Chinese Communist Party's crime of harvesting organs from live Falun Gong practitioners. Since then new evidence continues to surface.

Recently a witness from Wuxi City, Jiangsu Province has come forward and revealed what he discovered during his detention in Wuxi City No.2 Detention Center. According to the witness, many cases of organ harvesting occurred during 2002.

He was detained from 2005 to 2007 because he made opposing comments about China's unlawful control of personal speech and media. During his imprisonment he learned that not only death row prisoners were killed for their organs, but Falun Gong practitioners too. For the safety of the witness's family in China, we will not disclose his name.

Reporter: Under what circumstance were you able to find out about the organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners?

Witness: Between March 2005 and early 2007, I was unlawfully imprisoned in Wuxi City No.2 Detention Center. To add insult to my injury, the prison guards repeatedly moved me from cell to cell. Each time I was moved to a different cell, the despicable guards told the inmates I was nuts and that they shouldn't talk to me. The inmates were even instructed to give me a hard time. During my detention, I was kept in 17 different cells. Inmates that had been imprisoned for a long time told me that organs were harvested from about two or three Falun Gong practitioners in every cell between 2002 and 2003.
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