Urgent Call for Investigation of Live Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners

WASHINGTON, Aug. 17, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Falun Gong practitioners in the Greater Washington Area are calling for an independent international investigation into China's labor camps and prisons regarding organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners and the sale of their dead bodies. We request that the international society, governments and media demand that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) open its labor camps, prisons and affiliated facilities for independent investigation.

Media reports of the recent trial of Bo Gu Kailai's murder of Neil Heywood suggest that the real reason Heywood was murdered was because of his involvement in organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners and the export of their bodies to be used in body exhibitions. The reports allege he was killed because he had begun to talk about it. Chinese authorities do not want that information public and that is why they put on a show trial, to cover up the truth.

Three months after Wang Lijun, the former police chief of Chongqing City, fled to the U.S. consulate in Chengdu, the State Department released its 2011 Human Rights Country Report. In the report, it mentioned organ harvesting for the first time: "In response to allegations that the organs of executed prisoners were harvested for transplant purposes, Vice Minister of Health Huang Jiefu in 2009 stated that inmates are not a proper source for human organs, and prisoners must give written consent for their organs to be removed. Overseas and domestic media and advocacy groups continued to report instances of organ harvesting, particularly from Falun Gong practitioners and Uighurs."

In June 2011, the U.S. government revised the DS-160 form for non-immigrant visa application. A new question was included in the form, asking "have you ever been directly involved in the coercive transplantation of human organs or bodily tissue?"

At this year's annual July 20 rally of Falun Gong practitioners, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee said: "Falun Gong adherents have been systematically arrested, tortured, sent to forced labor camps for 're-education,' placed in mental institutions for brainwashing, and subjected to organ harvesting."

Similarly, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, Congressman Chris Smith, Congressman Sam Farr, Katrina Lantos Swett, chairman of the United Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and Lantos Foundation of Human Rights and Justice, also raised the concerns of organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners.

In March 2006, when the Epoch Times Chinese language editions first reported illegal organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners, it detailed the blood tests and physical examinations many Falun Gong practitioners experienced in prisons and labor camps. On one hand, the Chinese communist regime tortures them brutally in order to coerce them to abandon their belief, while on the other hand, the regime gives them very specific physical examinations and blood tests. It is certainly not concerned with Falun Gong practitioners' health.

Organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners started soon after the persecution against the peaceful exercise and meditation practice began.  Canadians David Kilgour, former Canadian secretary of state (Asia-Pacific) and crown prosecutor; and David Matas, an international human rights lawyer, investigated the allegations of organ harvesting in 2006 and quickly published a report, "Bloody Harvest" July 2006, which was later published as a book.

The senior statesmen found that between 2000 and 2005, 41,500 transplants took place in China. They concluded the most likely source of the organs was Falun Gong practitioners.

Many may think that live organ harvesting is too brutal to believe.

Yet, organ trafficking has existed for many years in the black market in China. It started from human trafficking. Later, these mafia found that organ trafficking was profitable and began to work with the Public Security Bureau and labor camps to conduct organ trafficking. At that time, however, the number of humans and organs was quite limited. So the scale was small.

Until the persecution of Falun Gong began in July 1999, at that time the Chinese Communist Party had collected data which indicated over 70 million people and across all levels of society were practicing Falun Gong. The movement is not political and practitioners seek only to promote truth, compassion, and forbearance across racial, national, and cultural boundaries, and to practice in peace. Violence is abhorred. But those in power, particularly the former leader Jiang Zemin, came to see Falun Gong as a threat to his monopoly of ideological power, and a campaign to destroy the practice was unleashed.

Between 2000 and 2003, tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong and were arrested.

Classified information from the Public Security Bureau in Beijing revealed that by the end of April 2001, less than two years into the ban, there had been approximately 830,000 arrests of Falun Gong adherents.

By 2007 thousands had been 'disappeared' arrested, tortured and/or killed. According to the U.S. State Department's 2007 Country Reports on Human Rights "Falun Gong adherents constituted at least half of the 250,000 officially recorded inmates in reeducation-through-labor camps, while the real number could be even higher."   As of August 2012, there are more than 3,500 confirmed deaths.

Because the CCP persecuted Falun Gong practitioners and their family members, friends and employers, Falun Gong practitioners did not want their communities persecuted too and refused to tell their names so the number that have been killed is estimated to be much higher.

As the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners spread nationwide, many provinces were carrying out the persecution policy passively. Bo Xilai, the figure so prominently in disgrace right now, was then Dalian mayor.   In order to seek promotion, he actively promoted the persecution and offered to transfer to his city, the many Falun Gong practitioners held in Beijing as a result of their peaceful appeals.  Dalian is also the home of the first plastination factory in China, the process that turns human bodies into plastic dummies and displays them in body exhibits around the world.

When Bo moved on to become the governor of Liaoning Province, more practitioners were transferred there too. Bo Xilai has had many lawsuits brought against him around the world, for his role in persecuting Falun Gong practitioners. Analysts have suggested that it was because of these lawsuits that Bo Xilai was posted to ChongQing as governor rather than a more central role in Beijing. It is also known that Bo's offsider Wang Li Jun had been given an award for his work on organ transplants.

A huge market demand for organs internationally, the deteriorated morality of Chinese society, the tremendous profits involved, little respect for rule of law and a nationwide persecution of a group whose members are given no trial or right of appeal, have all combined to produce an unprecedented evil - the large-scale businesses of organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners.

The number of organ transplants conducted in China is huge. According to China Daily, the number reached 20,000 in 2005 and Kilgour and Matas estimate over 41,500 between 2000 and 2005.  Such a big number of operations means that there is a big live organ supply. Where is such a crowd? Who are they?

The trial of Bo Gu Kailai is only the tip of the iceberg. Harvesting organs live from a person, murdered on the grounds of their belief, and further selling the dead body for exhibit – even if one such case happens, it is such a huge humiliation for humanity and a degradation of human values. And that is without mentioning the systematic scale under which the crime is happening, seemingly with government support!

An over-a-decade-long persecution of people who practice Truth, Compassion and Tolerance shows, the downslide of morality is evident, the society is on the verge of collapse.

Falun Gong practitioners strongly urge the international society, governments and media to investigate the crimes of live organ harvesting and sale of victims' bodies. The Communist Party of China must open all its labor camps, prisons and affiliated facilities to allow independent international investigation to reveal the truth.

SOURCE Falun Dafa Association of Washington, DC

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