Canada must end complicity in China’s brutal organ-trafficking regime

Forced organ harvesting deserves special attention in the context of China, where this practice is driven by the state
By MARIA CHEUNG 

A photo from the documentary Human Harvest, by Vancouver director Leon Lee. The film explores China's organ harvesting industry, and won the prestigious Peabody Award. 

The clock is ticking on Canada’s chance to enact important measures against organ trafficking.
For the past two decades, the Chinese regime has been killing prisoners of conscience for their organs. 

The purchase and sale of human lives has become an industry, and Canada, among other developed countries, has been supporting it.
Bill S-240 seeks to put a stop to Canadian complicity by criminalizing organ tourism. 

The bill has received unanimous consent from both the Senate and the House of Commons, and is awaiting final Senate approval before the end of the parliamentary session before it can be passed.
This is a critical moment of decision for Canada.
As a member of the Canadian Committee of the International Coalition To End Transplant Abuse In China, I have been among those advocating for Bill S-240, an act that brings important changes to the Criminal Code and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act in order to combat organ tourism.

Live organs on demand
Organ trafficking is a global phenomenon. 

However, forced organ harvesting deserves special attention in the context of the Chinese. 

In China, this practice is driven by the state.
It’s directed at prisoners of conscience to advance policies of genocide. 

Forced organ harvesting in China is carried out at such scale that it constitutes an industry.
Since the early 2000s, Chinese hospitals have been providing live organs on demand. 

Perfectly matched organs can be obtained in weeks or even days.
With an estimate of 60,000 to 100,000 major organ transplant cases per year in China, the availability of organs cannot be accounted for by the number of death-row executions and voluntary organ donations.

Falun Gong, Uyghurs, Tibetans targeted
The sudden boom in organ transplantation in China coincides with the start of the eradication campaign against Falun Gong. 

Since July 1999, Falun Gong practitioners have been incarcerated and tortured in massive numbers. During captivity, Falun Gong adherents have been singled out for organ examinations and blood tests.
As well as the Falun Gong, Uyghurs, Tibetans and some Christian sects are also being targeted. Forced organ harvesting is continuing despite China’s announcement that it’s going to stop the illicit practice.
Human Rights Watch reported in December 2017 that the Chinese government forcibly collected biodata, including DNA and blood samples, from 19 million Uyghurs that year under the guise of a free public health program in which all citizens are given physical examinations.
At the same time, the Chinese regime began mass arrest and incarceration of Uyghurs, with a million Uyghurs imprisoned in concentration camps. 

Meanwhile, a priority lane labelled as “special passengers/human organs transport lane” appeared in the Kashgar airport of East Turkestan.

Canadians travel to China for illicit organs
For the past two decades, Canada, among other developed countries, has been a participant in this abuse. 

Dr. Jeff Zaltzman, the head of renal transplants at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, revealed in 2014 that he alone had at least 50 patients who had gone to China for transplants. 

Zaltzman has since advocated for changing legislation to address the issue of forced organ harvesting.
Canada has, in fact, been identified as one of the seven major organ-importing countries, alongside the United States, Australia, Israel, Japan, Oman and Saudi Arabia.
Barring a few exceptions, the Canadian Criminal Code only criminalizes acts committed in Canada. As such, it is currently legal for Canadians to travel abroad and obtain organs from illicit sources, because such acts do not take place on Canadian soil.
A scene from the documentary Human Harvest, by Vancouver director Leon Lee. The film explores China’s organ harvesting industry. 

An extraterritorial offence
Bill S-240 recognizes the extraterritorial nature of organ transplant abuse. 

By making the purchase of organs, and obtaining organs without donors’ informed consent an extraterritorial offence, the bill creates important measures to stem the flow of organ tourism to countries such as China.
The proposed legislation would also bring Canada into further conformity with emerging international legal norms, such as the principle against transplant commercialism enshrined in The Declaration of Istanbul on Organ Trafficking and Transplant Tourism.
Countries like Israel, Spain, Taiwan, Italy and Norway have already enacted similar legislation. 

The European Union and United States have issued a declaration and resolution respectively condemning the crime of forced organ harvesting.
On Dec. 11, 2018, the China Tribunal — an independent people’s tribunal chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice, former deputy prosecutor who led the prosecution of Slobodan Milosevic at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia — stated the following in its interim judgment:
“The Tribunal’s members are all certain — unanimously, and sure beyond reasonable doubt — that 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.”
The final judgement is due to be released on June 17.
It’s vital that Canada ensures Bill S-240 is passed.

China plans globalization of mass murder
China has further ambitions to develop organ transplantation into an export industry as part of China’s “Belt and Road” initiative.
The industrialization and globalization of organ transplantation is the industrialization and globalization of mass murder. 

If this practice is allowed to take root in human societies, ever more vulnerable populations would be sacrificed in the pursuit of a healthy life by the powerful and the rich.
The cost of inaction means a continuation of Canadian complicity in one of the worst crimes of our times. 

It is vital that Canada passes this legislation before the end of this parliamentary session, bringing this complicity to an end.

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.