Chinese Accused of Vast Trade in Organs by Julia Duin
Harvests come from religious dissidents.

The Washington Times Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Reprinted by permission

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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 the 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 of the dead.
 

The newest wrinkle, they said, that the 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,” said Mr. Gutmann, author of a forthcoming book on Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa.  “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.

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 Mr. Gutmann, details the practice.

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