September 20, 2006

A small group of activists harshly critical of the Chinese government stopped in Ottawa Tuesday as part of a campaign to get Kansas politicians and businesses to pressure the Communists to stop
that country's organ transplant program.

The group is visiting cities in each of the state's Congressional districts this week in what they call "The SOS Tour," Felice Boewe, Overland Park and a member of the group, said. The Chinese are removing human organs from live political prisoners and selling the organs to transplant patients, she said.

"This is the 21st century and as this evil and inhumane practice goes on, we're just watching it and letting it happen," she said. Most of the political prisoners who are victims are practitioners of Falun Gong, she said.

Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, based on a now-banned Chinese martial art and closely related to Tai Chi [CW Editor's note: Falun Gong has no content of any form of martial arts and is not related to Taichi], has been described as Chinese yoga and combines specific exercises with meditation. In the
words of its creator Li Hongzhi, former Chinese government official [CW Editor's note: Mr. Li was a government employee, but not a government official] and now exile living in New York City, Falun Gong is designed to help practitioners learn "truthfulness, compassion and forbearance."

Some medical research indicates that Falun Gong promotes better health; and originally, the Chinese Communists encouraged practitioners, according to Falun Gong literature.

[...]

Falun Gong members living outside of China accused the government of the murder-for-transplants practice earlier this year after two Chinese familiar with the Communists' gulag of slave-labor camps said Falun Gong members were being killed to provide human organs.

An independent study by David Kilgour, a former Canadian member of Parliament and secretary of state for Asian affairs, and David Matas, Canadian human rights study, agreed that the Chinese were killing Falun Gong prisoners for transplants.

The study conceded that it had no witnesses that directly saw the abuses but that the circumstantial evidence was overwhelming.

Among the evidence, Kilgour and Matas said that their investigators, posing as patients in need of transplants, were told by Chinese doctors that their organs were coming from healthy Falun Gong donors.

[...]

The group approached Ottawa Mayor Deb Henningsen about the city commission issuing a proclamation critical of the Chinese government. Because of the growing trade relations between Kansas businesses and the Chinese, the group is hoping that economic pressure will persuade the Chinese to end the practice, she said.

In addition, the Chinese government is acutely sensitive anything that might cloud the 2008 Beijing Olympics, she said.

"We believe the American people are compassionate and they won't stand for this," she said.

Europeans have taken the charges seriously and are pressuring the Chinese government, she said.

However, American officials have said little and the charges have been ignored, she said.

Much of that is due to the amount of trade between the countries and American businesses' eagerness to sell inside China, she said.