Southwest Active Press on-line service (Südwest Aktiv (Deutschland) or Suedwest Presse Online Dienst)

August 26, 2006

(Clearwisdom.net)

.... Falun Gong practitioners in the hands of the Communist regime

The Chinese regime is accused of devastating crimes. They have supposedly harvested organs from Falun Gong practitioners under force. That means death for these people. Beijing denies this, but independent experts provide proof.

"So you are using organs from Falun Gong practitioners?"

"Correct"

"and they are from healthy Falun Gong practitioners?"

"Correct. We select the good ones, to assure the quality of our surgeries."

"That means you, yourselves, are selecting these organs?"

"Correct."

"...then you are traveling to these prisons, to make personal selections?"

"Correct. We have to choose."

"Is the individual aware you are going to harvest his/her organs?"

"No, they don't know this."

This is not a hypothetical dialogue. This is an excerpt from a telephone conversation on May 22, 2006 between Dr. Liu at the Minzu Hospital in the city of Nanning, Guangxi AR, China, and a caller. In all probability this conversation is proof of a particularly odious crime happening there. In this conversation, the physician offers the caller organs from incarcerated Falun Gong practitioners. The Chinese regime has misused prisoners for a long time over the years, among them Falun Gong practitioners.

Adherents of Falun Gong have been haunted in China since 1999. These peace-seeking people have done nothing, except they constitute huge numbers of followers. For a long time, even high-ranking members of the Politbureau had belonged to Falun Gong. But, since within a few years the numbers of practitioners according to Falun Gong spokespersons had grown to 70 to 100 million [practitioners] worldwide, Beijing put the screws on. The regime could not tolerate a mass movement besides its own Communist party.

Thousands of FG members have since disappeared without the benefit of due process of law or ended up in forced labor camps. So-called "administrative detention" makes this possible. According to that reasoning, "enemies of the state" can thus be held for three years. Falun Gong members are considered "enemies of the state."

What happens to these people in the camps and detention center is a dark chapter. Those who have been released following "re-education" often show signs of torture, according to Martin Kritzler, Chairman of the European Falun Gong organization. Victims describe tiny cages where they were held. Others describe electric-shock abuse, which is visible. And then there are those who are forever silenced - "many of the family members merely received the ashes," said Kritzler.

The Regime Blankly Denies

It is rather uncommon to find corpses whose organs have been harvested, but these incidents do exist. In April a discovery revealed the bodies of an elementary school teacher in Guizhou province and that of her cousin. Neither one of them returned from a hike in the mountains. Their bodies were found months later. The police report gave the cause of death as suicide. But why the internal organs were missing, and why their heads had been shaved, why they eye sockets had caved in - leading one to speculate the corneas had been taken - that the official report ignored. Just as China in general leaves many questions unanswered when it comes to organ harvesting. As for instance their claim of having performed 40,000 transplant surgeries, but being mum about the sources of these organs.

Beijing ignores all accusations as nonsense. Meanwhile the accusations are no longer limited to Falun Gong adherents. Former Canadian MP for Asian Affairs and Federal Prosecutor Mr. David Kilgour, as well as Canadian human rights attorney David Matas have confirmed the existence of these atrocities and found cause for these accusations in their independent report. "We have collected evidence; when we had gathered them after three months of exhausting research we had come to the conclusion that organ removal from living FG practitioners in China does take place, and that these people are being killed in the process. No one, for instance, can continue to live without a liver."

China is definitely enmeshed in organ trading. "much that ends up on the world market originates in China," so said Martin Lessenthin from the International Organization for Human Rights. Those who have the necessary capital - as a telephone conversation excerpt proved - can be assured an organ within a short amount of time. 500 clinics in China are doing organ transplants. Sometimes the hospitals are in close contact with prisons or camp where Falun Gong practitioners are incarcerated. Military doctors are supposedly attached to 36 of these camps. One of these "camps" can supposedly house 120,000 detainees. There is a constant investment in these camps.

All these incidents have in the meantime caught the attention of the international community. The end of July, 2006, U.S. attorney Terri Marsh filed a criminal complaint against two Chinese surgeons. They were at that time attending a Boston-hosted organ transplant congress meeting. "I will do everything in my power to stop the forced removal of organs from Falun Gong practitioners," stated the CEO of the Human Rights Law Foundation. The criminal complaint charged the two visiting surgeons, Zhonghua Klaus Chen and Tongyu Zhu, who have clinics in Wuhan and Shanghai, to not even have intervened in these actions at their clinics, actions that completely ignore human rights and dignity. The language of the complaint was direct: "The accused are willingly and knowingly involved or have aided and abetted the practice of illegal organ harvesting from FG practitioners or other prisoners." They also have "personally and financially profited from these practices."

......

Originally published in German at: http://www.clearharmony.de/articles/200608/33440.html