Toledo Blade, Ohio: Toledo protest focuses on Chinese organ harvesting

August 17, 2006

A group of Falun Gong practitioners demonstrated today in Toledo to urge local and national lawmakers in America to help stop what they claim is the illegal harvesting of organs in China.

Toledo was the first city along the group's Ohio tour, which includes planned stops in Findlay, Lima, Cleveland, Akron, and Youngstown.

Falun Gong is a Chinese spiritual group that was founded in 1992 by Li Honghzi and which practices meditation and breathing exercises based on ancient Chinese techniques. Their meditation practice was officially banned in 1999 by the Chinese government [...]

Asia Source reports that Falun Gong, whose millions of members include some members of China's Communist Party, is the target of an official government crackdown.

Cheng-Yuan "Corey" Lee, an assistant professor of education at the University of Findlay who was with the demonstrators this morning outside Government Center in Toledo, charged that an undetermined number of Falun Gong practitioners have been arrested in China and sent to prison camps, where they are murdered for their organs.

Hearts, kidneys, livers, and corneas are removed to be sold for transplants, and the prisoners' bodies are then cremated, Mr. Lee said.

"We want to put international pressures [on the Chinese government] and stop the persecution," he said.

Mr. Lee said that more than 41,000 organ transplants have occurred in China since 2000 from illegally harvested organs.

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