4/20/07

(Clearwisdom.net) David Matas and David Kilgour wrote a recent report on organ harvesting from living Falun Gong members in China, knowing full well the challenges-moral and visceral-the report might pose for its readers and legislatures in the free world. Matas, an international human rights attorney, and Kilgour, a former Secretary of State from Canada, are not ones to make such statements lightly.

What comprises this story, then? The Falun Gong is a meditation practice that originated in China in the early 1990s. Owing to its positive effects on health and the fact that it was free, throngs of people in mainland China took up the practice. Within seven short years, an estimated 70 million-plus were practicing.

China's ruling Communist Party operates above the law, and the growing popularity of Falun Gong unsettled certain members of the Party. In 1999, the Party-state banned Falun Gong and commenced a campaign of unlawful arrests and often-brutal persecution, which continues today. An estimated hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners languish in Chinese labor camps today without the most basic of human rights. Amnesty International has labeled these detainees "prisoners of conscience," given that they are "imprisoned solely for the peaceful expression of their beliefs."

While the maltreatment of Falun Gong prisoners has long been known, the Matas-Kilgour report has given credence to the worst fears: that the regime, having so dehumanized the Falun Gong, might go one step further. The report finds that the CCP regime is carving up-literally-the bodies of living Falun Gong adherents for their organs, which are then transplanted or sold for immense sums of money.

The report includes transcripts of conversations by investigators with Chinese doctors who flippantly reveal that they have Falun Gong members on hand, ready for mutilation. (Matas and Kilgour have made public the audio recordings.) "Is the organ from a healthy Falun Gong practitioner?" asks the undercover investigator. "Correct," replies the physician. "We will choose only a good one, because we guarantee the quality of our transplants."

So carefully researched and argued is the report, and so terrible its findings, that it has prompted Manfred Nowak, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, to begin probing the matter. The initial response of the Chinese regime has only served to deepen concerns, however: a curt, two-page dismissal of the whole affair. Perhaps it's no coincidence then that the state hastily banned the commercial trade of organs on May 1, 2006-less than a month after the report was published. Whether or not the law will be enforced is another matter, of course. Even before the Matas-Kilgour report, the investigations of human rights bodies had determined that China's regime was unlawfully harvesting organs from prisoners.

Then is our own "disbelief" an acceptable response, however natural? The history of the past century suggests that we must instead muster the courage to consider the reality of it all, gruesome as it may be. In the 20th century, there has been a haunting legacy for this sort of thing. But today's China is very much economically interwoven with our country-consider the number of items which bear the label "Made in China." A vast array of powerful institutions want, or believe they "need," China to be a normal, prosperous, uneventful place.

And indeed, U.S. corporations have gone so far as to sell Internet surveillance technology to China's communist leaders, who use it to arrest democracy advocates and members of various religious faiths. Meanwhile, those same leaders spend tens of millions each year on sophisticated international PR firms to foster the image of normality abroad. It's easier to dream about striking gold in China rather than think about kidneys being carved out of living prisoners of conscience.

When the Olympics were awarded to Nazi Germany, the regime turned the event into a tremendous publicity stunt, reassuring the world all was well. Many suggest that the 2008 Beijing Olympics is history repeating itself.

Matas and Kilgour have traveled the world to raise awareness of their findings, yet remain barred from perhaps the country that matters most: China. CCP officials have refused them, as with others, entry to investigate.

One is left to wonder: if the organ harvesting were indeed unreal, and the regime so confident of this, why would it fear independent investigation rather than welcome it? Or, even if the harvesting were taking place, what government wouldn't want dearly to rein in such abominable acts if occurring in its own land and to its own people? The answer to the latter, of course, is a government that is complicit in those acts. The CCP's response is a portrait of guilt.

Matas, who speaks at Uris Hall (Room 301) today at noon, gets my applause. One day, when the camps of China are liberated, we can only imagine it will be the people of China--oppressed on account of simply who they are--who will offer their applause.

http://media.www.columbiaspectator.com/media/storage/paper865/news/2007/04/20/Opinion/Organ.Harvesting.An.Unbelievable.Reality-2871152.shtml