China is the most populated nation on earth and home to a booming organ transplant industry
however over the past decade reports have emerged
that the majority of organs are not sourced from death row prisoners
and donations as stated by officials
but rather from innocent prisoners of conscience murdered on demand
researchers across the globe are uncovering new evidence that shows the true
nature and scale of these abuses
in June 2000 and 13 independent investigators jointly published a 680 page report of irrefutable evidence
as China to my knowledge is the only country in the world where the government
run industrial program kills people and
cells there organs endless hospitals in here we go into them in great detail
that we're talking about a large
hospital endless amounts of transplant surgery and transplant teams
I was really surprised to had the number was I mean it's ass ayit
multiple between six and ten of the official figures hearings were held by the
US Congress the British Parliament
the European Parliament and the Canadian Parliament
the US House of representatives unanimously passed a resolution
condemning the systematic state sanctioned organ harvesting from non consenting prisoners of conscience
China's killing for organs is making a major appearance across media outlets all over the world
in 2000 and 6 it first came to light that prisoners of conscience were
being killed on demand for organ transplants in secret detention facilities throughout China
the first two researchers to investigate were David Kilgore
former Canadian secretary of state for Asia Pacific
and David Matas an international human rights lawyer
when we started in 2000 and 6 I didn't know where the trails would lead or
what the conclusion would be the initial surprise and disappoint the disappointment was that
this was true that it was happening throughout China
and it was happening from 2000 and 1 to the date of our report
Kilgore mad is release their first report in July 2000 and 6 and later
published the book Bloody Harvest
around the same time Ethan Cottman an independent investigative journalist based in London
he spent seven years doing his own research before publishing the Slaughter in 2000 and 14
we made the point that it was really prisoners of conscience we believe are
making up the bulk of these organs
Bitter Arthur and app
we came as David Kilburn David made us and I
came to this from very the same conclusion from very different
using very different procedures but we did come to that conclusion
the investigators joined forces researched hundreds of transplant hospitals in China
and released their new report in 2000 and 16
the three investigators were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for their work
discovering exactly how large the transplant industry is in China and how many victims
there have been is difficult
the researcher spent a decade piecing together the evidence
for example in September 2000 and 13
director J J yeah of the liver transplant center at the People's Hospital of
Peking University told China economic weekly
our hospital conducted 4000 liver and kidney transplants within a particular year
so we had to cross check everything so and we had
posted volume numbers we cross checked it against
staff against beds against research publications against media reports
against the purchase of immune or suppressive drugs I mean every which way we could
and what we were able to do by all this cross checking is develop a consistent
pictured and in that particular hit case we came to the conclusion that yes
his claim 0 4000 was real
Chen in Central Hospital they have 500 beds
it's actually over that moth 500 dedicated transplant beds
that they were climbing in their internal communications
several points to be doing a hundred and 31 percent occupancy
what that means again twenty to thirty days stay or what it
suggests is they're doing about 5000
plants per year these examples show that China's official claim of 10 000 transplants per year
is easily surpassed by just a few hospitals
but these two hospitals are just the tip of the iceberg the investigators found that more
than 1000 transplant hospitals applied for permits from the ministry of health in 2000
and 7 to continue doing transport
its
that suggests these hospitals meant the ministry's minimum capacity requirement for transplant centers it certifies
a hundred and 69 were eventually selected if you
assume hospitals just operating at the minimums never mind actual our actual estimate is
closer to a 100 000 a year
the researchers found other evidence of a massive transplant system
some of it from Chinese officials themselves
Hu shao shun a member of the expert committee of the Human Organ donation commission stated
the number of transplants increased by ten times between 19 99 2000
and further tripled by 2000 and 5 that's a thirty fold increase in six years
Wu mung Chapel known as the father of liver surgery in China told the
media in 2000 and 11
China now performs the most liver transplants in the world
since 2000 the entire United States has performed an average of about
6000 liver transplants a year
this could be matched by just a few hospitals in China
that they had this endless supply of organs available on demand and
the only limit but's capacity
and so what you saw after 2000 and 1 was this huge building boom
new beds new wings new hospitals
focused on transplants and so that the volume
when the system's operating a capacity increased year by year
the report shows that just the 169 hospitals approved by the ministry of health
could have performed over one million transplants since the year 2000
many more hospitals were also doing transplants despite not having been certified
organ transplantation has been continuously incorporated into the national Five Year Plan
and has become a high priority in China's National strategy
a large number of organ transplant research and training projects are funded under the
major national programs and funds
the investigators found that China International transplantation network Assistance Center sitnak
listed transplant prices for foreigners on its archived website
that was bringing in about nine or ten billion dollars a year
this industrial transplant operation going on across didn't know
it's a lot of money a lot of a lot of hospitals are financing
and lot of their activities through that
they're watched Berry very closely indeed
by the top leadership so they're fully aware of this as well
as the fact that wrongly Jun
one of them the boche lie was a contender for the Chinese presidency
this was his right hand man he was the most famous policeman in all China
here he is directing organ trafficking
I mean he had a center which did this up
Stephen's given AN award for doing this
and specifically for coming up with a new lethal injection method
he did thousands of translates by his own admission and the award
ceremony he talks about that
we need to give all of the thanks to the government for the support extended
for our completing such a large number of organ transplants every year
researchers were particularly struck by one aspect of this transplants
unlike anywhere else in the world they were being done on demand
in countries with advanced organ donation and allocation systems
patients must usually wait years for a donor to become available
yet in China waiting times are commonly in weeks
the 2000 and 6 liver transplant registry report showed
that 27 percent of samples were emergency transplants
that means they found a new livery within days or even hours
but was back in 2000 and 5 when a patient of mine who has
been on the top list
of patience for human heart transplantation came to me one day and told me
that he was told by his insurance company his Israeli insurance company to go to China
in two weeks time as he was scheduled to undergo hard transplantation
and when I asked him how came such a surgery can be scheduled ahead of time
you know somebody has to die on the very day of the operation
he said he didn't know and he went to China and got his hard transplantation exactly
on the day that he was promised
one hospital in southwest China claimed to have
donors seeking matched recipients
and also promised in case of failure we will continue to perform
transplants until one is successful
in 2000 and 6 a chief surgeon of the organ transplant center
at a traditional Chinese medicine hospital
published a study of fifty patients at his hospital
who had each received kidney transplants 2 3 or four times
another example that's so I can't get out of my head is a
man from a country who went twice to China first time he went
they brought him four sets of kidneys
and none of the four was compatible with him three months four months later
he came back and they gave him brought him four more sets of kidneys
until finally the eighth kidney worked and when we saw him he was doing fine but
eight human beings have been killed
in northeastern China the international transplantation network Assistance Center stated on its website China carries out
kidney transplants from living sources it's completely
different from cadaveric kidney transplants in Japan
because they have a bank
of live donors waiting to get a match on the computer some like some
horrible restaurant where you go in and see a lobster and say I want
that lobster and the lobster's killed
it's a crime against humanity the Chinese Government claimed
that the vast majority of organs came from death brow prisoners
and later donations however international organizations estimate that the number of death brow executions
at thousands each year cents 2000
and decreasing Chinese tradition requires that bodies remain whole after death
there was no organ donation system in China before 2000 and 10
even today there are very few donations therefore these two sources combined account for only a
tiny fraction of all transplants performed in China
China started performing transplants with organs harvested from executed prisoners at a
small scale in the seventies
in the years that follow it also started using organs from prisoners of conscience
in 19 99 the crackdown of Falun Gong starts
that is the largest action of scale of the
by the Chinese Communist Party since the culture revolution and
by 2000 and 2000 and 1 that's when you have this explosion of transplant activity we
see continuity in the numbers of ton
Falun Gong is as I call it's kind of a cabuotist revival group
it doesn't have churches and so forth doesn't have temples
what it has is sort of common beliefs
these shared beliefs revolve around self improvement based on the values of truthfulness compassion
and tolerance by the end of the 19 90s the Chinese Government estimated
that over seventy million of its citizens were practicing Falun Gong
Jiang Zemin the head of the Communist Party at the time
saw Falun Gong's popularity and revival of traditional values as a threat to his rule
and launched a violent campaign to eradicate it in July 19 99
hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong Practitioners from all over China traveled to Beijing
to appeal to the central government
only to be arrested and tortured when many refused to disclose their identities to
protect their families and friends
they became part of a large anonymous population held captive by the state
more practitioners were rounded up all across China
this is when large numbers of them started disappearing
in terms of repression of Falun Gong the party is bankrupt them financially ruined
their reputations destroy them physically so that
the vilification is destroying their reputations the organ transplants is destroying them physically there's the physical
examinations the blood testing the organ examination
which have no other explanation than suitability
for it transplant it was like convert or die
convert or die turn in your friends or die Ted States Border gen us
as we did not expect
after the Holocaust to see this kind of medical corruption come round again
how can doctors people trained to heal harvest organs from living people for transplants
educated and raised in China envertoti is an ethnic Uyghur surgeon currently living in London
he was told to extract the organs from a living prisoner in 19 95
they made you disabled or
think yourself my whole body just become a
Robert just performed to do
what I had bin programmed to do so anybody if
they labeled it himself other than communism Communist Party or member
then they will be treated as an enemy after state
therefore they are not even qualified as human beings
and therefore they are subject to whatever punishment is available
they made you genuinely believe what you are doing is in the
phone for a good course
it is a little later I realize
I shortened this man's life that is equal to a killer I killed him
and dead pigs haunting me I have to
tell the world to release
and the things inside my heart to get a little relief
in February 2000 and 17 Freedom House an international human rights watchdog
published its own report on religion in China
it noted that a review of available information regarding organ transplants had
found credible evidence suggesting that beginning in the early 2000s
Falun Gong detainees were killed for their organs on a large scale
it added that the large scale disappearance of young Uyghur men
accounts of routine blood testing of Uyghur political prisoners
and reports of mysterious deaths of Tibetans and Uyghurs in custody should raise alarm
that these populations may also be victims
of involuntary organ harvesting I think you know the first thing
before you believe or you decide whether or not you want to believe you
have to learn the facts the facts are there the books are there the
richest is there read it
once you read it I'm sure there'll be no other way for you but
to believe it and we have to we I'm talking about the physician
have all to be together in order to stop it immediately
until 2000 and 5 who didn't have no law I found out
that Disraeli insurance companies and mo's
have been providing reimbursement full reimbursement for this transient of Israelis who went to China
and got these illegal organs so together with my friends we sat
down with our parliament the connect
and in two state night the is ready parliament has enacted the organ transport law
which totally bans any reimbursement
of illegally obtained organ transportation
anywhere around the world and since then not a single Israel in
patient went anymore to China
in addition to Israel Spain Italy
and Taiwan have passed laws restricting their citizens from traveling to China to receive
an organ transplant from an illicit source
the systematic government sponsored harvesting of organs
is a monstrous crime I strongly believe that the seventeen year campaign to eradicate Falun Gong
will be seen as one of the great shames of recent Chinese history
since I've been a student of the Holocaust I feel that to a certain extent
what we're seeing is just a continuation of what we saw there in another
form which is see that
endless and bottomless depravity of human nature I mean there's no
limit to the form of evil that people can think
when I was writing the Slaughter I sometimes said to I'm writing history and then at
the end of it I realized I wasn't it was actually still going on
this is a new form of genocide and it's using the most respected members
of society to implement it
this is one of the central tests of our time we can't avoid this any longer