Human rights researchers have published an updated study accusing China of conducting tens of thousands of organ transplants using the bodies of political prisoners without their consent. While the practice has been known to occur in the communist nation for decades, Beijing alleges that it long stopped harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience.
Former Canadian lawmaker David Kilgour, human rights lawyer David Matas, and journalist Ethan Gutmann have released an update to their respective projects documenting the use of political prisoner bodies in hospitals to conduct organ transplants. The update to their respective works “Bloody Harvest” and “The Slaughter,” suggests that the Chinese government regularly imprisons “primarily practitioners of the spiritually-based set of exercises, Falun Gong, but also Uyghurs, Tibetans, and select House Christians,” and transfers their bodies to hospitals after executing them “in order to obtain organs for transplants.”
The study does two things: compare the number of organ transplants on the Chinese government’s national record to the sum of the records of local hospitals, and cite numerous anecdotes from those who have seen the practice first-hand or fear their relatives have been a victim of the practice. The 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 – so researchers are forced to figure out the math using the numbers available of transplants already conducted: – READ MORE
