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... The epoch times was founded in 2000 by John Tang, an Atlanta-based follower of the Chinese spiritual movement Falun Gong, whose members you might have seen doing meditative exercises in parks, and whose living messiah is Li Hongzhi, a cherubic-faced man generally shown wearing dark suits. The movement, which claims to have millions of adherents, encourages believers to abandon lust, greed, alcohol, and other worldly “attachments.” Some of the more unusual characteristics of its outlook include a distrust of medical doctors and a belief in malevolent, Earth-roaming aliens who created impious technology (such as video games). In 1999, the...

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...

Diplomat 'fears for life' By Jonathan Granger June 04, 2005 From: AAP A CHINESE diplomat seeking political asylum in Australia has come out of hiding to address a public rally in Sydney, despite saying he fears for his life. And Chen Youg Lin, 37, has promised to reveal to Australians "everything I know" about threats by Chinese foreign agents "to the Australian society and its people". Mr Chen said he walked out of the Chinese consulate-general in Sydney four days ago, saying he could no longer support his country's refusal to embrace democratic reform and its persecution of religious group...

Team says China harvests Falun Gong organs Thu Jul 6, 3:34 PM ET A respected Canadian human rights lawyer and a former Canadian cabinet member lent their weight on Thursday to charges that China has been killing Falun Gong dissidents so it can use their organs. The two men -- lawyer David Matas, and David Kilgour, former secretary of state for Asia and the Pacific -- spent two months investigating the accusations, which China has regularly denied. "It is simply inescapable that this is going on," Kilgour told reporters as he and Matas released their findings. They provided transcripts of...

After years of denial, China has acknowledged that most of the human organs used in transplants here are taken from executed prisoners and that many of the recipients are foreigners who pay hefty sums to avoid a long wait. Speaking at a conference of surgeons in the southern city of Guangzhou, Deputy Health Minister Huang Jiefu called for a strict code of conduct and better record-keeping to stem China's thriving illegal organ trade, state media reported. "Apart from a small portion of traffic victims, most of the organs from cadavers are from executed prisoners," Huang said Tuesday, according to a...

SAN FRANCISCO — Many of San Francisco's Asian massage parlors — long an established part of the city's sexually permissive culture — have degenerated into something much more sinister: international sex-slave shops. Once limited to infamous locales such as Bombay and Bangkok, sex trafficking is now an $8 billion international business, with San Francisco among its largest commercial centers. San Francisco's liberal attitude toward sex, the city's history of arresting prostitutes instead of pimps, and its large immigrant population have made it one of the top American cities for international sex traffickers to do business undetected, according to Donna Hughes,...

NEW YORK -- A Chinatown businesswoman who prosecutors described as one of the biggest "snakeheads'' of all time was sentenced to 35 years in prison Thursday for her role in organizing human smuggling schemes, including the doomed Golden Venture voyage in 1993. Cheng Chui Ping, 57, pleaded for more than an hour for a lenient sentence, saying she was but a simple, hardworking immigrant who loved America and had been terrorized by Chinatown gangs. U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey listened patiently, then dismissed the speech as ``simply incredible'' and gave Cheng the maximum penalty allowed by law. Evidence at the...

Golden Venture Survivors Face Another Hurdle NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- Few Americans have lived through the kind of adventures that brought Arming He to the United States from his Chinese homeland. Seeking a better life, he made a dangerous escape across a mountainous border, traveled by ship to Africa, where he was marooned for months, then crammed into the hold of a rusted freighter carrying 295 other refugees. His ordeal didn't end when the ship, the Golden Venture, ran aground in Queens in 1993 in an ill-fated attempt to unload its battered and starving human cargo. Ten people died trying...

At Wal-Mart's 1992 general meeting, founder Sam Walton asked shareholders to sing God Bless America. The 15,000 Wal-Martians responded to Sam's call - even though Walton had been dead for two months. Walton's request to the shareholder-cum-revival meeting in rural Arkansas - channelled through a spotlit executive crouching on bended knee to speak to the departed Deity of Retail - was scarcely surprising. Wal-Mart is America's most patriotic, flag-waving company. But look under the flags. Stores are decked out like a war rally. Stars and Stripes hang from the ceiling. Cardboard eagles shriek 'Buy America!' But one independent group sampled...

SHANGHAI (Kyodo) Two Japanese nationals in their 50s received heart transplants between 2001 and 2004 at a Shanghai hospital whose organs mainly come from death-row inmates, sources at a Taiwanese company that arranged the procedures said Thursday. Japan was seemingly unaware of the cases, as a survey released March 9 by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said there were no cases of Japanese receiving heart transplants in Asia outside of Japan. Ethical and medical concerns have often been raised regarding organ transplants in China over issues that include the use of organs of prisoners on death row and uncertain...