New Study Alleges China Still Executes and Harvests Body Organs of Its Political Prisoners

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Human rights activists in the West have published a new study accusing the People’s Republic of China of still running a secret state program, where citizens taken as political prisoners are executed and their body organs removed for others who are in need of them.

The researchers revealed that they have documented tens of thousands of political prisoners’ body organs used in transplants without their consent. The study was conducted by three personalities, David Kilgour, former Canadian lawmaker, David Matas, a Canadian human rights lawyer, and Ethan Gutmann, an American investigative journalist.

Allegations of China harvesting body organs are not new. Gutmann started writing about the practice in the communist country in 2006. In 2012, Gutmann led the publishing of “State Organs: Transplant Abuse in China.” The work was based on interviews from six Chinese medical professionals. Gutmann revealed that the Chinese communist government was persecuting spiritual-based organizations including Falun Gong, Uyghurs, Tibetans, and select House Christians. He estimated then that from 2000 to 2008, the number of prisoners who were killed for their organs is close to 100,000.

In 2014, Gutmann published the book titled “The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ Harvesting, and China’s Secret Solution to Its Dissident Problem.” The book detailed the inside story of China’s organ transplant business and its connection with internment camps and killing fields for arrested dissidents, especially the adherents of Falun Gong. The book was based on interviews with top-ranking police officials, former prisoners of conscience, and Chinese doctors who have allegedly killed prisoners on the operating table.

Gutmann has testified in the past before the United States Congress, the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, the European Parliament and the United Nations about the alleged crimes being committed by the Chinese communist government.

Kilgour and Matas have also investigated similar alleged crimes against the Chinese government, in the past. In this new study, figures obtained in previous works accusing the Chinese government of committing the atrocities were updated. The updated version compared the number of organ transplants on the Chinese government’s national record to the sum of the records of local hospitals, citing numerous anecdotes from those who have seen the practice first-hand, or fear their relatives have been a victim of the practice.

It is said the Chinese government does not publish information on organ donor registries, which would confirm that either all transplants are done using voluntary donors or that prisoners are used in the practice. Also, the researchers claimed the Chinese government statistics for transplant volumes are not reliable. According to the researchers, these factors forced them to figure out the total, using the numbers available of transplants already conducted.

According to the Chinese government’s figure, the total number of legal transplants in the country is about 10,000 per year. But the researchers said this figure is highly inaccurate.  The study claimed about 60,000 to 100,000 organs are transplanted each year in Chinese hospitals.

The researchers wrote: “One effort which needed to be made and which we finally have made is to determine on our own what Chinese transplant volumes are… We did that by looking at and accumulating the data from the individual hospitals where transplants occur. Some hospitals state their transplant volumes. For those who do not, we can, from their bed counts, personnel strength, potential patient groups, rate of growth, technological development, academic publications, and media reports, come to a conclusion on their transplant volume.”

The researchers revealed that 612 hospitals they visited, conducted transplants. However, these hospitals were not on the government’s record as having approval to do so.

It is said the new study was first showed to the United State House of Representatives. It has made the House pass a resolution, calling for the State Department to implement visa restrictions on Chinese nationals suspected of participating in the practice.

However, the Chinese government has condemned the move by the House. The government has also denied all the allegations. CNN quoted the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying as saying “Such stories about forced organ harvesting in China are imaginary and baseless. They don’t have any factual foundation.”

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