May 1, 2006

Last year's movie, The Island, was more than just an attractive thriller starring Scarlett Johansson and Ewen McGregor.

It was a challenging look at the future of genetic ethics. In the film, set in the near future, famous and powerful people pay a company to create a clone of themselves, to be kept in case they ever need an organ transplant.

The story centres around two of those clones -- one a clone of a supermodel, the other a clone of a famous designer -- who break out of their prison.

What a dystopian future -- a place where there are two castes of humans, where clones exist as nothing more than spare parts for their masters.

Well, that may or may not be the future in North America, where The Island is set, but it is the shocking present in Communist China.

According to an investigative report by Epoch Times, China regularly "harvests" organs from people -- killing them in the process, just like in The Island. The difference is that in China, the killed spare parts people aren't clones, they're political and religious prisoners, including members of the peaceful Falun Gong [...] that China persecutes with fascist ferocity.

Josef Mengele would approve.

Epoch Times reporter Dominic Waghorn visited the Orient Organ Transplantation Centre in Beijing -- just like the rock stars and politicians in the movie visited Merrick Biotech -- posing as someone looking for an organ for his father.

According to Waghorn, the clinic's Dr. Zhu said they get the organs "the fastest" because they have the "best connections" with the Chinese police -- and that once a tissue match was found, the hospital would arrange for the prisoner to be executed just in time for the surgery, to keep the meat at maximum freshness.

China admits executed prisoners have their organs harvested, but this is the most credible evidence that prisoners are executed specifically for their organs -- they are farmed like livestock.

But why is this shocking?

China is a country that treats its citizens as the property of the state, that forbids them to believe in any God other than Mao, and that denies families the most essential human right of having children.

The Chinese government isn't particularly concerned. Huang Jiefu, the deputy health minister, said organ farming needs "regulations" to "standardize the management of the supply" and to "tidy up the medical market."

Not to shut down this unspeakable cruelty, but to make it more efficient.

The ruthless efficiency of the Chinese fascists is reminiscent of the ruthless efficiency of Nazi fascists 75 years ago. With 15,000 executions a year, there's a lot of paperwork to be done.

Surely this news will be front page of every paper. Surely this will lead the TV network news week after week. Surely the UN will have an emergency meeting and issue a resolution condemning this barbarity.

Surely the world's NGOs will scream themselves hoarse in protest.

What's that? This is the first time you've heard of it, even though it was disclosed months ago? Well, fancy that. Could it be that Chinese fascism is getting a pass for the same reason that Nazi fascism did last century -- because most of the world's self-appointed bleeding hearts are just poseurs, who prefer to rail against weak or imaginary threats rather than true menaces?

It takes courage to challenge China, an economically and militarily powerful fascist state. Some apologists even find that power seductive.

Others forgive China its barbarity because it's a non-European challenger to American hegemony. But true humanitarians should grieve at China's cruelty, and rage against the West's official silence.

Ezra Levant is Publisher of the Western Standard