Politics diary - March 2007
Ethical Corporation Magazine - London, UK
Allegations about “organ harvesting” in China have re-emerged. A
number of years ago, a report by an Australian non-governmental organisation
concluded that political prisoners in China were executed so that their organs
could be used in a growing “transplant tourism” business. The report included
details of how prisoners were shot in such a way as to minimise damage to
saleable organs. The new allegations accuse the Chinese authorities of selling
organs taken from Falun Gong practitioners.
The new report has been
written by two Canadians, David Matas, an immigration, refugee and
international human rights lawyer, and David Kilgour, a former member of
parliament and a former secretary of state of the government of Canada for the
Asia-Pacific region. Their work followed a request from the Coalition to
Investigate the Persecution of the Falun Gong in China, to investigate
allegations of human rights abuses.
Matas and Kilgour conclude that that
the government of China and its agencies in numerous parts of the country, in
particular hospitals but also detention centres and “people’s courts”, since
1999 have put to death a large but unknown number of Falun Gong prisoners of
conscience.
They detail evidence that shows that “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”.
The authors
make a number of recommendations. These include a demand that the Canadian
government becomes more forceful in its human rights dialogue with China and
that all detention facilities, including forced labour camps, be opened for
international community inspection. They also recommend that pharmaceutical
companies should not export anti-rejection drugs or any other drugs solely used
in transplantation surgery to China.