By Leonard Kamugisha Akida,
Daily Mail story.
“China’s Communist Party removes hearts, kidneys, livers and corneas from 100,000 dissidents and political prisoners every year, with a government-run ‘kill to order’ organ-trafficking network operating on a grand scale, human rights groups claim.”
A new report on illegal organ trafficking has implicated China’s Communist Party in removing of hearts, kidneys, livers and corneas from 100,000 dissidents and political prisoners every year, with a government-run ‘kill to order’ Organ-Trafficking Network operating on a grand scale, human rights groups claim.
Nine UN Special Rapporteurs from the Human Rights Council spent over a year unearthing witness testimony and examining China’s highly suspicious organ donor rates to shed new light on the terrifying ‘kill to order’ market.
‘UN human rights experts said today they were extremely alarmed by reports of alleged “organ harvesting” targeting minorities, including Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims and Christians, in detention in China,’ the statement said.
‘They have received credible information that detainees… may be forcibly subjected to blood tests and organ examinations such as ultrasound and x-rays, without their informed consent; while other prisoners are not required to undergo such examinations.
‘The results of the examinations are reportedly registered in a database of living organ sources that facilitates organ allocation.
‘According to the allegations received, the most common organs removed from the prisoners are reportedly hearts, kidneys, livers, corneas and, less commonly, parts of livers.’
The grim statement also points out that this form of alleged trafficking relies heavily on skilled health care workers sworn to protect their patients including ‘surgeons, anaesthetists and other medical specialists’ as well as participation from various public sector professionals.
‘Some prisoners receive death threats and threats of organ harvesting from the police, if they do not renounce their beliefs or refuse to cooperate with the police,’ the statement said.
One of the ‘red flags’ with China’s organ transplant system is that recipients can book surgeries at specific times and locations.
In other medical systems this does not happen because surgeons cannot predict when a person who has elected to be an organ donor will die.
Under an ‘ethical’ process approved by the WHO, the deceased’s organs will be matched to the most urgent patient on a transplant list who is within travelling distance of the hospital.
For many desperate people it can take years to receive transplant surgery as recipients must be the same blood-type as the deceased and have the same sized organ.
The alleged trafficking relies heavily on skilled health care workers sworn to protect their patients including ‘surgeons, anaesthetists and other medical specialists’ as well as participation from other public sector professionals.
An undercover phone call to a Chinese military hospital shows just how easy it is to get human organs
The follow transcript is an undercover phone call made to a the People’s Liberation Army No. 107 Hospital in Yantai, Shandong Province on September 1, 2019.
It shows how human organs are supplied on demand in China.
EXCERPT:
Investigator: Oh, if the registration is okay, in the fastest case, how long do we have to wait?
Dr Feng Zhendong: It depends on if we have the liver source. If you had called earlier, then we would have had it today.
Investigator: What does it mean that if I had called earlier?
Dr Feng Zhendong: It means that I would have done it for you today.
Investigator: So it can be done quickly, right?
Dr Feng Zhendong: Right… our hospital generally has relatively abundant liver sources, many donated organs. So our liver sources are relatively abundant.
Investigator: So almost every day you have [organs]. Whether it matches or not is another issue. Is that what you mean?
Dr Feng Zhendong: Not almost every day, but we basically have [organs] almost every month… in the fastest cases, we basically have organs every week.
But undercover phone calls made to Chinese hospitals as part of the independent China Tribunal hearings in 2019 show how fast patients can get surgery under the ‘kill to order’ system.
In one excerpt, Dr Feng Zhendong from a Shandong Province military hospital tells the investigator over the phone about the ‘abundance of organs’ which arrive ‘every month’.
Although China’s disturbing state-sponsored organ-trafficking has been well-documented for decades, there is very little the international community can do to stop the horrific trade.
Beijing is able to coverup their human rights abuses by under-reporting transplant data to the World Health Organisation which is compelled to accept the official statistics of member states.
Susie Hughes, the Executive Director of The International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China said China’s claims they are performing 10,000 to 20,000 do not stack up.
‘A recent statistical analysis of China’s current organ transplant system showed the numbers China has been putting out have been falsified,’ she told Daily Mail Australia.
‘When you examine hospital revenues, bed utilisation rates and the number of surgical teams from the official Chinese data… the figure is more likely to be between 60,000 to 100,000 transplants per year.’
The China Tribunal found the Uyghur Muslim minority along with followers of the banned spiritual practice Falun Gong, are essentially being used ‘as an organ bank’ for domestic and foreign buyers.
Falun Gong practitioner Jinato Liu, who was incarcerated for over two years gave terrifying testimony to the expert panel.
‘I was locked in a cell with about eight drug addicts, who were commonly induced to abuse Falun Gong practitioners.
‘These drug addicts were rostered on shifts to persecute me by the guards’ order.
‘The cell had a surveillance camera installed, so the guards knew everything that happened inside.
‘Don’t go against the Communist Party. Don’t resist them. If you do… where your heart, liver, spleen and lungs will be taken, you won’t even know’ – Falun Gong practitioner, Yu Xinhui.
‘One day a drug addict inmate was beating my back and waist and another inmate came in from outside and yelled at him: “Don’t injure his organs”!’
‘Only after they removed the black hood from over my head did I realise I was in a hospital,’ she said in her testimony.
‘I saw police in uniform everywhere, also people wearing white coats walking about, so I guessed that I was in a hospital.
‘They drew blood samples first, then X-rayed my internal organs.’
Another Falun Gong member, Yu Xinhui, who spend six years behind bars said a prison system medical practitioner had tried to warn him of the horror.
Uyghur prisoner Zumuret Dawut said she was taken to hospital to on the first day of her three months in detention to have her organs scanned.
Despite the findings, Beijing has repeatedly denied forced human organ harvesting is practiced in China, calling the UN’s statement ‘fabricated’ and ‘defamatory’.
‘One prison doctor who was sympathetic to us Falun Gong practitioners secretly told me,’ Mr Yu said in his evidence.
‘When it happens, where your heart, liver, spleen and lungs will be taken, you won’t even know.’
The Chinese government has also described the heart-breaking witness testimonies as coming from ‘actors’.
