Over the past fourteen years, multiple in-depth investigations, an international “China Tribunal” and hundreds of pages of reports have established and documented the shocking reality of China’s state sanctioned system of harvesting organs from imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners, and evidence continues to surface.
Chinese citizens who believe their family members were killed for their organs while detained have come forward to recount their stories. Han Yu was informed that her father had died in custody. When viewing his body, she was forcibly removed from the morgue when she tried to unbutton her father’s shirt because of a scar on his throat. Yu’s relative managed to open the shirt and discovered a long scar from his throat to his stomach. Another woman, Jiang Li, visited her healthy father one day only to be told the next day that he had died. At the morgue, Li was permitted to see only his head, not his full body. When she felt the skin near his mouth, it was still warm and he was biting his lip, indicating that he was still alive. After calling for medical help, Li was forcibly removed from the morgue, and was never permitted to see her father again.
Survivors of Chinese prisons have testified about undergoing extensive medical examinations and being evaluated for organ health, such as Jennifer Zeng who believes her prior diagnosis of hepatitis C made her organs unsuitable for transplant which saved her life. There are also increasing reports of police going to the homes of Falun Gong practitioners and forcibly taking blood samples or bringing them to the police station for blood draws.
Reports of transplants with short wait times indicate an abundance of transplant organs waiting for recipients. A Japanese woman traveled to China and received four matching hearts within a ten-day period, which Dr. Jacob Lavee, Director of the Heart Transplantation Unit and Deputy Director of the Department of Cardiac Surgery at the Sheba Medical Center and Professor of Surgery at Tel Aviv University said “raises high suspicions as to the nature of these donors.” DAFOH Executive Director Torsten Trey said this blatantly indicates an “on demand” system of organ procurement.
Undercover investigators have recorded telephone calls with doctors in Chinese hospitals that indicate that imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners are having their organs removed for transplant. In a recent call a military doctor said that patients could visit the bed of the person whose organ would be used to see for themselves that they were young and healthy. When the investigator asked “So you are saying, you guys are using Falun Gong (practitioners’) organs. But you can’t openly say so. You can only say those are disease-free, primary-disease free organs,” the doctor replied “Exactly, that’s the way to put it. Your way of putting it is correct.”
The growth of China’s transplant industry is fueled and sustained by the systematic persecution of Falun Gong that has lasted more than twenty years. Recent reports indicate that this persecution has continued and even intensified. China’s transplant industry is highly lucrative and forced organ harvesting, as well as the persecution of Falun Gong, will only end when world governments and oversight bodies demand it of China. As one journalist stated, “It is an evil trade, and one for which China should be shunned by the international community.”
