Community News (Delaware): Demonstrators accuse China of atrocities (Photos)

As an actor portraying a Chinese police officer stood watch, other actors portraying a doctor and a nurse appeared as if they were removing the organs of a man on a table in Rodney Square in Wilmington. To their right, two women demonstrated a series meditation exercises.

Protestors hold signs denouncing China's treatment of Falun Gong followers in Rodney Square in Wilmington.

This was the scene April 27 at a press conference and demonstration calling attention to accusations of persecution, killing, and harvesting of the organs of practitioners of Falun Gong in China.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a belief and spiritual movement in which there is a series of five meditation exercises and the principles of truth, compassion, and tolerance. Cindy Wang, spokesperson for the event, said it was also held in support of Dr. Wenyi Wang, a medical doctor and practitioner of Falun Gong who shouted at President Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao during a welcoming ceremony for Jintao on the south lawn of the White House April 20. Wenyi Wang faces federal charges that could result in six months in prison for shouting "President Bush, stop him from persecuting Falun Gong" from within the press corps as Hu Jintao began speaking. Cindy Wang, 34, of Brandywine Hundred, said Falun Gong was a popular practice in China until 1999 when a survey showed the number of practitioners in the country to be between 70 million and 100 million. She said it was then, seeing the practice as a threat, and out of jealousy, that the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners began on July 20, 1999 under the leadership of Chinese President Jiang Zemin. Cindy Wang, who is a practitioner of Falun Gong, said it started with propaganda against the practice - ridiculous stories and lies about it causing people to commit suicide and kill others in order to build hatred and turn the society against practitioners. Followers say conditions have become worse. Now, advocates and practitioners are taken into labor camps where they are brainwashed, tortured, and killed. The practitioners are being killed for a purpose however - their organs. Cindy Wang said that, since 2001, organs have been forcibly removed from practitioners of Falun Gong in China, and that a great deal of information regarding the harvesting has come to light since March.

Levi Browde, a spokesperson for the Falun Dafa Information Center, a volunteer organization based in New York City that is dedicated to getting news stories and reports out of China, said there have been pieces of information coming out of China about for years hinting at the existence of concentration camps for Falun Gong practitioners and organ harvesting. Browde said that suspicions were confirmed in March when, during the course of two weeks, three independent people - a Chinese journalist, the wife of a doctor who performed organ extraction surgeries, and a Chinese military doctor - revealed details about a lucrative organ harvesting business in China. According to reports, it is a systematic practice in which Falun Gong practitioners are detained in facilities associated with hospitals where their blood type is tested. These practitioners are used as live organ donors - when someone would come to a hospital needing an organ, it would be carved out of the practitioner and their body burned to hide the evidence. At first, it was believed there was only one detention facility, known as Sujiatun, which is where the husband of the second informant is reported to have done the extraction surgeries. Bowde said Sujiatun is reported to have held more than 6,000 practitioners, 4,000 of which have been killed.

According to the military doctor, however, there were actually 36 similar facilities throughout China, the largest of which holds more than 120,000 detainees and contains primarily Falun Gong practitioners. He said the peak of the harvesting was done between 2001 and 2003, although most of the facilities are still active.

Because of the information, Browde said the Falun Dafa Information Center and other affiliated organizations did their own investigation into the harvesting. Volunteers called hospitals in China posing as people in need of organs. Browde said doctors in eight provinces throughout China admitted to the volunteers that organs for transplant are readily available and that they come from Falun Gong practitioners. Browde, 33, of New York City, said that, based on the testimony of the informants as well as the organization's own investigation, the Falun Dafa Information Center is positive that organ harvesting is being performed on Falun Gong practitioners in China. Browde said that, because of news reports and other information that has been made available, there has been a campaign in China to eliminate evidence of the harvesting. He said many doctors told their volunteers that it was necessary to get a transplant before May 1, otherwise an organ may not be available, but no one would explain why.

The Beijing International Medical Support Center, according to its website Bek-transplant.com, offers kidney and liver transplants at five hospitals in China.

The transplants are offered to both Chinese citizens and non-Chinese, for a cost of $70,000 and $120,000, respectively. On the "frequently asked questions" section of the website, it states that the organs they transplant come from executed prisoners in China.

The Community News sent an e-mail to the Beijing International Medical Support Center asking if the accusations made on their website are true. Taisuke Kawazuru, a representative from the medical team, replied saying they do offer transplants and that it generally takes a couple of months to find a matching donor depending on the patient's blood type. Browde said the Chinese government announced legislation in March prohibiting the organ harvesting business. Browde says the center believes that the government is pushing expediting the killing of the practitioners for their organs and/or moving them to other camps and facilities in order to hide evidence of the harvesting. Telephone calls to the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C. requesting an interview were not returned.

Cindy Wang said a group of people concerned about the persecution and harvesting have formed an investigative team called the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong. Consisting of members of the media, non-profit organization personnel, and legal professionals from North America, Europe, and Australia, the team hopes to further investigate medical facilities across China that conduct organ transplants. Wang said coalition members are trying to get visas to go there, but that many visa requests were denied, and the coalition needs support from the United States' government and people to help secure the visas and get the camps and related hospitals opened up so that a proper investigation can be performed. Falun Gong practitioner Alex Meltser, 38, of Philadelphia, gave a speech at the demonstration. He said he learned about Falun Gong from his cousin, Marina, and slowly entered into the practice. As a result, he said he saw his life and health begin to improve, and also became a more peaceful and tolerant person. In his speech, Meltser talked about the labor camps where the practitioners are detained and how, because of their beliefs, they are forced to work 20-hour days in the midst of being brutalized and tortured. "Many, many years ago, in Nazi Germany, there was also news of concentration camps, and Nazi Germany denied these camps existed," Meltser said. "Now the Chinese Communist Regime is denying the fact they are actually doing this, but more and more evidence is being put forth to show that these camps really do exist - that these thousands of operations are being performed all over China."

Joanne Qi of Bear demonstrates Falun Gong meditation during the Wilmington protest.

Phil Randell, 46, of Philadelphia, also a Falun Gong practitioner, told the crowd of about 40 people that he was introduced to Falun Gong by the clergyman who married him and his wife, Yvette Scarlette. Randell said there are tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners who are missing in China, as well as the thousands who are known to have been murdered by the government.

"We ask everyone in the world to pay attention to this brutal, brutal story," Randell said. Dr. Yubin Pang, 57, of Washington, D.C., said he is a friend of Wenyi Wang, and the reason she cried out the way she did at the White House is because it was a way of bringing attention to the killings going on for the purposes of organ harvesting in China every single day. Calling her brave, he said that had she not done what she did, it is possible no one would have listened. "This is so serious," Pang said. "This is urgent. We need all the world to know the situation."

More information on Falun Gong and the accusations of persecution of the practitioners is available at faluninfo.net.

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