China
forcefully harvests organs from detainees, tribunal concludes
China's organ transplant trade is worth $1 billion a year, according to
a tribunal. This story contains details some may find distressing.
By Saphora
Smith
LONDON — The organs of
members of marginalized groups detained in Chinese prison camps are being
forcefully harvested — sometimes when patients are still alive, an international
tribunal sitting in London has concluded.
Some of the more than 1.5
million detainees in Chinese prison camps are being killed for their organs to
serve a booming transplant trade that is worth some $1 billion a year,
concluded the China Tribunal, an independent body tasked with investigating
organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in the authoritarian state.
“Forced organ harvesting
has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale,” the
tribunal concluded in its final judgment Monday. The practice is “of unmatched
wickedness — on a death for death basis — with the killings by mass crimes
committed in the last century,” it added.
In 2014, state media
reported that China would phase out the practice of taking organs from
executed prisoners and said it would rely instead on a national organ donation
system.
The Chinese Ministry of
Foreign Affairs on Tuesday was not immediately available to comment on the
tribunal's findings.
In a statement released
alongside the final judgment, the tribunal said many of those affected were
practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that China banned in the
1990s and has called an “evil cult.” The tribunal added that it was
possible that Uighur Muslims — an ethnic minority who are currently being
detained in vast numbers in western China — were also being targeted.
The tribunal is chaired by
Sir Geoffrey Nice, who worked as a prosecutor at the international tribunal for
crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia.
“Falun
Gong practitioners have been one — and probably the main — source of organ
supply,” the judgment read, while “the concerted persecution and medical
testing of the Uyghurs is more recent,” using a different spelling of the
minority group's name. It warned, however, that the scale of medical testing of
the Uighur Muslims meant they could end up being used as an "organ
bank."
The
tribunal that delivered its judgment in London was initiated by the
International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China — a not-for-profit
coalition including lawyers, academics, human rights advocates and medical
professionals.
Allegations
of forced organ harvesting first came to light in 2001, after a boom in
transplant activity was registered in China, with wait times becoming unusually
short, the statement said. Chinese websites advertised hearts, lungs and
kidneys for sale and available to book in advance, suggesting that the victims
were killed on demand, it added.
On Monday,
the tribunal concluded that there was “numerical evidence” of the
“impossibility of there being anything like sufficient ‘eligible donors’ under
the recently formed PRC [People’s Republic of China] voluntary donor scheme for
that number of transplant operations.”
The
tribunal added that witnesses, experts and investigators had told of how Falun
Gong practitioners continued to be killed in order for their organs to be
extracted. It added that forced organ harvesting was also being performed while
victims are still alive, killing the person in the process.
The
statement recalled how one witness, Dr. Enver Tohti, told of how as a surgeon
in China he had been required to perform organ extractions. Referring to one
instance in which he extracted an organ from a living patient, he said: “What I
recall is with my scalpel, I tried to cut into his skin, there was blood to be
seen. That indicates that the heart was still beating … At the same time, he
was trying to resist my insertion, but he was too weak.”
Several
survivors of prison camps told the tribunal of how they were subjected to
physical examinations including blood tests, X-rays and ultrasounds, the
statement said. “Experts report that the only reasonable explanation for these
examinations was to ensure that victims’ organs were healthy and fit for
transplantation,” it added. A healthy liver, for example, can reportedly be
sold for some $160,000, according to the statement.
The
tribunal concluded that it was "beyond reasonable doubt" that crimes
against humanity had been committed against the Falun Gong and Uighur Muslims
but that it could not prove that the killing of the Falun Gong amounted to
genocide — because of the tribunal's inability to prove ‘intent’ to commit
‘genocide.’
In
a statement accompanying the final judgment, the International Coalition to End
Transplant Abuse in China called on the international community to help bring
an end to forced organ extraction.
“It
is no longer a question of whether organ harvesting in China is happening, that
dialogue is well and truly over. We need an urgent response to save these
people’s lives,” Susie Hughes, executive director and co-founder of the
coalition, said.
Saphora Smith reported from
London. Dawn Liu and Ed Flanagan reported from Beijing.
.
