China's crimes against humanity

Researcher Hopes President Trump Will Hold China Accountable on Organ Harvesting
By Sarah Le

Former Canadian Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific David Kilgour presents a revised report about continued murder of Falun Gong practitioners in China for their organs, as report co-author lawyer David Matas listens in the background, on Jan. 31, 2007.

LOS ANGELES—As former Canadian member of Parliament and Secretary of State (Asia-Pacific) David Kilgour travels around the world speaking on the issue of forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in China, there are some people who tell him the practice ended in 2015.
Jan. 1, 2015 is the date that former Chinese Vice Minister of Health, Huang Jiefu, openly promised that China would end using organs from executed prisoners for transplantation.
“People don’t want to believe this is still going on. They want to believe that it’s stopped,” he said during an interview on Friday, Feb. 3, prior to a screening of the award-winning documentary “Human Harvest” at the UCLA Ackerman Grand Ballroom.
For years, Kilgour has researched allegations of organ harvesting in China. 

In June of last year, he published an updated version of his 2006 report titled “Bloody Harvest,” co-authored by international human rights lawyer David Matas, and in cooperation with researcher and author of “The Slaughter” Ethan Gutmann.
The researchers say China is conducting 60,000 to 100,000 organ transplants per year, and most of the organs come from prisoners of conscience who are killed in the process.
Meanwhile, Chinese officials claim only 10,000 transplants are conducted each year.
Yet Kilgour said most of the data used in his updated report came directly from Chinese government websites during the last two years. 

And the number of transplants was much higher than 10,000.
All the evidence points to a giant bank of living organ “donors,” who tissues are matched to wealthy Chinese and medical tourists and killed on demand, said Kilgour. 

The film “Human Harvest” by Vancouver filmmaker Leon Lee tells the chilling story in detail.
“People will fly to China and get a kidney or a liver and come back home with it, and they don’t want to think about where the liver’s coming from,” he said. 

“That is simply inhuman, and it’s got to stop.”
Kilgour says he has found hope in an unlikely source—the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.
Late last year, Trump picked Peter Navarro to head a new National Trade Council. 

Navarro has written hard-hitting books and created a film about the risks the United States and the rest of the world face from China regarding issues such as trade imbalance and the military.
Kilgour thinks highly of Navarro and even wrote an endorsement for Navarro’s book “Crouching Tiger: What China’s Militarism Means for the World,” calling it “brilliant and clear-headed analysis.”
“I think big changes are coming for the way China deals with America, and I think with the world, for the better,” said Kilgour.
Although Kilgour is not a supporter of Trump, he thinks it’s likely the new U.S. president will be tougher on China than the previous administration and may put pressure on the Chinese regime to take responsibility for the crime of organ harvesting.
“In the history of the world, no other government on the face of the earth [has done] this except China,” he said. 

“Until it stops, China should not be part of the world trading community, and it should not be part of the civilized community.”
Kilgour said during his travels, he’s noticed more and more people around the world are becoming aware of the organ harvesting issue. 

His recent visits to Ukraine, Latvia, and Poland were covered extensively by local media.
He said he’s also optimistic that the horrific practice of organ harvesting in China will soon end, despite the fact that it could be generating as much as $9 billion a year.
“Once more and more people in China know about it, I’m sure they’ll rise for the party state to stop doing it,” he said.
Until that happens, he hopes the United States, Canada, and other countries can join Israel, Spain, and Taiwan in passing legislation banning citizens from participating in transplant tourism to countries that sell organs that were taken by force.
“The question now is doing something about it,” said Kilgour.

China's Crimes Against Humanity

Two movies China desperately wants to hide
By Jeff Jacoby

Canada's Miss World contestant Anastasia Lin speaks to media after she was denied entry to mainland China, at Hong Kong International Airport on Nov. 26, 2015.

This week, two extraordinary Canadian films — one a chilling documentary, the other a riveting drama based on its findings — were released for sale on iTunes. 

Directed by Leon Lee, the films illuminate what may be the most depraved of all systematic human-rights atrocities in the world today: China’s industrial-scale harvesting of vital organs from prisoners of conscience, to be transplanted into patients paying exorbitant fees for a heart, kidney, or liver made available on demand.
The documentary, “Human Harvest,” won the coveted Peabody Award for its exposé of an unspeakable crime against humanity. 

In 1999, Chinese hospitals began performing more than 10,000 organ transplants annually, generating a vast and lucrative traffic in “transplant tourists,” who flocked to China on the assurance that they could obtain lifesaving organs without having to languish on a waiting list. 

China had no voluntary organ-donation system to speak of, yet suddenly it was providing tens of thousands of freshly harvested organs to patients with ready cash or high-placed connections. 

How was that possible?
The evidence, assembled by human-rights researchers and investigative journalists, added up to something unimaginable: China was killing enormous numbers of imprisoned men and women by strapping them down to operating tables, still conscious, and forcibly extracting their organs — and then delivering those organs to the hospital transplant centers that have become a major source of revenue. 

Chinese officials claim that organs come from violent criminals on death row. 

But “Human Harvest” makes it clear that most of those killed are peaceful citizens persecuted for their beliefs: Tibetans, Uighurs, Christians — and, above all, practitioners of Falun Gong, a Buddhist-style spiritual movement of peaceful meditation and ethical commitment.
Falun Gong (or Falun Dafa), a peaceful and nonpolitical discipline, attracted millions of adherents across China during the 1990s. 

But in 1999, Jiang Zemin and the Chinese Communist Party, alarmed by the popularity of a belief system not controlled by the state, abruptly turned against it. 

Practitioners found themselves demonized as dangerous cultists; by the hundreds of thousands they were arrested and imprisoned, often subjected to ghastly torture until they “transformed” — i.e., until they signed a document renouncing Falun Gong. 

Many who wouldn’t died under the knife, literally butchered for their organs.
As awareness of China’s gruesome organ-harvesting crimes has spread, a few Western governments have moved to combat it through laws prohibiting citizens from traveling to China for transplants or barring insurance companies from covering it. 

In conferences and parliamentary hearings, activists have pressed for a comprehensive strategy to end to organ harvesting. 

But the best vehicle to arouse a massive audience to resist China’s massive evil is popular culture. Hence Lee’s newest movie: a feature-length thriller, “The Bleeding Edge.”
The film stars Anastasia Lin, a gifted Chinese-Canadian actress who also happens to be the reigning Miss World Canada. 

She plays Chen Jing, a young Falun Gong practitioner who is jailed and brutally tortured for her refusal to “transform.” 

A simultaneous plot line follows James Branton (played by Jay Clift), a hard-charging tech entrepreneur whose heart collapses while on a business trip to China to close a major deal with the government. 

Branton receives an emergency transplant that saves his life — and motivates him to find out how a suitable organ could have been located so quickly.
Lin drew international headlines last year when she was forbidden to enter China, where the 2015 Miss World pageant was being held. 

For Lin, who was born and lived in China until she was 13, beauty pageants are a means of calling attention to human-rights abuses in her native land, and Beijing was intent on denying her a Chinese platform from which to speak.
This year’s Miss World pageant is taking place in Washington, D.C. 

Lin is once again representing Canada. 

The competition’s motto is “Beauty with a Purpose,” and Lin’s purpose hasn’t wavered: to shed light on China’s terrible repression, particularly its inhuman treatment of those who practice Falun Gong.
“The Bleeding Edge” will be screened in Washington a few days before the Miss World final on Dec. 18, and the iTunes listing is timed to coincide with Lin’s bid for the crown. 

Far better, of course, would be a wide theatrical release, but no theater chain has agreed to show the movie. 

That isn’t because of any problem with the quality of the film — it is a gripping work, and Lin’s performance is haunting. 

But China’s regime exerts enormous leverage on the US movie industry. 

Studios are afraid to make films that may face resistance in the Chinese market, and major swaths of the American theater market, such as AMC Entertainment, are Chinese-owned subsidiaries.
When Beijing aims to stifle a message, it takes grit to push back. 

Lin’s father, who still lives in China, was threatened by security agents into severing his ties with a daughter he adores. 

A renowned Canadian fashion designer who was eager to provide dresses for Lin’s Miss World appearances abruptly backed out after allegedly receiving a warning from the Chinese embassy in Ottawa. 

Lin has been told more than once that she is effectively blacklisted in Hollywood.
Making any film is challenging, but “The Bleeding Edge” has also had to contend with the roadblocks that come with Chinese enmity. 

Chinese-speaking cast and crew members who were supposed to work with Lee backed out for fear of endangering loved ones in China. 

Owners of venues where filming was to take place panicked when they heard actors rehearsing their lines. 

One potential distributor told Lee: “I am not keen on putting my head in China’s crosshairs... I really wish I could publicly attach my name to this, but too many of my paychecks are involved in Chinese funds.”
Yet Leon Lee and Anastasia Lin have not lost their resolve. 

Nor have they lost sight of their goal. 

They seek not fame or fortune for themselves, but liberty for China’s people and an end to an crime against humanity so evil that it could have been devised by Josef Mengele. 

China wants to quash “The Bleeding Edge.” 

All the more reason to view it.