Authors: David Matas and David Kilgour, Seraphim Editions, October 2009.
Consider this fact: China has the second-largest number of organ transplant operations in the world every year, even though they have no organised, official system of organ donations in place. How can that be?
This book gives us the answer in grim detail as the two Canadian authors report on their investigation into the widespread allegations of organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China. Falun Gong is the name of the traditional meditation and exercise practice that the Chinese regime has been persecuting for more than 10 years. Its teachings are derived from the practices of qigong, Buddhism and Taoism. Many thousands of practitioners have been arrested and sentenced to forced labor camps. Kilgour and Matas’ investigation offers 52 points of evidence showing how the Chinese regime has been killing Falun Gong practitioners for their organs to be sold to wealthy transplant patients who come to China as medical tourists.
Few now doubt the truth of the authors’ claims. The United Nations Committee against Torture in November 2008 stated that China “should immediately conduct or commission an independent investigation of the claims that some Falun Gong practitioners have been subjected to torture and used for organ transplants and take measures, as appropriate, to ensure that those responsible for such abuses are prosecuted and punished.”
One of the author-investigators is David Kilgour, who served 27 years in the Canadian House of Commons. In May 2006, he received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from the University of Toronto. He is a Presbyterian who feels his faith challenges him to work for human rights, both at home and abroad. In his writings he has challenged the international community to respond to the plight of Darfur, as well as in Burma, and Zimbabwe. His co-author David Matas is a Human Rights lawyer. Both have a number of books to their credit.
Supporting the reports is a one-hour documentary film by Peter Rowe, “Beyond the Red Wall: The Persecution of Falun Gong”, that corroborates all the evidence collected by Kilgour and Matas. In it there is footage of Chinese officials who deny capturing, interrogating, beating, imprisoning, killing and selling the organs of thousands of practitioners of Falun Gong along with ample testimony of exactly that from eye-witnesses or spouses of those who participated in the forced surgical removal of organs from living victims.
Also speaking in the film is US Congresswoman from Florida, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who has introduced bills in the U.S. House of Representatives addressing the systematic eradication of Falun Gong carried out by the Chinese Government. Canadian reporter Ian Johnson, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on Falun Gong in the Wall Street Journal also substantiates the authors’ claims.
This month the Swiss International Society for Human Rights awarded the authors the Society’s annual Human Rights prize for the courage and excellence of Bloody Harvest. In accepting it David Matas, said, “It is the voice of individuals around the world which is most likely to lead to respect for human rights.”
In 2006, Chinese hospital websites advertised perfectly matched organs and extremely short waiting times for organ transplants—as fast as one to two weeks. Dr. Franz Immer, the Director of Swiss Transplant explained why this was peculiar: “In Europe we wait, on average, two and a half to three years for a kidney, nine to 12 months for a heart or a liver.” In 2007, Dr. Immer was invited to attend a heart transplant surgery in Beijing but declined when he realized what the short waiting times implied regarding the source of the organs: they were being harvested to order.
Dr. Immer said, “We were quite interested in seeing a Chinese hospital, but then I suddenly realized that in Switzerland, the transplantations are never known in advance. It happens in the night or during the weekends, sometimes there are two to three of them in a row and sometimes there are none for a longer period of time. So this was the first time I saw the fact that obviously executions are being carried out, are being killed on a certain date in order to carry out the transplant surgeries.”
Despite international protests by such human rights advocacy groups as Amnesty International and courageous activists such as actor Richard Gere, the unspeakable crimes against humanity continue. And there are still many thousands of Falun Gong practitioners in labour camps across China. David Kilgour and David Matas continue to travel all over the world to raise awareness about their findings and to encourage active opposition by governments and the global community. This important book will help spread their message.