Organ scandal hits China

A report outlines harvesting of organs from the outlawed Falun Gong

By Jim Bronskill, CP

July 7, 2006

OTTAWA -- Calling it a crime against humanity, a report says China is harvesting vital organs from devotees of the outlawed Falun Gong movement. Hearts, kidneys, livers and corneas are removed from executed practitioners of the meditative regimen and sold for transplantation at hefty prices, sometimes to foreigners, concludes the report.

Winnipeg human rights lawyer David Matas and former Liberal cabinet minister David Kilgour, who undertook a two-month investigation, acknowledged yesterday their findings were almost too astonishing to comprehend.

"The very horror makes us reel back in disbelief," the report says. "But that disbelief does not mean that the allegations are untrue."

At a news conference, Matas called the practice a shocking "new form of evil" on this planet. Who would have believed the Holocaust before it happened?"

Kilgour, former secretary of state for the Asia-Pacific region, said Canadians are among those who have travelled to China for illicit organs.

"It's appalling," he said in an interview. "You don't want to believe it."

The pair conducted the probe as unpaid volunteers at the request of the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, a Washington-based organization with a branch in Ottawa.

In a statement, the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa dismissed the report as a "groundless and biased" Falun Gong smear effort based on "rumours and false allegations."

Kilgour and Matas insist their research was conducted independently of the coalition and any other organization or government.

They were unsuccessful in obtaining visas to visit China to investigate.

Instead, they gathered testimony from witnesses in Canada, the United States, France and Australia, consulted websites of Chinese transplantation centres and studied transcripts of Mandarin conversations with officials at hospitals and detention centres in China.

"We believe that there . . . continues today to be large-scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners," the report says.

It calls on the United Nations to determine whether China is in violation of the UN protocol to prevent trafficking in persons.

Beth Berton-Hunter of Amnesty International Canada said the group asked the UN special rapporteur on torture to be admitted to China to investigate.

Copyright © 2006, Canoe Inc.

This article posted August 20, 2006.