Epoch Times: Illegal Organ Harvesting Common in China, Experts Agree Disturbing news about Sujiatun concentration camp is indicative of larger problem

March 21, 2006

NEW YORK - The recent discovery of Sujiatun concentration camp in China, where authorities are currently removing organs from living Falun Gong practitioners, has highlighted the apparently widespread practice of illegally harvesting organs from prisoners without their consent. Two experts on illegal organ transplants in China, Harry Wu and Dr. Tom Diflo, have both testified before U.S. Congress about such illegal practices in state-owned Chinese hospitals.

"In Russia there were gulags, in Germany they had concentration camps, and because of the silence of the international community a lot of people were killed there. We should realize that we have an obligation to stop such things from happening," said Wu, founder of the Laogai Research Foundation (LRF), which was established to gather information and spread public awareness about the brutal Chinese labor camp system.

Wu himself spent 19 years in a Chinese labor camp.

"If I tried to escape or did anything wrong, they would have killed me and harvested my organs," said Wu, through a translator.

According to LRF, when officials wish to harvest the organs of a death-row prisoner, first a blood sample is taken for medical testing. Soon thereafter, the prisoner is executed with a shot to the back of the head. Doctors remove the organs which are then placed in solution for preservation and transported to nearby hospitals for transplantation.

LRF has tracked media reports of people from all over Asia traveling to China to take advantage of the abundant supply of organs from executed prisoners.

Dr. Tom Diflo, director of kidney transplantation at New York University Medical Center, has researched illegal organ transplants in China. His findings basically confirm those of the LRF.

"The government said that this was something that they had gotten consent for, something [the prisoners] had agreed to beforehand or the families had consented to, but the evidence was overwhelming that there wasn't any consent involved--and in fact it was just the government doing what they wanted," said Dr. Diflo.

"There appears to be a big conspiracy involved between the hospitals, the military, and of course the transplant doctors. So, once the prisoners were executed their organs were removed--either on the way to the hospital or the body is transported to the hospital and the organ is removed--and then the organs are transplanted into people who pay for the privilege of being transplanted."

The Sujiatun concentration camp in Shenyang City of northeast China has brought organ harvesting in China to another level, according to an investigative report from the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG).

A large number of people who refuse to give up the peaceful meditation practice Falun Gong have been secretly abducted to and imprisoned in Sujiatun, according to WOIPFG. Because Falun Gong practitioners are not regular death-row inmates with predetermined execution times, the timing of the organ harvesting is determined by when they are needed by the hospital. The organ-harvesting operation is conducted on living people.

Wu said, "The Chinese Communist Party is most scared of Falun Gong because they have a different belief system, other than communism."

Sujiatun, which was just exposed this month, has not been investigated yet by Wu or Dr. Diflo, although neither doubt its existence.

http://english.epochtimes.com/news/6-3-21/39537.html