Mick Hartley

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Chinese Coma

This story has been around before, but it won’t go away:

China’s military is harvesting organs from unwilling live prison inmates, mostly Falungong practitioners, for transplants on a large scale – including to foreign recipients- according to a study.

The report’s authors – Canada’s former secretary of state for the Asia Pacific region David Kilgour and human rights lawyer David Matas – implicated dozens of hospitals and jails throughout China in July, after a two-month investigation.

Chinese officials denied those allegations.

Mr Matas and Mr Kilgour’s second report, released today, includes interviews with organ recipients in 30 countries and Canadian hospital staff who cared for more than 100 patients who had undergone suspicious transplant surgeries in China.

“The involvement of the People’s Liberation Army in these transplants is widespread,” Mr Kilgour said at a press conference.

Like many civilian hospitals in rural China, military hospitals turned to selling organs to make up for government funding cuts in the 1980s, the report said.

But military personnel could operate with much more secrecy, it said.

“Recipients often tell us that even when they receive transplants at civilian hospitals, those conducting the operation are military personnel,” the report said.

Hospitals in Canada’s biggest cities – Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto – confirmed “a substantial number” of Canadians had travelled to China for dubious organ transplants, Mr Kilgour said.

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3 responses to “Chinese Coma”

  1. Charles Liu Avatar
    Charles Liu

    Falun Gong’s allegation has been discredited by multiple undercover invstigations.
    US embassy and Chinese dissident:
    1) http://www.usembassy.it/pdf/other/RL33437.pdf (section CRS-7)
    http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2006m=April&x=20060416141157uhyggep0.5443231&t=livefeeds/wf-latest.html
    2) http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20060806_1.htm
    http://www.cicus.org/news/newsdetail.php?id=6492
    3) http://crc.gov.my/clinicalTrial/documents/Proposal/TCM_Stroke%20TrialProtocol%20synopsis.pdf (page 3)
    As you can see, the hospital Falun Gong accused is partly owned by a Malaysian health care company and is subject to oversight beyond Chinese authority.

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  2. Dom Avatar
    Dom

    I can’t go through all of your references, but I’m surprised by the first one. If you read it, you find the following:
    “On July 6, 2006, two Canadian investigators, former Liberal Member of parliament David Kilgour and David Matas, an international human rights attorney, published Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China. The report concludes that the allegations that “large numbers” of Falun Gong practitioners in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have been victims of live organ harvesting are true.”
    Also, this: “In these recorded calls … respondents reportedly indicated that organ harvesting of live Falun Gong detainees was common.”
    In fairness, there are other quotes indicating these reports are false, but I really wouldn’t use this report as evidence that the allegations are “discredited”.

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  3. charles liu Avatar
    charles liu

    Dom, I’m not here to say that China is perfect and without abuses. The CRS report is balanced, as in it didn’t let China off the hook either. Many of the citations I provided expressed concerned with Chinese society’s ethical, moral standards on dignity and treatment of the condemned, even without FLG’s sensational story.
    Please note the section I pointed out (CRS-7):
    “U.S. Embassy in Beijing and the U.S. consulate in Shenyang visited the area as wellas the hospital site on two occasions — the first time unannounced and the secondwith the cooperation of PRC officials — and after investigating the facility “foundno evidence that the site is being used for any function other than as a normal publichospital.””
    “the reports’s keyallegationsappear to be inconsistent with the findings of other investigations. The report’sconclusions rely heavily upon transcripts of telephone calls in which PRCrespondents reportedly stated that organs removed from live Falun Gong detaineeswere used for transplants. Some argue that such apparent candor would seemunlikely given Chinese government controls over sensitive information, which may raise questions about the credibility of the telephone recordings.”
    Essentially, Kilgour accepted Falun Gong’s evidence without a lot of scrutiny. The people linked with the phone calls are all FLG disciples.

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