There's a Holocaust Happening in China, Doctors Warn-Organ Harvesting in China continues Unabated

TORONTO—"This is a Holocaust, no question about it," Toronto-based family doctor Gerry Koffman told an audience gathered in the University of Toronto's Medical Science Building on Thursday.

Dr. Koffman is the Canadian co-ordinator for Doctors Against Organ Harvesting, a U.S.-based group of medical doctors that is warning the public and the medical community that there are serious ethical implications in receiving organ transplants in China.

Thursday's forum discussed recent reports of widespread forced organ removal from living prisoners of conscience in that country.

Based on its own independent investigations and a report by Canadians David Kilgour and David Matas, Doctors Against Organ Harvesting is confident that the allegations of organ harvesting from unwilling prisoners of conscience, particularly Falun Gong practitioners, in Chinese hospitals are true.

Dr. Treston Trey, the founding member and spokesperson of the organization emphasized the importance of its mission and stated that even though this practice is taking place in China, it nevertheless affects the whole world, especially the medical profession.

"This is a threat to the ethical standards in medicine worldwide. We don't see this as an isolated issue."

"Each recipient going to China asking for an organ is causing the death of a healthy, living person," Dr. Trey said.

That is why his organization is issuing an urgent call to action to the medical community to inform patients who are considering China for an organ transplant of the implications of their actions.

It is also sending a petition to the Canadian government to add this information about organ harvesting to the travel advisory for Canadians going abroad to China. The petition already contains more than 100 signatures from Canadian physicians.

According to various independent investigations, the large number of unaccounted organs in China and the short waiting times advertised by Chinese hospitals (one or two weeks for some organs) are of particular concern.

In their report "Bloody Harvest," David Matas and David Kilgour state that between the year 2000 and 2005, out of 60 000 organs transplanted in China, 41,500 organs came from unexplained sources. (Please read the entire Kilgour-Matas report on organ harvesting in China. )

While the Chinese communist regime admitted in 2005 that 95 per cent of these organs came from executed prisoners, according to the report by Matas and Kilgour, this still leaves 41,500 transplants unaccounted for.

Dr. Trey stressed that the exponential increase in organ transplants in China began in 1999, the same time the Chinese regime first launched its massive crackdown on Falun Gong. According to his data, the number of centres conducting liver transplants rose from 22 in 1999 to over 200 by 2006.

He went on to add that the large numbers of unaccounted organs are especially remarkable since China is a society that is traditionally reluctant to donate organs, and does not have a transparent organ donation program. Kilgour and Matas also emphasized this in their report.

The situation in China is that donors are waiting in line for a recipient, said Dr. Trey, adding that there must be a pool of living donors. He mentioned an ad found in April 2006, published in a Chinese newspaper, advertising: "Twenty organ transplants free of charge" at the Hunan Provincial People's Hospital, for which people could register by calling the hospital's hotline.

Organ transplants are a lucrative business in China, with prices ranging between $USD 30,000 and $USD 180,000 for an organ. According to the data collected by the organization, these prices were available on the China International Transplantation Network Assistance Center website, but have since been removed.

That Falun Gong practitioners are the principal victims of this organ-harvesting seemed to be unanimous agreement between the speakers at the forum on Thursday, which also included Kilgour and Asia scholar Erping Zhang.

Based on accounts by various witnesses and prisoners, Falun Gong practitioners are being singled out for systematic blood-testing in detention centres, said Dr. Trey. It makes no sense that a group who is persecuted and tortured would be tested for their health, he added.

Ms. Ying Dai, a Falun Gong practitioner who survived Chinese labour camps and now lives in Norway after being granted refugee status by the UN, confirmed the blood testing of Falun Gong practitioners. She also told of the persecution she endured in China together with other practitioners.

"For five years, I was arrested, I was incarcerated. We were severely beaten. But we were no animals and we committed no crime."

"The degree of persecution is beyond what people in the West can imagine", she told the audience.

Mr. Erping Zhang, the director for the Association for Asian Research, a New York-based organization, presented an overview of Falun Gong, a spiritual practice that includes meditation, and of its persecution by the Chinese communist regime.

The practice, first made public in China in 1992, was originally endorsed by the government for its ability to improve health and morale, but it fell out of favour after the officially atheist regime found it had attracted more adherents than there were members in the Chinese Communist Party.

Zhang emphasized that Falun Gong practitioners have been vilified by the Chinese media, which are under the control of the ruling communist party in China. The media have treated Falun Gong worse than criminals, Zhang said, and this has helped substantiate the persecution.

David Kilgour, former Canadian secretary of state for Asia and the Pacific, said that he and David Matas have met Falun Gong practitioners in over 32 countries in their mission to raise awareness about the organ harvesting. "The one thing you know about Falun Gong practitioners is that they're completely opposed to violence," he added.

Dr. Koffman, the moderator at the forum first became involved in Doctors Against Organ Harvesting after reading about the allegations about organ-harvesting in China in The Epoch Times and then pursuing his own independent investigation.

He stressed that this organization, which was officially launched on January 31, 2007 is a supporter of organ transplants, and that it is important for people to understand the difference organ transplants from consenting donors and the organ harvesting from unwilling prisoners of conscience, who are systematically killed for their organs.

Since the initial release of the report by David Matas and David Kilgour in 2006, the issue of organ-harvesting in China has gradually been getting more attention in the medical community. A March article published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine compared this organ harvesting in China to the Holocaust in Nazi Germany and stressed the impact this has on the ethics in the medical community.

"The killing of Nazi Germany shows that nothing is impossible when a totalitarian system loses ethics," said Dr. Trey who was born in Germany.

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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1602444/posts
Heart recipients' hospital has China death-row link

The National Traditional Chinese Medicine Thrombus Treatment Center in Shenyang City. According to a former nurse who worked there, the Sujiatun death camp is in an underground complex connected to this hospital.

The furnace unit on the southwest side of the hospital. There are two doors leading to the underground complex of the Sujiatun death camp. According to the witnesses, the remains of Falun Gong practitioners are incinerated here after their organs are extracted.

Mr. Zuo Zhigang, age 33, was arrested on May 30, 2001, by the Shijiazhuang City police. He was beaten to death that night at the Qiaoxi District Police Station. His corpse was covered with scars, and there were two large square-shaped holes on the back of his torso, consistent with kidney harvesting.

Mr. Ren Pengwu, age 33, was arrested by the police in Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province on February 16, 2001. Five days later, he was murdered and all his organs, from his pharynx and larynx to his penis, were removed. The authorities hastily cremated his remains that same day without his family's knowledge or consent.

Click to View - Warning, Disturbing

On May 14, 2004, two policemen abducted Ms. Wang Yunjie while she was working in a shopping center and later sent her to the infamous Masanjia forced labor camp. To break her will and force her to renounce Falun Gong, the police tortured her every day for the next six months with beatings, hanging her in the air, depriving her of sleep, solitary confinement, forcing her to stand or squat for days at a time, etc. She was also forced to do hard labor for extended hours. In December 2002, after depriving her of sleep for many days, the police stripped her clothes and shocked her breasts with two electric batons for half and hour. They then tied her up like a ball by forcibly bending her upper body down to her legs and handcuffing her arms behind her back. While in that position, they hung her up by her wrists for seven hours. The protracted torture severely damaged her body, the electric shocks disfigured her breasts, and her left breast became infected and festered. Even then, the labor camp continued to torture her for another six months. Only when she was on the verge of death did the labor camp order her family to pay 2000 Yuan and take her home.

Click to view - Disturbing

Mr. Wang Bin was arrested and detained at the Dongfeng Xinchun Labor Camp. On the night of September 27, 2000, five guards and prisoners beat him so severely that they broke his neck, injured his tonsils, crushed his lymph nodes, and fractured several bones. He was taken to the Daqing People's Hospital, but died in the hospital on October 4, 2000. Two doctors in the hospital removed his heart and brain. The photo shows that his body had been operated on.

http://falunhr.org/index.php?option=content&task=blogcategory&id=90&Itemid=92

Please remember the name: Sujiatun. It will one day be as infamous as Auschwitz and Dachau.

On March 8, 2006, a Chinese journalist on the run from the Chinese communist regime disclosed to Falun Gong practitioners in the United States some appalling news: a secret death camp in Sujiatun, Shenyang City, Liaoning Province in China.

According to this journalist, over 6,000 Falun Gong practitioners have been taken to Sujiatun. "I believe that once they are in they 100% cannot come back out," the journalist said. He also disclosed that there are incineration chambers and a large number of doctors there. "Why are there incineration chambers there? Why are there so many doctors inside? Certainly not for the benevolent treatment of prisoners. Something you simply cannot imagine..."

"The prisoners, the Communist Party definitely will not let them just waste food there. Why are they there then? ... They will all be murdered, and all their organs will be harvested and distributed to hospitals. The sale of human organs is a vastly profitable trade in China."

Falun Gong practitioners are not the only victims of such crimes. One week after the journalist's disclosure, a former nurse whose ex-husband had taken part in harvesting organs from Falun Gong practitioners also stepped forward to testify:

"I used to work at the Liaoning Thrombus Treatment Center, which was next to the concentration camp. My ex-husband had taken part in removing corneas from Falun Gong practitioners. This brought disaster to my family."

"In early 2001, my husband was assigned by the hospital to secretly remove corneas from Falun Gong practitioners. He hid this from me at the beginning, but slowly I sensed he was in great agony, had nightmares often, and was always stressed. After my repeated inquiries, he told me the truth in 2003."

"He knew they were Falun Gong practitioners. Every doctor who took part knew. They were told that eliminating Falun Gong was not a crime, but helping the Communist Party to do 'cleansing.' Those who were taken in on the operating tables were anesthetized. Elderly people or children were mostly used for harvesting corneas."

"At the time when my ex-husband told me about this, he could no longer bear the torment of doing such evil things, and decided to leave China to escape the horror. He said to me: you cannot possibly know my despair, because those Falun Gong practitioners were still alive. It was different from removing organs from dead people - they were alive."

"Because of this, I divorced him. I said to him: you are done with your career; you will not be able to hold a scalpel in the future."

"I know there are still Falun Gong practitioners in that hospital," this nurse said in the end. "I hope this crime can be exposed to the international society as quickly as possible, so their lives can be saved. I also hope, through my disclosure, to atone my relative's crime."

The victims are not even limited to Chinese. It is an open secret that China has become the world capital of organ transplantation, and ships human organs to nearby countries such as Thailand. Tens of thousands from different parts of the world have received organ transplants in China and Thailand, being assured that the organs have been legally obtained. How will they and their surgeons feel when they learn about the barbaric organ harvesting, even if the organs harvested from Falun Gong practitioners turn out to account for a portion of all human organs used in transplant operations? Is there a way for them to remove the doubt? Will they want to find out? Or will they bear that doubt and forever avoid mentioning "transplanted in China"?

Another doctor recently stated that extracting organs from living prisoners is common across China. How many more camps like Sujiatun exist?

It was precisely because we abhor such appalling crimes that humanity vowed "Never again!" after the shock of the Holocaust. Yet, as this vow is still ringing in the ears of Holocaust survivors, we are in for another shock - or are we? How do we explain to ourselves and our children that we have watched the systematic eradication of Falun Gong for more than six years and allowed it to escalate to the emergence of human organ harvesting factories like Sujiatun?

It is not due to a lack of information. Ever since July 1999, Falun Gong practitioners in China have been taking great risks to collect and send abroad, on a daily basis, detailed information on the extensive and severe human rights violations committed by the Chinese communist regime. Falun Gong practitioners overseas have worked their hardest to disseminate this information to governments, media, opinion leaders, the United Nations, and the general public to appeal for their attention.

United Nation's Reports

It is not because the information is unsubstantiated. In the past few years, many Special Rapporteurs of the United Nations Human Rights Commission have cited in their annual reports numerous cases of torture and killing of Falun Gong practitioners by the Chinese regime. Special Rapporteur Asma Jahangir wrote in her 2003 report: "The cruelty and brutality of these alleged acts of torture defy description." On October 15, 2004, seven Special Rapporteurs sent a joint letter to China to express their concern about the persecution of Falun Gong. These Special Rapporteurs are the most-respected authorities on human rights. Their findings and opinions on the Chinese regime's persecution of Falun Gong have been reprinted to thousands upon thousands of copies and submitted to world governments and media.

History, unfortunately, repeats itself. Just as the Holocaust information provided by Jewish groups was cast aside or downplayed because of the "unsubstantiated nature of the information" and its "prejudiced sources," information from Falun Gong practitioners has received the same fate. History has also shown that all major atrocities occurred when there was not enough media exposure, when perilous signals were ignored because they were "incomplete" or "unsubstantiated" or from "prejudiced sources" - when evildoers' deceits prevail, when the silence allows the evildoers to carry on unnoticed and unhindered.

History, however, never duplicates itself exactly.

There is no major military or ideological confrontation in the world now. While the Allies did not have their focus on saving the Holocaust victims, at least they were fighting the Nazis and determined to win the war. We do not have that excuse now. On the contrary, we are apparently determined to win the market in China.

Technology is far more advanced now than it was in WWII, and we do not even need to be at Auschwitz or Buchenwald to know what is going on there. If 6,000 people have been taken in to Sujiatun and none has come out, how hard is it to see from surveillance satellites the suspicious traffic going in and out to figure out that it is a death camp?

There are now many international human rights laws that were not available before the Nuremberg trials, and there are now many surveillance and protection mechanisms implemented by the United Nations. How hard is it to demand an international investigation into the serious claim of the death camp's existence? What were those international human rights laws established for?

We do not always ignore incomplete or unsubstantiated information from China, however. When Dr. Jiang Yanyong disclosed the Chinese regime's deadly lies about the SARS epidemic, the retired doctor's letter to the media contained only what he had heard from his colleagues. Did the world hesitate for a second because the information was "incomplete" or "unsubstantiated"? Why didn't the information's incompleteness prevent decisive action by the international community? In fact, his letter was sent only to Chinese media, but Western media got hold of it and publicized it. Why does the world react so differently to the SARS news and the Sujiatun news, both of life-and-death importance? Isn't it because Sujiatun is about other people's lives?

If that is not enough to make us look at the selfish side of our humanity, consider this: if Sujiatun happened anywhere else other than China, whether in democratic countries or in North Korea, Sudan, or Cuba, it would have caused major outcries. Only the human greed for economic gains from China has kept the Sujiatun death camp from being an international issue.

"The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated." Justice Jackson knew the legacy that the Nuremberg trials would leave behind when he drafted his opening speech. If he have lived to see the post-Nuremberg wrongs, he might have been more introspective and lead a trial on human conscience and how it could allow the wrongs to continue to happen.

My links says there is. Do you have links saying there isn’t?

http://web.archive.org/web/20060627150612/http://www.nationalreview.com/nordlinger/nordlinger200603300722.asp

March 30, 2006, 7:22 a.m.
A Place Called Sujiatun
Are they killing Falun Gong, for their organs?

There is a horrifying story going around the world: In the northeast of China, thousands of prisoners are being held, so that they can be killed for their organs. The prisoners are practitioners of Falun Gong, the meditation-and-exercise system. The facility at which they are being held — called a “concentration camp” or a “death camp” — is at Sujiatun. Chinese human-rights activists believe that this name should cause the same shudders as Treblinka and the others.

I cannot say whether this story is true; I can say that one ought to pay attention.

Of course, “organ-harvesting” is a very familiar story: The PRC has been doing it, with prisoners, for many years. In 2001, the U.S. Congress held hearings on the matter, which caused a sensation. But the sensation died down, as sensations tend to do. Organ-harvesting has gone on, with no negative consequences for the Chinese government.

Organ-selling is a huge business for the Chinese. You can obtain organs in China as you can nowhere else: any type, and very speedily.

The subject of organ-harvesting has been revived by the discovery of Sujiatun. I will not attempt to do justice to this story in this space (as though justice could be done). I will mainly direct you to the website of the Epoch Times, and specifically to its archive on Sujiatun: http://web.archive.org/web/20060627150612/http://www.theepochtimes.com/211,111,,1.html . The Epoch Times is an international newspaper whose reason for being is to tell the truth about China. Media in China itself, of course, are government-owned or -controlled.

I also wish to direct you to an article by the tireless Bill Gertz of the Washington Times: http://web.archive.org/web/20060627150612/http://washingtontimes.com/national/20060323-114842-5680r.htm .

How do we know about Sujiatun? Mainly through two witnesses, indescribably brave. One is a woman whose husband was a doctor who took part in the organ-harvesting; the other is a Chinese journalist, long based in Japan, who investigated the matter. Both are now in the United States, in hiding, in fear of their lives. I talked to the journalist, by phone, on Monday morning.

First, a further word about the woman: You can read an Epoch Times interview with her http://web.archive.org/web/20060627150612/http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/6-3-17/39405.html , and a follow-up story http://web.archive.org/web/20060627150612/http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/6-3-21/39480.html . They will give you all the details a human mind can take, and probably more. In brief, her husband became deranged by his work, unable to go on. The wife did not intend to step forward as a witness, but concluded that she had no choice.

I will indulge in just a few details. The woman’s husband said to her, “You don’t understand my suffering. Those Falun Gong practitioners were alive. It might be easier for me if they were dead, but they were alive.”

The woman also said this, to the Epoch Times: “Some poor farmers from nearby places were hired to work in the boiler room. [This served as the crematory.] They were penniless when they first came. . . . But they could scrape up some watches, finger rings, necklaces, and so on. The amount is not small.”

Finally, she said, “I would like to expose this to the international community, so those who are not yet killed can be saved. Also, I would like to expose this as an atonement for my family.”

Now to the Chinese journalist: His name is Jin Zhong — or so he calls himself for the purpose of media reports. I spoke to him when I was meeting with some Falun Gong activists in a New York conference room. One of them, Charles Lee, was recently released from a Chinese prison after three years’ confinement. He was tortured, and I will be writing about him in the next issue of National Review. Dr. Lee is a U.S. citizen, by the way.

And, in a strange twist, he bore witness to organ-harvesting, while a young medical researcher in China, years ago. Prisoners would be shot in the back of the head, and their bodies would be hustled to a waiting van. There, doctors would extract their organs; Charles Lee served as an assistant, holding the instruments. Sometimes, the prisoners seemed not quite dead, he says.

Before Dr. Lee and I talked, I was able to interview Jin Zhong by phone, using an associate of Dr. Lee’s as a translator.

For an extended report on Mr. Jin, please see this Epoch Times article: http://web.archive.org/web/20060627150612/http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/6-3-10/39111.html . I will say simply that he found out about Sujiatun when he was investigating SARS, and the extent of the Chinese government’s cover-up of that problem. Some local officials let slip information about the Falun Gong camp, and its purpose. He could not believe what he was hearing: It was too horrific, too inhuman. But he pursued the story, and confirmed that what he had heard was true.

I ask Mr. Jin whether the officials felt guilty about this murder and organ-harvesting. He says, “Not at all.”

Mr. Jin soon attracted the attention of the police, and was twice detained. He says he was tortured, while in detention. He managed to return to Japan, and then come to the United States. His family remains in Japan, and he says they have received death threats. Obviously, he fears for his own life here in America. PRC agents have never been respecters of national territory.

For those who care, Mr. Jin is not himself a Falun Gong practitioner. (Neither is the woman whose husband performed organ-harvesting.) “I’m not even interested,” says Mr. Jin. But he is interested in humanity, and in justice. He says, “I trust that the CCP [the Chinese Communist Party] will try to kill me,” for telling about Sujiatun. His life would have been far easier if he had kept quiet, but his conscience would not allow it.

I compliment him on his bravery. He says, “You’re a journalist. You wouldn’t have done any differently, in my position.” I reply, “I can only hope that that is so.”

Is the U.S. government aware of Sujiatun? Mr. Jin says he has informed interested congressmen and their aides. And friends of human rights in the media are weighing in. Peter Worthington concluded a piece: http://web.archive.org/web/20060627150612/http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Worthington_Peter/2006/03/25/1505613.html in the Toronto Sun this way: “China’s use of prisoners as guinea pigs, or as a supply to meet world demand, makes Nazi medical experimentation seem almost benign by comparison.”

No one should bet that Sujiatun will penetrate the world’s consciousness. Governments everywhere are keen on smooth relations with the PRC; media, even in free countries, seem to want to help them. The reluctance of major newspapers and TV networks to report on atrocities in China is a sad subject.

And I recall what Robert Conquest, the great analyst of totalitarianism, once told me: The world has seldom wanted to believe witnesses. Ten, 20, or 30 years later, maybe, but rarely sooner.

Testimony out of the early Soviet Union was scoffed at; these were “rumors in Riga.” Tales of the Holocaust were Jewish whining. When escapees from Mao spilled into Hong Kong, they were “embittered warlords.” When Cubans landed in Florida, they were “Batista stooges.” And so on.

There is an extra incentive to look away from persecution when the victims are Falun Gong. Many people are suspicious of these meditators and slow-motion exercisers, with their strange philosophy. And massive Communist propaganda against them has not been without an effect. Western business leaders see Falun Gong standing in their way, or at least irritating them.

I have no idea what will happen to Jin Zhong, or to the wife of the doctor, or to the prisoners who remain in Sujiatun. It may well be that, with some international attention, the Chinese government will Potemkinize the place. They have done as much before, as have many governments like them. And it could be that people will simply not care about Sujiatun, no matter what is proven.

My main hope, at the moment, is that readers will glance at the reports I have mentioned, especially those in the Epoch Times. Because, sometimes, the unthinkable needs to be thought about, just a bit.

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