OTTAWA -- An estimated 41,500 transplant operations in China were probably performed using organs of imprisoned Falun Gong members killed by Chinese authorities, says a report released yesterday by two prominent Canadian lawyers.
There is no other possible source for the organs used in transplants between 2000 and 2005, says the report by David Matas, a Winnipeg human-rights lawyer, and David Kilgour, a former prosecutor who was also a federal Liberal cabinet secretary for Asian affairs.
"Where do the organs come from for the 41,500 transplants? The allegation of organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners provides an answer," the report says. The authors say they ruled out all other sources, including the relatively small number of other Chinese prisoners executed for crimes.
A new Chinese law governing organ transplants came into effect last week after reports in Western news media that Chinese hospitals were advertising on-line that they had fresh kidneys, corneas and other organs for foreign customers frustrated with long waits.
The law limits transplant surgery to a relatively small number of Chinese hospitals that must certify that the organs come from "legal sources." Hospital ethics committees must approve all transplants.
The authors say they welcome the new law, but wonder whether it is simply window dressing. Chinese authorities routinely ignore human-rights laws and are known to torture prisoners, Mr. Matas said.
The widespread killing of Falun Gong members for profit to provide organs for transplants is "so shocking that it represents a new form of evil in the world," Mr. Matas said.
"It's hard for anybody in this room to believe it. It was hard for us to believe," Mr. Kilgour said during a news conference.
Yet after a two-month investigation of the available evidence -- much of it admittedly circumstantial -- the two men believe the allegation to be true based on a civil-law standard of "balance of probability."
They acknowledge that they have no direct evidence, but say that putting together the pieces, it is hard to come to any conclusion other than that healthy Chinese are being killed to harvest their organs.
The Washington-based Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong commissioned the report. Other international human-rights groups have said they are concerned by the reports of forced organ-harvesting, but do not have the evidence to prove prisoners are executed for this sole purpose.
Mr. Kilgour said he was shaken after listening to the in-camera testimony of a Chinese woman who said her husband, an eye surgeon, had participated in the harvesting of corneas from about 2,000 anesthetized Falun Gong prisoners in China during a two-year period ending in late 2003. The woman was interviewed in the United States, where she now lives. She does not want to be identified for her own safety.
The report acknowledges the difficulty corroborating the woman's story.
The authors also heard tapes and read transcripts of translated telephone conversations with Chinese medical officials who told Falun Gong members posing as patients that fresh organs were available on short notice at their hospitals.
The pretext calls were made over the past few months. In one call to a hospital in Wuhan, the caller asked whether the kidney suppliers are alive, saying: "We're looking for live organ transplants from prisoners, for example, using living bodies from prisoners who practise Falun Gong. Is it possible?" The hospital official replied, "It's not a problem."