The perpetrators are officials of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), acting in collaboration with surgeons, prison authorities, and military officials.
Victims are held in concentration camps prior to having their organs harvested, after which the bodies are immediately cremated.
The story, almost too dreadful to believe, was first revealed in March 2006, when a woman claimed that as many as 4,000 Falun Gong had been killed for their organs at the hospital in which she had worked. She also said that her husband, a surgeon at the same hospital outside the northeastern city of Shenyang, had disclosed to her that he had removed cornea from the living bodies of 2,000 Falun Gong practitioners.
One week later, a Chinese military doctor not only corroborated the woman's account but claimed that such atrocities were taking place in 36 different concentration camps throughout the country. The largest, he said, held 120,000 persons. He said he had also witnessed Falun Gong practitioners being massively transported across the country in cattle trains, at night and under the cover of tight security.
Falun Gong supporters and human rights activists overseas immediately began investigating the allegations. They placed calls to Chinese hospitals pretending to be shopping for a kidney or a liver. To their horror, one doctor after another openly confirmed: We've got Falun Gong in stock; just come in and we can get you the organ within a week.
Shocked by these reports, two prominent Canadian human rights lawyers launched their own investigation. In July 2006, former Secretary of State for Asia Pacific David Kilgour and Human Rights lawyer David Matas published their 140-page report, which drew "the regrettable conclusion that the allegations are true." Their research also concluded that the large number of organs transplanted in China since the persecution of Falun Gong began in 1999 could not possibly have been provided by voluntary donors or executed prisoners. (Bloody Harvest)
CCP officials are reportedly hastening to destroy all evidence. They have provided monitored tours and removed websites that advertised organs for sale (though not in time, as investigators had already managed to save images of these web pages). One Chinese website had boasted that it could provide matching organs in 1-4 weeks, which medical experts say is impossible unless the Chinese hospitals have access to a huge stock of living organ "donors."
Shortly after reports of organ harvesting emerged, Party leaders announced new legislation banning use of organs without consent. Over a year later, this law does not appear to have been implemented at all, supporting those who claimed all along that the legislation was nothing more than a public relations stunt.
Along with Kilgour and Matas, the Committee to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (CIPFG: http://www.cipfg.org/) has taken the lead in uncovering and exposing the organ atrocities.