The Diplomat Magazine Reports on Organ Harvesting in China

(Minghui.org) The Diplomat, an international current-affairs magazine for the Asia-Pacific region, carried an article titled “Organ Harvesting in China” by Benedict Rogers on June 29, 2016. Rogers is Deputy Chair of the U.K. Conservative Party Human Rights Commission.

The article begins: “Across China, a gruesome trade in human organs is taking place on a mass scale. Like something out of a horror movie, livers, kidneys, hearts, lungs, and corneas are being cut out from prisoners of conscience while they are still alive. The victims are then, if still living by that point, executed. If anything proves the meaning of the term 'crime against humanity,' it is this bloody, ghoulish practice.”

The article mentioned two recent reports presented in Parliament in the UK that expose the appalling scale and nature of forced organ harvesting in China.

“Three researchers – distinguished human rights lawyer David Matas, former Canadian member of parliament and government minister David Kilgour, and journalist Ethan Gutmann – have published a detailed tome that argues, on the basis of forensic research into the public records of 712 hospitals in China carrying out liver and kidney transplants, that the scale of organ harvesting is far, far bigger than previously imagined. All three have previously published reports on the topic, but they now conclude that between 60,000 to 100,000 organs are transplanted each year in Chinese hospitals. The numbers and the extraordinarily short waiting times for transplant patients suggest that prisoners of conscience, from the spiritual movement Falun Gong as well as Uyghur Muslims, Tibetans, and house church Christians, may be the primary victims.

“Their report, Bloody Harvest/The Slaughter: An Update, is an impressive 798-page piece of work. They find that one hospital alone, the Oriental Organ Transplant Center at the Tianjin First Center Hospital, is probably doing more than 6,000 transplants a year.”

Rogers pointed out, “'The ultimate conclusion is that the Communist Party of China has engaged the State in the mass killings of innocents … in order to obtain organs for transplants.' While China officially claims 10,000 organ transplants a year, the authors argue that this is 'easily surpassed by just a few hospitals.'”

In describing another report he wrote, “Their claims have also been highlighted in another report launched this week by the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission. Following an extensive inquiry into China’s human rights record, examining the severe repression of human rights lawyers, dissidents, and civil society activists, violations of freedom of expression, freedom of religion, abuses in Tibet and Xinjiang, and the erosion of freedom in Hong Kong, the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission released The Darkest Moment: The Crackdown on Human Rights in China 2013-2016 at an event in Parliament yesterday. In the section on organ harvesting, the report notes the new findings and called for an international inquiry into the practice.

“The Commission calls on British Parliamentarians to initiate legislation to prohibit organ tourism in China, at least until a comprehensive investigation has been completed, and to consider releasing statistics on how many British citizens travel to China for organ transplants each year. It urges the United Kingdom, the European Union, and others to prepare a list of doctors engaged in organ harvesting in China, and to introduce a travel ban for those associated with such practices. Tomorrow, the Commission will hold a hearing specifically on organ harvesting.”

The author concluded, “The release of this new evidence demands a response from the international community. The United Kingdom faces calls to review and recalibrate its relationship with China, which it currently describes as in a 'golden era,' in view of the severe and widespread assault on human rights that has occurred under Xi Jinping’s presidency. How is it possible to have a golden era of relations with a country that takes a knife to prisoners of conscience while they are still alive, in order to sell their organs? An urgent international investigation is needed, a ban on organ tourism to travel required, and a travel ban on those who perform such bloody acts is long overdue. This crime against humanity must stop.”