I’m on my way to donate blood today. I am AB-, and also something called CMV-, so the local blood bank people call me if I don’t show up, and beg for me to donate. Now it appears that China is accepting donations (involuntary) of organs “harvested” from its dissidents and political prisoners.
China’s hidden policy of executing prisoners of the forbidden quasi-Buddhist group Falun Gong and harvesting their organs for worldwide sale has been expanded to include Tibetans, “house church” Christians and Muslim Uighurs, human rights activists said Monday.
In a news conference on Capitol Hill, several speakers, including attorney David Matas of B’nai Brith Canada and Ethan Gutmann of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said their investigations have unearthed a grisly trade in which an estimated 9,000 members of Falun Gong have been executed for their corneas, lungs, livers, kidneys and skins.
They likened the practice to the Nazi treatment of Jewish prisoners in World War II concentration camps, which included using them for sadistic medical experiments and taking the gold fillings from the teeth of corpses.
The newest wrinkle, they said, is that organs from other religious prisoners, specifically dissidents from China’s Christian, Muslim and Tibetan Buddhist communities, are also being harvested to satisfy an insatiable global demand.
“These groups are useless to the state,” Mr. Gutmann said. “They are toxic, so you can’t release them. But they’re worth a great deal of money in terms of their organs.”
Organs from just one person can fetch a total of $100,000 on the worldwide market, he added.
The Falun Dafa Information Center issued at Monday’s news conference its annual report on China’s persecution of Falun Gong.
The charges of organ harvesting and its spread to other religious and ethnic groups were made by the researchers and activists based on their extensive interviews with former prisoners and families of prisoners, and based on analysis of statistics, including health numbers, released by the Chinese government.
Although the practice of harvesting organs from prisoners has been documented as early as 1992 by Chinese dissident Harry Wu’s Laogai Research Foundation, it was not until 2006 that the Epoch Times, a Falun Gong publication, accused the Chinese government of using its adherents for the practice.
In 2005, Chinese Vice Minister of Health Huang Jiefu acknowledged that 95 percent of all transplanted organs come from executions, said Mr. Matas, whose 2009 book “Bloody Harvest,” co-written with David Kilgour of Ottawa, a former member of the Canadian Parliament, details the practice.
May 1st, 2010 11:40 am
Isn’t it wonderful to find such an advanced society that gives people the same value as a car? Most cars, like Chinese dissidents are worth more when parted out. I keep thinking I’ve heard every disgusting way human beings treat each other, but I was wrong.