Western Civilization vs. Chinese Barbarity

China watchdog reveals monstrous allegations of mass forced organ-harvesting

By Martin M. Barillas

GENEVA — A human rights group reported to the U.N. that China harvests human organs from imprisoned dissidents, especially members of the proscribed Falun Gong religious group and Uighur Muslims.
Lawyer Hamid Sabi of the London-based China Tribunal told the U.N. Human Rights Council on Tuesday that China takes skin, kidneys, lungs, and hearts from members of the persecuted groups. 

He described the atrocity of “cutting out the hearts and other organs from living, blameless, harmless, peaceable people.” 

Sabi told the assembled U.N. delegates that his group has proof of the atrocities and claimed that it has evidence of China’s crimes against humanity.

“Forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience, including the religious minorities of Falun Gong and Uighurs, has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale,” Sabi said in a video published on the China Tribunal website.
Sabi told the U.N. council that China’s organ-harvesting has led to “hundreds of thousands of victims” in “one of the worst mass atrocities of this century.” 

China Tribunal did not specify how many organs have been harvested by China, nor how many victims came from each of the targeted groups. 

In June, China Tribunal published a report that found that a “very substantial number” of prisoners were “killed to order” by the Chinese government. 

The report claimed that prisoners were “cut open while still alive for their kidneys, livers, hearts, lungs, cornea and skin to be removed and turned into commodities for sale.”
“Victim for victim and death for death, cutting out the hearts and other organs from living, blameless, harmless, peaceable people constitutes one of the worst mass atrocities of this century,” Sabi said. 

He added, “Organ transplantation to save life is a scientific and social triumph, but killing the donor is criminal.”
Speaking at the council’s headquarters in Switzerland, Sabi said the U.N. and other organizations should examine China Tribunal’s findings “not only in regard to the charge of genocide, but also in regard to crimes against humanity.” 

According to Sabi, member-states of the U.N. have a “legal obligation” to act in view of the release of the tribunal’s June report that uncovered “the commission of crimes against humanity against the Falun Gong and Uighur [minorities] had been proved beyond reasonable doubt.”
Sabi said in a speech that the targeting of minority groups, such as Uighur Muslims and members of the Falun Gong religion, makes possible a charge of genocide. 

Comparing it to other instances of extermination, he said, “Victim for victim and death for death, the gassing of the Jews by the Nazis, the massacre by the Khmer Rouge or the butchery to death of the Rwanda Tutsis may not be worse” than what China is doing. 

Saib told the U.N. Human Rights Council, “It is the legal obligation of UN Member States to address this criminal conduct.”
For its part, China denies that it is harvesting organs en masse. 

However, China has admitted to harvesting organs from executed criminals but claimed that it ceased the practice in 2015, according to Reuters. 

However, China Tribunal’s report said the organs are used for medical purposes. 

It cited short wait times for organ transplants in Chinese hospitals as evidence that China engages in harvesting. 

Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, an attorney who led prosecutors in the trial of former Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milošević, chaired the tribunal, which heard testimony from witnesses, medical experts, and human rights investigators. 

According to its findings, China has been extracting organs from victims for at least 20 years and continues to this day.
The report asserted that there is evidence of organ extraction among Tibetans and some Christian communities. 

More than a million mostly Muslim Uighurs are currently subjected to “re-education” in prison camps managed by the Chinese government in northwestern East Turkestan colony. 

The tribunal reported that they are “being used as a bank of organs” and subjected to regular medical testing.
Speaking at a separate event on Tuesday, Sir Geoffrey Nice said the governments of the world “can no longer avoid what it is inconvenient for them to admit.” 

Israel, Italy, Spain, and Taiwan, as well as other countries, have placed restrictions on persons wishing to travel to China for organ transplant surgery. 

The International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC) charity, which founded the China Tribunal, expects that legislation will emerge in the British parliament next month to halt unethical organ tourism.

The profit motive
Concerns over organ-harvesting date back more than a decade. 

In 2006, when hundreds of thousands of members of the outlawed Falun Gong group were imprisoned, the matter was raised by foreign ministers at a China–European Union summit meeting held that year. 

This came after Canadian human rights lawyers David Matas and David Kilgour investigated the deaths of Falun Gong members who were killed despite not having been sentenced to death by any court. 

They estimate that of 60,000 transplant operations in China between 2000 and 2005, only 18,000 organ donations in that period came from official sources, which is to say from posthumous donations or from formally executed death row prisoners. 

This leaves a shortfall of some 40,000 organ donations, which Matas and Kilgour supposed may come from forced organ extraction.
The profit motive is evident in the trafficking of human body parts. 

In 2006, the China International Transplantation Network Assistance Center in Shenyang carried a list of prices for body parts wherein a kidney was listed at $62,000, a liver or heart at $130,000, and a lung at $150,000. 

Currently, according to China Tribunal, the trade surpasses $1 billion each year.

China's crimes against humanity

U.N. urged to investigate monstrous live organ harvesting in China

By Emma Batha


LONDON -- A senior lawyer called on Tuesday for the top United Nations human rights body to investigate evidence that China is murdering members of the Falun Gong spiritual group and harvesting their organs for transplant.
Hamid Sabi called for urgent action as he presented the findings of the China Tribunal, an independent panel set up to examine the issue, which concluded in June that China’s organ harvesting amounted to crimes against humanity.
Beijing has repeatedly denied accusations by human rights researchers and scholars that it forcibly takes organs from prisoners of conscience and said it stopped using organs from executed prisoners in 2015.
But Sabi, Counsel to the China Tribunal, told the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) that forced organ harvesting had been committed “for years throughout China on a significant scale ... and continues today”.
The harvesting has involved “hundreds of thousands of victims”, mainly practitioners of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement, he said, adding that detainees from China’s ethnic Uighur minority were also targeted.
“Victim for victim and death for death, cutting out the hearts and other organs from living, blameless, harmless, peaceable people constitutes one of the worst mass atrocities of this century,” Sabi said.
“Organ transplantation to save life is a scientific and social triumph. But killing the donor is criminal.”
Falun Gong is a spiritual group based around meditation that China banned 20 years ago after 10,000 members appeared at the central leadership compound in Beijing in silent protest. 

Thousands of members have since been jailed.
Geoffrey Nice, the tribunal’s chairman, told a separate U.N. event on the issue that governments, U.N. bodies and those involved with transplant surgery, could no longer turn a blind eye to the “inconvenient” evidence.
Nice, who was lead prosecutor in the trial of former Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic, said the tribunal’s findings required immediate action.
“The time of convenient ‘uncertainty’, when all these entities could say the case against (China) was not proved, is past.”
Transplant recipients in China include Chinese nationals as well as overseas patients who travel to China in order to receive an organ at a substantial cost, but with a greatly reduced waiting time.
The tribunal said in June its findings were “indicative” of genocide, but it had not been clear enough to make a positive ruling.

Barbaric Men of Asia

The ugly truth about China’s organ harvesting
By Anastasia Lin

Actress/Beauty Queen Anastasia Lin denounces Chinese Organ Harvesting

The verdict is in: On June 17, the China Tribunal announced its finding that China’s Communist regime has for two decades practiced systematic, forced organ removal from prisoners of conscience, mainly Falun Gong practitioners and Muslims.
The independent, London-based panel of international legal and medical experts was led by Sir Geoffrey Nice, who also headed the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
After unwilling donors are executed, the tribunal found, their organs are sold to Chinese or foreign “transplant tourists.” 

Before 2015, China, whose Confucian value system considers it important to keep the body ­intact after death, had no voluntary organ-transplant system. 

Yet Chinese hospitals perform some 60,000 to 90,000 transplant surgeries each year.
Chinese hospitals promise that they can deliver hearts, livers, kidneys and corneas of matching blood type and size in two weeks. 

The surgeries can be scheduled in advance, which suggests hospitals know exactly when the “donors” are going to die.  

By contrast, America has a highly developed voluntary organ-donation system, and recipients typically have to wait hundreds of days.
According to researchers, Chinese prison authorities subject detained Falun Gong practitioners to medical exams to determine the health of their organs (even as they routinely torture these same prisoners). 

Detained Uighur Muslims report similar medical examinations.
The tribunal also heard from Chinese medical personnel who have defected from the regime. 

They warned Western governments and medical practitioners of this ongoing atrocity.
It wasn’t easy. 

One researcher likened his work to examining the scene following a nuclear explosion. 

Chinese government agencies and hospitals never provide honest numbers, so investigators have to make inferences from evidence such as hospital-renovation notices, patient turnover rates and medical research papers to estimate how many transplants are performed at each hospital.
Beijing deletes all traces of evidence online, making preservation of available records vitally important to rights researchers.
I first grappled seriously with this issue when I starred in the 2016 film “The Bleeding Edge.” 

I played a ­Falun Gong practitioner imprisoned for her beliefs, who is tied to an operating table as her vital organs are removed to be sold for profit.
I later joined these courageous researchers and campaigners. 

We testified at legislative hearings to push for laws prohibiting foreigners from going to China for transplants and banning Chinese medical and police personnel from visiting the West.
It was an uphill battle. 

Although Israel and Taiwan both passed laws making it harder for their citizens to obtain transplants in China, other democratic governments were reluctant to acknowledge this crime against humanity, perhaps ­because doing so would imply an obligation to act immediately.
China launches vicious ad hominem attacks against critics, to undermine our credibility. 

Numerous screenings of my film, and of documentaries on the subject, have been canceled on university campuses and elsewhere following phones calls from Chinese diplomats.
A year ago I was booked to discuss organ harvesting on a prominent Western public broadcaster. 

A producer canceled the interview hours before I was due to go on air. 

My representative was told the order came from “higher up” and that my “affiliations” had disqualified me from talking on live TV. 

China’s state-run media called me a tool of a “cult” working with “anti-China forces” to spread lies.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been murdered and had their organs harvested since the practice was industrialized in 2000. 

The victims were Chinese citizens who wanted nothing more than to practice their beliefs in peace. Instead, they were killed by their government on an industrial scale.
For those of us who have fought to expose this crime against humanity, the tribunal’s verdict is an answer to a prayer. 

We had presented the free world with mounds of evidence but were repeatedly dismissed. 

How many crimes did China’s global partners ignore, because the truth was inconvenient? 

Now that the China Tribunal has concluded that organ harvesting is happening on a massive scale, and systematically documented the practice, there is no excuse left for inaction.

Murderous Pigs of Asia

Kyle Bass attacked the 'murderous pigs' who run China after a tribunal found it harvests organs from prisoners

• Kyle Bass, head of Hayman Capital Management, has attacked China's ruling party after a tribunal concluded prisoners are being executed to harvest their organs for transplants.
• "Reading this made me sick to my stomach," tweeted Kyle Bass, the head of Hayman Capital Management. "It's time to completely cut ties with the MURDEROUS PIGS that run the Chinese Communist Party."
• Mr. Bass has also accused Huawei of theft, condemned the Chinese as genocidal killers, and cheered the Hong Kong protests in the past week.

By Theron Mohamed

Kyle Bass, head of Hayman Capital Management 

A US hedge-fund manager has attacked China's ruling party on Twitter after an independent tribunal of human-rights advocates concluded prisoners are being executed to harvest their organs for transplants.
"Reading this made me sick to my stomach," tweeted Kyle Bass, head of Hayman Capital Management, referring to an article detailing the China tribunal's findings. 

"It's time to completely cut ties with the MURDEROUS PIGS that run the Chinese Communist Party."
Mr. Bass, a longstanding China bear, shorted the Chinese yuan for nearly four years until exiting the position earlier this year. 

He has accused Chinese smartphone giant Huawei of stealing US technology, condemned the Chinese as "genocidal killers," and cheered Hong Kong protestors' resistance to a China-backed extradition bill in the past week.
The China Tribunal determined members of religious minorities such as Falun Gong have been imprisoned, tortured, and executed to harvest their organs for transplants. 

It found evidence of prisoners being kept alive while their organs were forcibly removed. 

Cases of forced organ harvesting in China date back at least 20 years and continue, it said.
"Forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience has been practiced for a substantial period of time involving a very substantial number of victims," the tribunal concluded. 

"Very many people have died indescribably hideous deaths for no reason."
Chinese officials said they stopped harvesting organs from death-row prisoners in 2014 and shifted to a voluntary donation system.
The tribunal was headed by Sir Geoffrey Nice, a barrister who led the prosecution of Slobodan Milošević, the former president of Serbia charged with genocide, torture, and other crimes against humanity. 

The panel included several human-rights lawyers, a surgeon, and a historian.

Chinese Barbarity

China is harvesting organs from detainees, China Tribunal concludes. Victims include imprisoned followers of Falun Gong movement
By Owen Bowcott

Waiting times for transplantation offered by hospitals in China are extraordinarily low. 

An independent tribunal sitting in London has concluded that the killing of detainees in China for organ transplants is continuing, and victims include imprisoned followers of the Falun Gong movement.
The China Tribunal, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, who was a prosecutor at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, said in a unanimous determination at the end of its hearings it was “certain that Falun Gong as a source -- probably the principal source -- of organs for forced organ harvesting”.
“The conclusion shows that very many people have died indescribably hideous deaths for no reason, that more may suffer in similar ways and that all of us live on a planet where extreme wickedness may be found in the power of those, for the time being, running a country with one of the oldest civilisations known to modern man.”
He added: “There is no evidence of the practice having been stopped and the tribunal is satisfied that it is continuing.”
The tribunal has been taking evidence from medical experts, human rights investigators and others.

Call for retraction of 400 scientific papers amid fears organs came from Chinese prisoners

Among those killed are members of religious minorities such as Falun Gong. 

Persecution of the group began in 1999 after it had attracted tens of millions of followers and came to be seen as a threat to the communist party.
There is less evidence about the treatment of Tibetans, Uighur Muslims and some Christian sects.
China announced in 2014 that it would stop removing organs for transplantation from executed prisoners and has dismissed the claims as politically-motivated and untrue.
The tribunal was initiated by the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (Etac) and its members, all of whom worked without payment, included medical experts.
Waiting times for transplantation offered by hospitals in China were extraordinarily low, the tribunal noted, often only a couple of weeks.
Investigators calling hospitals in China inquiring about transplants for patients, the tribunal said, have in the past been told that the source of some organs were from Falun Gong followers.
Both former Falun Gong and Uighur inmates gave testimony of undergoing repeated medical testing in Chinese jails.
Jennifer Zeng, a Falun Gong activist who was imprisoned for a year in a female labour camp, gave evidence to the China Tribunal about what she said were repeated medical check-ups and blood tests to which inmates were subjected.
She told the Guardian: “On the day we were transferred to the labour camp, we were taken to a medical facility where we underwent physical check-ups. We were interrogated about what diseases we had and I told them I had hepatitis.
“The second time, after about a month in the camp, everyone was handcuffed and put in a van and taken to a huge hospital. That was for a more thorough physical check-up. We were given X-rays. On the third occasion in the camp, they were drawing blood from us. We were all told to line up in the corridor and the test were given.”

Zeng, who fled China in 2001, did not see any direct evidence of forced organ removal but since reading other accounts, she has questioned whether the tests were part of a medical selection process.
In her statement to the tribunal, she said: “Inmates of the labour camp were not allowed to exchange contact details, so there was no way to trace each other after we were released. When anyone disappeared from the camp, I would assume that she was released and had gone home.
“But in reality that cannot be confirmed, as I had no way to trace others after my release and I now fear they might have been taken to a hospital and had their organs removed without consent and thus killed in the process.”
As many as 90,000 transplant operations a year are being carried out in China, the tribunal estimated, a far higher figure than that given by official government sources.
There have been calls for the UK parliament to ban patients from travelling to China for transplant surgery. 

More than 40 MPs from all parties have backed the motion. 

Israel, Italy, Spain and Taiwan already enforce such restrictions.
China insists it adheres to international medical standards that require organ donations to be made by consent and without any financial charges. 

It declined to participate in the tribunal.

The tribunal heard reports of extraction of kidneys from executed prisoners from as far back as the 1970s. 

Most of the evidence, however, came from 2000 onwards.

Call for UK to ban patients travelling to China for 'organ tourism'

Forty MPs back effort before inquiry into China's forced organ harvesting
By Owen Bowcott 

UK patients should be banned from travelling to China for transplant surgery, the government has been told, before an inquiry into allegations of forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience.
The call has so far been backed by 40 MPs from all parties before the next session of the independent China tribunal, which is investigating claims that detainees are being targeted by the regime. 

Opening a Westminster Hall debate last week, the DUP MP Jim Shannon urged the UK government to consider imposing an organ tourism ban like those already enacted by Italy, Spain, Israel and Taiwan.
“It is wrong that people should travel from here to China for what is almost a live organ on demand to suit themselves,” Shannon, the MP for Strangford in Northern Ireland, said. 

“It is hard to take in what that means – it leaves one incredulous.
“It means someone can sit in London or in Newtownards and order an organ to be provided on demand. Within a month they can have the operation.
“We need to control that structurally, as other countries have, not simply because it is the right thing to do, but also because it is necessary to protect UK citizens from unwittingly playing a role in the horrifying suffering of religious or belief groups in China.”
The China Tribunal, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC who was formerly a prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, has been taking evidence about mispractices from medical experts, human rights investigators and others.
It will hold a second round of hearings on 6 and 7 April in London. 

Its final judgment will be published on 13 June. 

China has been asked to participate but has declined to do so.
In an interim judgment released last December, the tribunal said: “In China forced-organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience has been practised for a substantial period of time involving a very substantial number of victims... It is beyond doubt on the evidence presently received that forced harvesting of organs has happened on a substantial scale by state-supported or approved organisations and individuals.”
Among those killed are members of religious minorities such as Falun Gong, Tibetans, Uighur Muslims and Christian sects. 

In 2014, China announced that it would stop removing organs for transplantation from executed prisoners.
It is not clear how many UK citizens have travelled to China for transplants. 

Waiting times for operations are said to be far shorter than in the west. 

One inquiry suggested that a liver transplant could be arranged privately at a Chinese hospital for $100,000.
Fiona Bruce, the Conservative MP for Congleton, who is also leading the campaign for a ban said during the Westminster debate: “Our government could inquire about the numbers of organ removals and their sources … They could reduce demand by banning organ tourism … This is not a case of a few voluntary organ transplants; it is a case of mass killings through forced organ removal, of religious persecution, of grave allegations of crimes against humanity.”
Mark Field, the Foreign Office minister, acknowledged that there was a growing body of research, much of which was “very worrying” but he believed relatively few people in the UK chose to travel to China for organ transplants.
Introducing a travel ban, he said, would be difficult to police since it would be hard to establish whether people had travelled there for that purpose. 

Field said: “But, it is important that we make them aware that other countries may have poorer medical and ethical safeguards than the UK, and that travelling abroad for treatments, including organ transplants, carries fundamental risks.”

China's crimes against humanity

The Truth about China’s Persecution of Falun Gong
By ETHAN GUTMANN
People practice Falun Dafa, or Falun Gong, meditation and exercises before a protest march against the Chinese government, outside City Hall in Los Angeles, Calif., October 15, 2015. 

There is a certain transgressive thrill in pulling the tail of a sacred cow. 

In that sense, Ms. Tolentino’s piece “Stepping Into the Uncanny, Unsettling World of Shen Yun” (March 19, 2019) is a compliment, a flare in the New York sky that Falun Gong, as a victim group, has finally achieved sacred-cow status. 

But even tail-pulling has an unwritten etiquette: If I wanted to write a critique of, say, traditional Jewish Passover food, I would stick to things such as the texture of gefilte fish rather than condemning the Seder or questioning the existence of the Holocaust. 

And I suspect Ms. Tolentino would agree with me.
Ms. Tolentino was essentially writing a critical dance review of Shen Yun Performing Arts while sprinkling a little snark on — in her view — the cornball conventions of Chinese theater and Falun Gong’s suspicious refusal to adopt Western, politically correct norms. 

Yet her argument suddenly took a weird detour, delivering a skeptical judgement on the charges of Chinese State organ harvesting of Falun Gong (“many experts dispute this”).
Why did she do this? 

Two reasons: A moment of transgressive pleasure is followed by guilt, and guilt must be answered by justification — perhaps the victim group is not really a sacred cow after all? 

Or they have brought their suffering upon themselves? (You know, through hypocrisy or not answering her emails or something). 

The second reason is that even a cursory glance at the credible claims surrounding Chinese organ harvesting will establish that this is not the Holocaust.
Indeed, it’s closer to the Spanish Inquisition — a convert-to-the-Communist-Party-or-die scheme that has spanned two decades and picked up four victim groups on the way: the Uyghurs in 1997, Falun Gong in 2001, Tibetans and House Christians in 2003. 

Overall casualty rate? 

Probably just under that of the Syrian Civil War. 

Tolentino is right; that’s only a fraction of what the Nazi death camps produced in a just a few years.
Yet Ms. Tolentino had many choices in her brief Google search. 

On one side, she found me, and David Kilgour, and David Matas — two Jews and a Presbyterian who have investigated this subject for 13 years and have published books on the subject. 

On the other, she found a Washington Post journalist who, during his brief posting in Beijing, wrote a single story on this issue, with a single quote from a Chinese lawyer (“he had never heard of organs being harvested from live prisoners, as Falun Gong claims.”)
That Chinese lawyer represents Falun Gong detainees in China. 

And that means he is a very brave man — particularly at a time when Chinese lawyers are routinely being thrown into prison, “Black Jails,” and even labor camps. 

Yet even very brave men don’t stand up all that well to electric cattle prods, so it is not surprising that the lawyer didn’t remember hearing anything from his clients about the most politically sensitive issue in China, the state-sponsored organ harvesting of political and religious dissidents.
Ms. Tolentino had choices. 

I’m not surprised that she did not read our published works. 

That can take a month. 

But she could have quoted the New York Times; their previous star China reporter, Didi Kirsten Tatlow, seamlessly fluent in Chinese, wrote six stories on this issue. 

Ms. Tolentino could have easily found that our own House of Representatives passed a resolution in 2016 condemning China for harvesting dissidents, citing our “credible and persistent reports” — as did the European Parliament. 

She could have quoted from the ongoing London China Tribunal, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice, probably the most respected human rights prosecutor in the world. 

Again, Ms. Tolentino is right: There is a rival herd of experts who dispute our findings out there. 

But with over a million Uyghurs incarcerated over the last year, blood-and-DNA-tested, ready for organ-tissue matching, those experts are very quiet these days.
Gefilte fish has many memories for me. 

I could write an essay about Jewish food and it might be just as evocative — and critical of how corny the whole Seder thing can be, and emotionally mixed — as Ms. Tolentino’s feelings about the Shen Yun dance performance. 

But the force of my writing still wouldn’t give me the standing to publish in The New Yorker on the Holocaust. 

Only intensive study and the relentless, challenging, scarring, tedious, and exhaustive interviews of witnesses can do that.
I suspect that the author had a nice, mildly transgressive piece in hand. 

Pull the tail a little, maybe even tip the whole cow. 

Then she “stepped into” something, “uncanny and unsettling.” 

It wasn’t Shen Yun, or Falun Gong — or a cowpie for that matter. 

No, it was something evil, with a whiff of the gas chamber about it, something she did not understand. 

And she panicked, but she went ahead and did it anyway. 

I have no clue as to why her editors went along on that midnight ride, but they did. 

And in doing so, they failed their readers — and millions of prisoners of conscience as well.