Investigators Shed Light on China's Forced Organ Harvesting in UK Parliament

Leading investigators into China's forced organ harvesting presented evidence to UK lawmakers at a briefing on Tuesday, April 17. The investigators pieced together the jigsaw of evidence that they say shows that organs are being forcibly extracted from prisoners of conscience in China then sold for profit on an "industrial" scale. "This is thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people being forced to hand over, unwillingly, their organs," said Jim Shannon MP, who co-hosted the talk with Fiona Bruce MP in the parliament building. "In the room today, you had Conservatives, DUP, Labour and others who would hold positions as peers in the house," he said. "We’re all horrified, totally horrified about what’s taken place." Among the nine speakers were Nobel Peace Prize nominee Ethan Gutmann, former Canadian Secretary of State David Kilgour and Benedict Rogers, Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission. Research from Gutmann, Kilgour, and human rights lawyer David Matas, found that the main supply of harvested organs is from practitioners of Falun Gong, a traditional Chinese practice of the Buddhist school that has been persecuted by Chinese authorities since 1999. "Their vital organs, including kidneys, livers, corneas and hearts, were seized involuntarily for sale at high prices, sometimes to foreigners, who normally face long waits for voluntary donations of such organs in their home countries," notes a 2006 report by David Matas and David Kilgour. The report found that Uighurs, Tibetan Buddhists, and some house Christians were also victimized. Regular sources of transplants and the use of death-row prisoners come nowhere near explaining the total number of transplants taking place in China. According to the investigators, Falun Gong practitioners who were illegally detained but later got out of China almost all spoke of a similar experience: they had their blood tested and organs examined while they were in forced labour camps. According to investigators, this was not for health reasons, as they were victims of torture, but a test to assess if their organs were suitable for harvesting. “Until you start reading the reports and the investigations and all the evidence, I don’t think you can grasp how serious it is,” said the chair of the event, Becky James, who is a co-founder of Bristol Against Forced Organ Harvesting. “It’s so horrible, people can easily think it’s not true.”