Evidence
In 2014, the documentary Human Harvest has been released.
The documentary is based on the investigative work of co-authors David
Kilgour and David Matas, who published Bloody Harvest in 2009. In addition the
documentary presents new information and developments on the subject of forced
organ harvesting in China.
Due to restrictions on investigations that a
totalitarian government imposes on international investigative delegations,
evidence often cannot only be compiled from first-degree witnesses and direct
sources but also must come from hints and secondary sources. A large number of
significant hints can supplement the testimony principal witnesses. The latter
are almost impossible to find due to the nature of live organ harvesting.
Significant Hints
Traditionally,
Chinese are reluctant to donate their organs for transplantation. Vice Health
Minister Huang Jiefu admitted at a summit for transplant doctors held in
Guangzhou in November 2006 that the communist government was torturing
prisoners, executing them, and trafficking in their body parts. “Apart from a
small portion of traffic victims, most of the organs from cadavers are from
executed prisoners. … The current organ donation shortfall can’t meet demand.”
(China Daily) Some experts estimate that over 90 percent of organ
transplants in China come from prisoners. The Los Angeles Times reported that
Chinese transplant physician Dr. Zhonghua Chen said at a conference in Boston
in July 2012 that Chinese doctors had transplanted 8,102 kidneys, 3,741 livers,
and 80 hearts in 2005. With a small number of freely donated organs and a
constant number of executions per year, the unexplained gap between supply
and demand raises the question: Where do all the organs come from?
Amnesty
international estimates the number of executions is between 2,000 and 10,000
per year. This would almost match the number of transplants, but it does not
explain how all death-row candidates matched the blood types and tissue factors
of the recipients. In order to provide all the recipients with a transplant,
the projected number of organ donors must be higher than the actual number of
transplants.
This lack of transparency could be explained
by the allegations described in the Kilgour & Matas Report.
On
Chinese transplantation center websites and in Chinese newspapers, several
articles mention that organs can be provided within a short period of time.
They have advertised that the waiting time for a kidney is less than 4 weeks,
and in many cases only 1–2 weeks. A liver or a heart can be provided within 1–2
months. In order to match blood and tissue types, it would require a large number
of donors to provide these organs. This especially applies to livers and
hearts, which are necessary for survival. Again the question is: Where do all
the transplanted organs come from? The allegations of a living pool of donors
whose organs are harvested on demand is the most likely answer to this
question.
Reports from China
On
May 17, 2006, China Times printed an article entitled “Kidney
Transplants Performed Twice within 48 Hours for 220,000 Yuan (US$27,440).”
According to this article, on December 19, 2004, 49-year-old Xue Yanlin Fuyang
in Anhui suffered from uremia and was hospitalized in Beijing Haidian
Hospital’s transplant center. Nine days later, on the afternoon of Dec. 28, a
physician from the Transplant Center brought kidneys from an outside source
with blood type and panel reactive antibody (PRA) that matched Xue’s. At 10:10
p.m. that day, Xue was wheeled into the operating room. By 11 p.m., the chief
surgeon Han Xiuwu, entered the operating room. Four hours later, Xue
Yanlin was wheeled out of the operating room. Han said: “The surgery was not
successful.” On the morning of Dec. 29, at 9 a.m., a B-scan examination
confirmed the failure of the kidney transplant operation.
According
to Xue’s husband Lu Xiaoxing, “The diseased kidney was not removed because Han
was in a hurry to get back to Kunming on the same day for another operation. He
said there was a kidney source there. He would bring back another kidney the
next day, remove the diseased kidney, and replace it with the new kidney.” On
Dec. 30, Xue underwent emergency surgery due to a heart attack. By 11 p.m. that
evening, Han returned from Kunming with a new kidney and performed the kidney
transplant on Xue for a second time. The two transplant operations took place
within 48 hours.
Seeking the Mysterious Organ Sources of Shenyang City’s
Multi-Organ Transplant Center
Located
in Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, the China International Transplantation
Network Assistance Center (CITNAC) advertised on their website: “If you send
your personal data to this center by e-mail or fax and accept the necessary
body examination in Shenyang, China, in order to assure a suitable donor, it
may take only one month to receive a liver transplantation, the maximum waiting
time being two months. As for the kidney transplantation, it may take one week
to find a suitable donor, the maximum time being one month.”
Due
to traditional Chinese values, there are very few kidneys taken from live
bodies of family members for transplantation. According to the report “To
Transplant or Not to Transplant” published in Modern Business Daily of
Beijing on June 10, 2004, transplant surgery using kidneys from family members
represents about 1.5 percent of the total number of kidney transplants.
According
to the article “Organ Transplant: An Area that Needs Fast Regulations” in the
147th issue of Finance Journal in December 2005, Deputy Health
Minister of China Huang Jiefu admitted for the first time at a WHO meeting held
in Manila from Nov. 7 to 9 that most organs China uses for transplant come from
death-row convicts.
“Twenty
Organ Transplants Free of Charge” at the Hunan Provincial People’s Hospital
read the April 28 edition of the Hunan Xiaoxiang Morning Herald.
The advertisement was for a special hospital promotion giving away 20 free
liver or kidney transplants. Patients were instructed to call the paper’s
hotline to register. The hospital also advertised its promotion in other media,
including the Changsha Evening Post and the Hunan
Economics TV Station.
China’s Announcements to End Organ Harvesting
from Executed Prisoners by January 2015
China
has announced to end organ harvesting from executed prisoners, however, the 1984 provisional regulations on the use of dead bodies or
organs from condemned criminals, which allow to
harvest organs from executed prisoners, were not abolished. The
announcement did not include to also end the organ harvesting from prisoners of
conscience.
Although
China has announced to replace the organ sourcing from executed prisoners
through organs from the newly founded public organ donation system, a scrutiny
of the new system cannot deflect concerns about the source of organs. It is
questionable how a 2-3 year old organ donation system can yield more
than 7,000 organ donations within one year, and how the number of registered organ donors can possibly increase by
exactly 25,000 registered donors within 24 hours.
The
data suggests that they follow an artificial course, where concerns remain.
.
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