15 Years Too Long: Illegal Organ Harvesting & Persecution Falun Gong in China

Articles, News Reports

By Epoch Times

OTTAWA—Fifteen years ago on July 20, 1999, the Chinese Communist Party launched a genocidal campaign against some 70 to 100 million adherents of the Falun Gong spiritual faith in China—a campaign that continues unabated today.

To mark this tragic anniversary, practitioners of Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, and their supporters gathered in front of the Chinese embassy in Ottawa on July 17.

A similar event occurred on the same day in Montreal, and other gatherings will occur over the next few days across Canada and around the globe.

Appealing for a Father’s Release
Paul Li, a Canadian citizen and Toronto resident who is a practitioner of Falun Gong, spoke at the event to tell a personal story about his father’s firsthand experience of the benefits of practicing Falun Gong as well as the brutality and injustice of the persecution.

Canadian Rights Lawyer David Matas Receives Award in Italy

Articles, News Reports

By Epoch Times
Longtime rights defender recognized for his work
Upon learning about the Holocaust in his youth, David Matas felt the urge to do something in response to the massive crime against humanity. He later found his calling in taking up human rights causes.

“Human rights became a vehicle to be able to do something,” said the Winnipeg-based international human rights lawyer, who over the years has devoted his time to many worthwhile causes.

That work was recognized on July 10, when Matas received the Carthage International Award in Rome in the category of Peace and Defence of Human Rights.

The award is granted annually by the International Carthage Academy, a non-profit organization that presents awards in 16 different categories to those in Italy and abroad who have contributed to the development and dissemination of culture and knowledge in various fields.

Members of Congress Call for Ending Forced Organ Harvesting

Articles, News Reports

By Epoch Times

WASHINGTON—A bipartisan group of members of Congress and leaders of human rights organizations observed on Thursday an anniversary that communist China would prefer be ignored—the 15th year of the persecution of Falun Gong.

Hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners and supporters converged on the West Lawn of the Capitol to cheer speeches calling for an end to the persecution, which began on July 20, 1999.

The speakers honored the 3,769 practitioners confirmed killed by the regime. The true number who died from torture and abuse while being held in prisons, detention centers, labor camps, and brainwashing facilities is undoubtedly several times larger. In addition, researchers believe tens of thousands more have been murdered for their organs, which are used for transplantation.

The speakers also honored the millions of Falun Gong practitioners inside China for practicing “civil disobedience on a scale unprecedented in China’s history,” according to the Falun Dafa Information Center.

Europe Moves to Outlaw Organ Trafficking Worldwide

News Reports

By Epoch Times
An official European representative body has promulgated a new convention outlawing the trafficking in human organs, calling on all countries to become signatories to it and criminalize the practice and punish offenders.
The convention, called the “Council of Europe Convention against Trafficking in Human Organs” was adopted by the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers on July 9. The Council of Europe is composed of 47 member states; it does not make binding laws, but provides policy guidelines and promotes good governance.
With the new convention, it aims to have governments criminalize certain forms of organ transplantation, including where the donor is not freely consenting, or where the donor or a third party receives financial gain from the transaction.
The full document explains that its purpose is in part also to “facilitate co-operation at national and international levels on action against the trafficking in human organs.”

Minneapolis, Minnesota: Locals Say “No” to Forced Organ Harvesting in China

Articles, News Reports

By Minghui
At the third Minnesota Food Truck Fair, a free annual event in uptown Minneapolis that brings people together from all around the State of Minnesota, visitors were offered an opportunity to support a worthy cause while enjoying gourmet food.
At the June 29 event, Falun gong practitioners shared the facts of the persecution that is taking place in China and collected signatures to call for an end to the Chinese Communist Party’s state-sanctioned crimes of harvesting organs from persecuted Falun Gong practitioners.

Zurich: Signature Drive Calls for Ending the Chinese Communist Regime’s Organ Harvesting Atrocity

Articles, News Reports

By Minghui
Display boards describing the crimes of state-sanctioned organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners in China were seen by locals and foreigners on the morning of July 5, 2014, as they walked along the bustling Bahnhof Strasse shopping avenue in Zurich, Switzerland. Many passersby signed their names to the signature petition, which was organized by Falun Gong practitioners.

Italian Medical Community Changes Pace in Fight Against International Organ Trafficking

Articles, News Reports

By Epoch Times
The world is acting quickly to counter the international traffic organs and Italy is in the game.
Only three days ago, July 9th, the Council of Europe adopted the first convention to combat human organs traffic, encouraging a “close international cooperation between Member States [of the Council] and non-member states.”
Yesterday at the Italian Parliament was held the First Symposium on Ethics in transplantation, which gathered together doctors, lawyers and institutions with the same goal: promoting ethical standards and legislative actions to eradicate an illegal phenomenon that involves the entire planet.

Account Sheds Light on Organ Harvesting From Falun Gong in China

Articles, News Reports

By Epoch Times

COPENHAGEN, Denmark—Yang Guang and his old friend, a logistics officer at a major hospital in northeastern China, had everything planned: the officer would slowly, carefully, over many months, collect the files and documents moving across his desk that showed a pattern of illicit organ harvesting at the hospital. Then, he would leave China on “vacation,” defect, and expose how Chinese hospitals were killing for their organs practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual practice that is persecuted in China.

The plan came undone in December 2009, Yang Guang said, when his friend received a visit from China’s secret police, who got word of the plan. The friend is now retired, and Yang has not been able to contact him for several years.

Yang said that he kept detailed notes of their discussions throughout the 2000s, however. Earlier this year he recapitulated his notes in interviews with the Epoch Times, providing a portrait of how organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners may actually play out in China.

The Disappearing China Organ Transplantation Conference

Articles, News Reports1 Comment

By Epoch Times

The month of June this year was to be one of celebration for the Chinese transplant community. An important conference was planned, the agenda of which was “to establish China as a model for the international standards now set forth by World Health Organization’s Guiding Principles and the Declaration of Istanbul,” the two global benchmarks for ethical organ transplant practice.

But there was no conference this June. And not a peep has been heard about the matter—not from China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission, which ostensibly oversees the country’s organ transplantation system, nor from The Transplantation Society (TTS), the international medical body that has for years worked with Chinese officials in an attempt to have them turn their system around from one of outright abuse into an ethical paragon for other countries.

Purged Chinese Military Leader Turns Persecution Into Power

Articles, News Reports

By Epoch Times

News Analysis

In what mainland Chinese media described as an “earthquake” in the nation’s military, retired Gen. Xu Caihou was purged on July 1 from the Chinese Communist Party and charged with corruption.

Xu’s fall from the heights of the CCP followed a career based on a devil’s bargain: Xu managed to convert his enthusiasm for persecuting the spiritual practice of Falun Gong into position and influence.

In 1999 Xu Caihou was the political officer for one of the seven military regions of the People’s Liberation Army, one of hundreds of Party cadres a few rungs below the CCP’s top ranks.

Xu then began a meteoric ascent, in the same year he become the second in command of the PLA’s political department and a member of the Central Military Commission that commands all of China’s armed forces, and then in 2003 he was promoted to director-general of the political department.

Sydney: Citizens Sign Petition to Support Ending Forced Organ Harvesting in China

Articles, News Reports

By Minghui.org

When Falun Gong practitioners held a signature drive in front of the Sydney Town Hall on June 28, 2014, Australians responded.

Upon learning about the persecution of this peaceful cultivation practice, especially the forced organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners in China, they showed their support with their signatures, calling on the Australian government to help bring an end to this crime against humanity.

An Australian citizen signed the petition after reading about the forced organ harvesting. He hesitated initially, because he was going to visit China in the near future and he was afraid that he would be denied access by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) because he had signed the petition. Practitioners explained to him that the petition was to be submitted to the Australian government, not the CCP. He left with the truth-clarification materials and returned shortly after, to sign his name after he did some reading.

Brisbane: Exposing the Chinese Communist Party’s Forced Organ Harvesting Atrocities

Articles, News Reports

By minghui.org

The Australian Medical Association of Queensland held a Junior Doctor Conference on June 28, 2014 in downtown Brisbane. Falun Dafa practitioners held a series of activities to raise awareness in the medical profession and the local community about the ongoing crime of forced organ harvesting in China.

Falun Dafa practitioners held a series of activities downtown Brisbane to expose the persecution.Many people in the medical profession, including doctors and professors, signed the petition to condemn the atrocities after learning about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) brutal suppression of Falun Gong and state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting from living practitioners.

After signing the petition, a doctor said to a practitioner that it was unethical to remove anyone’s organs for any reason without the person’s voluntary consent, “Everyone should have the right to decide where his organs go. If we could do something (to stop live organ harvesting), we all have the responsibility to make sure that we do so. We should try to prevent such illegal actions.”

“Knowing the CCP’s live organ harvesting, can you keep silence?”

Articles, News Reports

By Minghui.org

“We want to tell people about the human rights abuses of Falun Gong practitioners in China. It is a really good opportunity as a lot of media attention focused on the Chinese prime minister’s visit,” said British Falun Gong practitioner Lee Hall, who participated in a peaceful protest across from 10 Downing Street on June 17, 2014, where British Prime Minister David Cameron received his Chinese counterpart, Li Keqiang.

The practitioners’ protest, which condemned the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) persecution of Falun Gong and the CCP’s atrocity of forced organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners, has garnered support from the public. A number of people spoke out to protest the persecution and to call on the British government to consider human rights first when dealing with China.

The practitioners called for bringing former Chinese President Jiang Zemin and other perpetrators of the persecution to justice. They also encouraged more Chinese people to learn about Falun Gong and the CCP’s crimes, and renounce the CCP and its affiliated organizations.

Falun Gong practitioners hold a peaceful protest against the persecution in front of the British Prime Minister’s office during the Chinese Prime Minister’s visit.

Raising Awareness about Organ Harvesting at the Grand Canyon

Articles, News Reports

By Epoch Times

GRAND CANYON, Ariz.–Falun Dafa practitioners set up a display this month hoping to tell Chinese and other tourists about a situation they said the Chinese communist regime is concealing.

“We are trying to raise awareness because the Chinese don’t get any truth inside their country because their media is all propaganda, propagandized,” said Mel Etherton, one of the display’s organizers. Banners at the canyon said “Falun Gong is Good” and “Stop the Killing of Falun Gong for Organs.”

Seven Wonders
The group chose the canyon for its fame. “The Grand Canyon is a popular destination for Chinese tourists,” said Fen Ho, an Arizona Falun Gong practitioner. In China, students are taught about “the Seven Natural Wonders of the World, and the Grand Canyon is one of them.”

Medical Professionals Condemn Organ Harvesting in China

Articles, News Reports

By Epoch Times
Medical professionals from around the globe attending the 2014 International Transplantation Congress in London last week condemned the widespread non-consensual organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in China. All, that is, except for one Chinese delegate who has carried out transplant operations that number in the thousands.
The number of organ transplant operations taking place in China has seen a surge in recent years, following the persecution and mass arrests of practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline which follows the Chinese traditions of meditation and self-cultivation.
Preceding the persecution, the number of liver transplant surgeries was recorded at 118 in the years between 1991 and 1998. After the persecution began in 1999, numbers began to multiply steadily with close to 4,000 recorded liver transplants in 2005. Increases in other organ transplant surgeries were also found, with no accompanying rise in donation rates, along with transplantation centres claiming matches of suitable organs within two weeks.

Transplant Tourism Website in China Taken Offline

Articles, News Reports

By Epoch Times

Until some point in May it was possible to go to the unassumingly titled cntransplant.com website and, then and there, place a phone call to arrange a transplant organ from a hospital in Tianjin, China.

“Medinet Healthcare Center. … We are the fruits of one tree, leaves of one branch,” the site once beckoned.

“We … are here to assist the patients in getting a kidney, liver or heart transplantation in China.” Its hospitals, the site said, operated with all appropriate licenses, and “are surely where the dying patients reborn.”

Patients, known as “transplant tourists,” would then fly to China to get their new organs and emerge “reborn.”

Organs of this sort in China invariably come from executed prisoners—though the type of prisoner is disputed. China is in the shaky beginning stages of attempting to set up a voluntary organ donation system, to exist alongside the harvesting of organs from prisoners.

Over 4600 People Sign to Stop the Organ Pillaging in China (Video)

Articles, News Reports

By China’s Forbidden News
With the exposure of the CCP’s living organ harvest on Falun Gong practitioners, the mainland people’s signature collection in protest against it continues to grow. After the first three times nearly 18,000 signatures were collected. A few days ago, the media reported that 4700 signatures were collected to condemn the CCP’s atrocity in the Tangshan area from January to May. According to the U.S. Minghui report from Hebei on June 4th, since January a total 4688 signatures were collected in Tangshan calling on the CCP to stop the atrocity of organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners.

Uighur Attacks in China – Ethan Gutmann’s Interview on RTHK Hong Kong Radio

Articles, By Ethan Gutmann, News Reports

Ethan Gutmann’s interview on “Uighur attacks in China” can be heard on “China takes over the world” a hot Hong Kong Radio show.

LISTEN TO RADIO INTERVIEW

A new book titled Strategic Reassurance and Resolve: U.S.-China Relations in the Twenty-First Century says that competition between China and the United States is inevitable but it can be limited to avoid the worst outcomes. Michael O’Hanlon, a coauthor of the book and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, joins us to explain how this can be accomplished.

In the second half of the show, Ethan Gutmann, veteran investigative journalist, talks about the recent horrific attacks in China that the government has condemned as acts perpetrated by Uighur separatists. Ethan also talks about his forthcoming book, The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ Harvesting, and China’s Secret Solution to Its Dissident Problem.

A Chinese Witness: 14 People Had Kidney Changed At Same Time (Video)

Articles, News Reports

A Chinese Witness: 14 People Had Their Kidney Changed At Same Time

Recently, a Chinese netizen who had his kidney transplanted 13 years ago contacted NTD Television. He said that 14 kidney patients had their kidney changed at the same time with him in the hospital. A doctor told him that the kidney donor was very healthy. This patient suspected that the kidney was from live organ harvesting of a Falun Gong practitioner.

This patient didn’t give his name for security reasons, he told NTD about his experiences in Guangzhou.

A Chinese netizen: “I affected uremia in 2001, I noticed this problem in 2001.
Two months later I had my kidney changed. I was lucky I only waited for 30 minutes after I stood in a queue, they faxed out my blood type, half an hour later, they told me to stay in the hospital next day.”

NYC Rally Offers Chance to Quit the Chinese Communist Party

Articles, Events, News Reports

By Epoch Times

NEW YORK—More than a thousand practioners of Falun Dafa rallied at the United Nations headquarters at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza Park Wednesday. They celebrated World Falun Dafa Day, appealed to the world to help stop the brutal persecution of Falun Dafa in China, and supported a growing number of Chinese who are quietly withdrawing from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

“The darkness and panic of the 15 years of persecution can’t be described by human language,” said Charles Lee, spokesman for the Global Center for Quitting the Chinese Communist Party, part of a movement known in Chinese as Tuidang.