Background
The People’s Republic of China (PRC)
performs the second-highest number of organ transplants per country per year,
yet there exist no sufficient public organ donation program or organ
distribution system in China, and the Chinese population has a cultural
aversion to donation.
Medical professionals in the People’s
Republic of China began conducting organ transplants with the use of organs
that were harvested from executed prisoners in the 1980s. In June 2001, Chinese
Dr. Wang Guoqi testified before the House International Affairs Subcommittee
that hospitals worked in collusion with state security agencies to extract
organs from executed prisoners without written consent of the donors. These
transplants became a lucrative source of income for Chinese hospitals. The
practice of sourcing organs from nonconsenting prisoners is a violation of
medical ethics and has been condemned by international medical organizations,
such as the WMA, TTS and the transplant community.
In order to protect their families and
associates, while in detention, many Falun Gong prisoners refuse to provide
their real names or other identifying information. This makes them more of a
target for transplant abuse. In 2006, Canadian researchers human-rights
attorney David Matas and former Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific David
Kilgour conducted an investigation into allegations of organ harvesting from
Falun Gong prisoners. Based on extensive circumstantial evidence, their report
concluded that the allegations were true, and that tens of thousands of Falun
Gong practitioners may have been killed for their organs.
After 1999, an exponential increase of
transplantations in China coincided with the onset of the unlawful and brutal
persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. In the absence of a public
organ-donation program and a decrease in the number of executions, detained
Falun Gong practitioners became part of a living pool of donors, ready to be
organ harvested on demand. They have been contributing to the more than 10,000
transplants per year in China.
Falun Gong practitioners are subject to
medical examinations while in detention, such as blood tests, urine tests, X‑rays, and physical exams. These
examinations are unlikely to be motivated by health care concerns since
detained Falun Gong practitioners are subject to persecution and torture. It is
implausible that the detention centers would go to the extra expense for the
exams unless there were financial returns.
Senior Chinese Communist Party
officials are complicit in the forced organ harvesting from living Falun Gong
practitioners. In 2012, David Matas said at the annual conference of the
International Association of Genocide Scholars in San Francisco:
“On Nov. 30, 1999, the head of the ‘610
Office’, Li Lanqing, announced the government’s new policy on the movement:
‘Defame their reputations, bankrupt them financially, and destroy them
physically.’ A call to destroy Falun Gong physically is a call to genocide. It
is not admittedly a call to genocide through sourcing their organs.
Nonetheless, when that sourcing occurs, in the context of a call for physical
destruction, the two should be linked. Organ sourcing is the means. Physical
destruction is the intent.”
Under the format of “executing
prisoners”, killing people to harvest their organs for transplantation is a
crime against humanity and a breach of medical ethics. The demand for
transplant organs must not justify the means. Falun Gong practitioners, the
largest group of prisoners of conscience in China, are the main targets of this
crime against humanity.
Petition to the UN Human Rights High Commissioner Calling
for an Immediate End of Forced Organ Harvesting From Falun Gong
Practitioners in China
Petition
We,
the undersigned, are alarmed at the evidence of forced organ harvesting from
detained Falun Gong practitioners in China. We understand that the forced organ
harvesting from detained Falun Gong practitioners is an egregiously evil form
of persecution against this peaceful spiritual discipline and we expressively support
European Parliament’s urgent resolution on organ harvesting in China adopted on
12 December 2013 calling for a full and transparent investigation by the EU into organ transplant practices in China, for
the prosecution of those found to have engaged in such unethical practices and
for the immediate release of all prisoners of conscience in China, including
Falun Gong practitioners; we hereby ask the UN
Human Rights High Commissioner:
- Please publicly
condemn organ transplant abuses in China and call
upon China to immediately end the
forced organ harvesting from detained Falun Gong practitioners in China.
- Please
initiate further investigations that lead to the prosecution of the
perpetrators involved in this crime against humanity.
- Please call
upon the Chinese government to immediately end the brutal persecution of
Falun Gong, which is the root cause for the forced organ harvesting from
Falun Gong practitioners.
