Brooklyn Daily Eagle (New York): Illegal Harvest?

. Falun Gong supporter Clearine Hunter of Borough Park speaks at Monday’s rally in Columbus Park.		Frank Yu, of Park Slope, speaks about the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China with passersby in Columbus Park.

COLUMBUS PARK — Not only are Chinese people being persecuted for practicing harmless meditation, advocates say — they are being disemboweled and sold for parts. A rally outside Brooklyn Supreme Court on Monday morning protested China’s alleged practice of harvesting organs without consent from living Falun Gong practitioners.

An independent report released last month concludes that the allegations are true.

"When a person willingly donates an organ, it is a notable gesture that can save another life," said Frank Yu, of Park Slope. "When a person’s organs are forcefully ripped out and then sold for profit by your own government without consent, it is an abomination and a blatant attack on humanity."

Falun Gong, or Falun Dafa, is a Chinese meditation practice based on the principles of "Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance." It has grown quickly in China and around the world since it was developed by Li Hongzhi in the early 1990s. Brooklyn practitioners gather regularly in Prospect Park and in Flatbush.

Former Chinese president Jian Zemin outlawed Falun Gong [slanderous term omitted] in 1999, when his government estimated that there were over 100 million practitioners — "more than the Communist Party," according to one Brooklyn Falun Gong practitioner. Quan Sha, of Borough Park, has suggested that Zemin considered it a threat to the communist government.

"We have documented 3,000 people who have died in this persecution," Yu said Monday. "My own 83-year-old grandmother, who is a Falun Gong practitioner residing in Jiangsu Province in China, had also been routinely harassed and intimidated to force her to give up her practice."

Yu joined Clearine Hunter, of Borough Park, in calling attention to a new report that large-scale organ seizures from Falun Gong practitioners have been occurring in China since 2001.

In a 45-page report released last month, former Canadian Secretary of State (Asia-Pacific) David Kilgour and international human rights lawyer David Matas concluded that illegal organ harvesting was taking place in dozens of Chinese prison camps.

According to the allegations, the Chinese government removes marketable organs such as the kidneys, heart, skin, the corneas and liver, and then incinerates the remains. The anaesthetized victim dies during surgery or is killed afterward.

The first prison camp hospital was discovered in Sujiatun, in northeast China.

The report highlights the testimony of a Chinese woman whose ex-husband was a surgeon at Sujiatun. He told her that he personally removed the corneas from approximately 2,000 anaesthetized Falun Gong prisoners between October 2001 and October 2003, when he refused to continue. Neither she nor her husband were Falun Gong practitioners.

Investigative phone calls "garnered a surprising number of admissions," the report states.

Kilgour and Matas also cite the skyrocketing numbers of live transplants and the exceptionally low waiting periods advertised by Chinese hospitals. One hospital performed seven liver transplants in 1996 and more than 140 in 2005. Hospital Web sites claim the average wait for a compatible liver is one week.

The report is online at http://www.organharvestinvestigation.net. Kilgour and Matas are expected to re-release the report in October, with additional evidence supporting their conclusions.