March 26, 2006

Chinese doctors are "harvesting" kidneys, corneas and other organs from live concentration camp inmates and selling them for up to $100,000 apiece.

That's the shocking report from a former employee at Liaoning Provincial Thrombosis Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, where the organ removal has allegedly been taking place.

In an interview with The Epoch Times, the ex-employee said the Sujiatun Concentration Camp in Shenyang City is part of the hospital and since 2001 has secretly detained approximately 6,000 Falun Gong practitioners - none of whom has left the camp alive.

"The hospital removed many kidneys, livers, and corneas from the practitioners," according to The Epoch Times, a New York-based news organization specializing in Chinese coverage.

"After the organ removal, the practitioners were thrown into an incinerator, which was converted from a boiler. Their ashes were dumped together with burned charcoal."

The Chinese Communist Party persecutes Falun Gong, but medical personnel were told Falun Gong practitioners were facing death because [slander omitted], the former staff member at the hospital said.

The Epoch Times ran a transcript of the interview with the ex-staffer. Her comments read in part:

"Organs harvested from live bodies are worth far more than organs taken from dead bodies. Many Falun Gong practitioners were still alive when their organs were taken. After their organs were cut out, some of these people were thrown directly into the crematorium to be burnt, thus leaving no evidence.

"For some others, after their organs were stolen, the doctor sewed up the wound and asked the family or family representative to give a signature for cremation. Family members did not know at all that the dead had their organs taken out...

"It is also said by the employees in the hospital [that] some were still alive when being thrown into the boiler...

"Three-quarters of these 6,000 people have died, having their hearts, kidneys, retinas, and skins harvested and their bodies disposed of. I think now about 2,000 Falun Gong practitioners are still in this hospital."

The harvested organs "are mainly sold to Thailand, but I believe they are also sold to other regions of the world. Nowadays, there are many patients in China who need human skin, corneas, and kidneys for organ transplant surgeries."

Currently, a kidney can be sold for $30,000 to $100,000, the former employee added.

"The profit from selling organs is simply too great. The people who benefit from this are not only the top leaders of hospitals and the officials of the Chinese Communist Party's Heath Department ... People ranging from government officials to doctors to organ sellers are all involved in this and are profiting greatly.

"I am not a Falun Gong practitioner. But as a former staff member of the hospital, I have the responsibility to expose the truth, and let the world save those Falun Gong practitioners who are still alive."