Organ Harvesting in China
by David Matas
Der Autor:
David Matas, geboren 1943 in Winnipeg, Kanada, studierte Jura und Philosophie
in Oxford und Princeton.
Als Anwalt für Einwanderungs- und Flüchtlingsrecht sowie für
internationale Menschenrechte engagiert er sich aktiv als Autor und Sprecher
bei verschiedenen Menschenrechtsorganisationen für die Förderung der
Anerkennung der Menschenrechte. Er ist Mitglied der kanadischen Delegation bei
der Generalversammlung der Vereinten Nationen. Seit 1997 leitet er das Internationale
Zentrum für Menschenrechte und Demokratische Entwicklung.
David Matas führt eine eigene Anwaltskanzlei in Winnipeg.
Zusammenfassung:
Im März 2006 wurde der Organraub an lebenden Falun Gong Praktizierenden
zum ersten Mal entdeckt. Am 24. Mai wurden die Autoren von der ‚Koalition
zur Untersuchung der Verfolgung von Falun Gong in China’ gebeten, die
Ermittlungen zu den Organentnahmen an lebenden Falun Gong-Praktizierenden zu
übernehmen. Sie folgten der Bitte dieser in Washington D.C. registrierten
Menschenrechtsorganisation mit einer Zweigstelle in Ottawa.
Aus der Besorgnis über diese schweren Anschuldigungen haben David Matas
und sein Kollege David Kilgour eine unabhängige Nachforschung begonnen.
Entsprechend ihren Recherchen sind Matas und Kilgour zu der Überzeugung
gekommen, dass in China neben zum Tode verurteilten Strafgefangenen ausschließlich
Falun Gong Praktizierende als lebende Organspender benutzt werden. Diese lediglich
aufgrund ihres Glaubens inhaftierten chinesischen Bürger sterben im Verlauf
der Organentnahme, ihre Organe werden mit großem Gewinn verkauft. Am 6.
Juli 2006 legten David Matas und David Kilgour einen ersten Bericht vor, in
dem sie auf der Grundlage offizieller Datenangaben zu dem Schluss kamen, dass
die Herkunft der Organe von über 41.500 Organstransplantationen, die in
China seit 2001 stattgefunden haben, nicht nachvollziehbar ist und sie nicht
von Exekutierten stammen können.
Am 31. Januar 2007 legten sie einen revidierten Bericht vor mit dem Titel: Bloody
Harvest / Blutige Ernte, der die ersten Untersuchungsergebnisse bestätigt
und neue Erkenntnisse hinzufügt.
http://organharvestinvestigation.net
http://investigation.go.saveinter.net/
Das Referat
ORGAN HARVESTING
Is China harvesting organs of Falun Gong practitioners, killing them in the
process? A Japanese television news agency reporter and the ex-wife of a surgeon
in March made claims this was happening at Liaoning Hospital in Sujiatun, China.
Are those claims true?
The Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of the Falun Gong in China, an
organization headquartered in Washington D.C., in May asked former Minister
of State for Asia and the Pacific David Kilgour and me to investigate these
claims. We released a report in July 2006 and a revised report in January 2007
which came to the conclusion, to our regret and horror, that the claims were
indeed true.
The repressive and secretive nature of Chinese governance made it difficult
for us to assess the claims. We were not allowed entry to China, though we tried.
Organ harvesting is not done in public. If the claims are true, the participants
are either victims who are killed and their bodies cremated or perpetrators
who are guilty of crimes against humanity and unlikely to confess.
We examined every avenue of proof and disproof available to us, thirty three
in all. They were:
a) General considerations
1) China is a systematic human rights violator. The overall pattern of violations
makes it harder to dismiss any one claimed violation.
2) The Government of China has reduced substantially financing of the health
system. Organ transplants are a major source of funds for this system replacing
the lost government funding.
3) The Government of China has given the military the green light to raise
money for arms privately. The military is heavily involved in organ transplants
to raise money for itself.
4) Corruption in China is a major problem. There is huge money to be made from
transplants and a lack of state controls over corruption.
b) Considerations specific to organ harvesting
5) Technology has developed to the point where organ harvesting of innocents
for their organs has become possible. Developments in transplant surgery in
China fail prey to the cruelty, the corruption, the repression which pervades
China.
6) China harvests the organs of prisoners sentenced to death without their
consent. The Falun Gong constitute a prison population who the Chinese authorities
vilify, dehumanize, depersonalize, marginalize even more than executed prisoners
sentenced to death for criminal offences.
7) There is no organized system of organ donations in China. There is a Chinese
cultural aversion to organ donation.
8) Waiting times for organ transplants in China are incredibly short, a matter
of days. Everywhere else in the world, waiting times are measured in years.
9) Hospital websites post self-incriminating information boasting about short
waiting times for all organs for big payments.
10) Donor recipients who we have interviewed tell us about the secrecy with
which transplant surgery is undertaken and the heavy involvement of the military.
Information given to patients is kept to a minimum. Transplants are performed
in military hospitals and, even in civilian hospitals, by military personnel.
11) There is huge money to be made in China from transplants. Prices charged
to foreigners, also available on a web site, range from $30,000.00 US for corneas
to $180,000.00 US for a liver kidney combination.
12) There are no Chinese transplant ethics separate from the laws which govern
transplants. China does not have a self governing disciplinary body for transplant
professionals.
13) There are huge gaps in foreign transplant ethics. It is rare for foreign
transplant ethics to deal specifically with either transplant tourism or contact
with Chinese transplant professionals or transplants from executed prisoners.
14) Until July 1st, 2006, the practice of selling organs in China was legal.
Even today, the new law banning the selling of organs is not enforced.
15) Foreign transplant legislation everywhere is territorial. It is not illegal
for a foreigner in any country to go to China, benefit from a transplant which
would be illegal back home, and then return home.
16) Many states have travel advisories, warning their citizens of the perils
in travel to one country to another. But no government has posted a travel advisory
about organ transplants in China.
17) Organ transplantation surgery relies on anti-rejection drugs. China imports
these drugs from the major pharmaceutical companies.
No state prohibits export to China of anti-rejection drugs used for organ transplant
patients.
18) Some state administered health plans pay for health care abroad in the
amount that would be paid if the care were administered in the home country.
Where that happens, there is not, in any country, a prohibition of payment where
the patient obtains an organ transplant in China.
c) Considerations specific to Falun Gong
19) The Communist Party of China, for no apparent reason other than totalitarian
paranoia, sees Falun Gong as an ideological threat to its existence. Yet, objectively,
Falun Gong is just a set of exercises with a spiritual component.
20) The threat the Communist Party perceives from the Falun Gong community
has led to a policy of persecution. Persecution of the Falun Gong in China is
officially decided and decreed.
21) Falun Gong practitioners are victims of extreme vilification. The official
Chinese position on Falun Gong is that it is "an evil cult". Yet,
Falun Gong shares none of the characteristics of a cult.
22) Falun Gong practitioners are victims of systematic torture and ill treatment.
While the claims of organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners has been met
with doubt, there is no doubt about this torture.
23) Falun Gong practitioners have been arrested in huge numbers. They are detained
without trial or charge until they renounce Falun Gong beliefs.
24) There are thousands of named, identified Falun Gong practitioners who died
as a result of torture. If the Government of China is willing to kill large
number of Falun Gong practitioners through torture, it is not that hard to believe
they would be willing to do the same through organ harvesting.
25) Many practitioners, in attempt to protect their families and communities,
have not identified themselves once arrested. These unidentified are a particularly
vulnerable population.
26) Falun Gong practitioners in prison are systematically blood tested and
physically examined. Yet, because they are also systematically tortured, this
testing can not be motivated by concerns over their health.
27) Traditional sources of transplants-executed prisoners, donors, the brain
dead - come nowhere near to explaining the total number of transplants in China.
The only other identified source which can explain the skyrocketing transplant
numbers is Falun Gong practitioners.
28) The money from organ transplants to be made has led to the creation of
dedicated facilities, specializing in organ transplants. The Chinese authorities
must have the confidence that there exists into the foreseeable future a ready
source of organs from people who are alive now and will be dead tomorrow. Who
are these people? A large prison population of Falun Gong practitioners provides
an answer.
29) In a few cases, between death and cremation, family members of Falun Gong
practitioners were able to see the mutilated corpses of their loved ones. Organs
had been removed.
30) We had callers phoning hospitals throughout China posing as family members
of persons who needed organ transplants. In a wide variety of locations, those
who were called asserted that Falun Gong practitioners (reputedly healthy because
of their exercise regime) were the source of the organs. We have recordings
and telephone bills for these calls.
31) We interviewed the ex-wife of a surgeon from Sujiatun who had said her
husband personally removed the corneas from approximately 2,000 anaesthetized
Falun Gong prisoners Sujiatun hospital in Shenyang City in northeast China during
the two year period before October, 2003. Her testimony was credible to us.
32) There has been two investigations independent from our own which have addressed
the same question we have addressed, whether there is organ harvesting of Falun
Gong practitioners in China, one by Kirk Allison of the University of Minnesota,
another by European Parliament Vice President Edward McMillan-Scott. Both have
come to the same conclusion we did. These independent investigations corroborate
our own conclusion.
33) The Government of China has responded to the first version of our report
in an unpersuasive way. Mostly, the responses have been attacks on the Falun
Gong. The fact the Government of China, with all the resources and information
at its disposal, resources and information we do not have, was not able to contradict
our report suggests that our conclusions are accurate.
It is easy to take each element in isolation, and say that this element or
that does not prove the claim. But it is their combination which led us to the
chilling conclusion to which we came.
Our report has twenty five different recommendations. Virtually every precaution
one can imagine to prevent the harvesting of organs of Falun Gong practitioners
in China is not there. All these precautions should be put in place.
But there is one basic recommendation we make which must be implemented immediately.
Organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners in China must stop.
