By Al Irwin
Times Reporter
Aug 20 2006

An appalling persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China is alleged by members of the religion in Vancouver.

The atrocities include harvesting of body organs from unwilling donors, for transplant operations, members of Falun Gong in Canada said.

Falun Gong is a meditative and spiritual practice that was banned in China in 1999. Members are being systematically imprisoned, tortured and killed throughout the country, local members said.

As part of a Canada-wide campaign to raise awareness of these allegations, Falun Gong members were at Langley City library on Aug. 10. The information package includes a report from former MP David Kilgour and David Matas, an immigration, refugee and international human rights lawyer in Winnipeg.

As part of their investigation from Canada, Kilgour and Matas interviewed medical personnel and their spouses who had defected to the west, and Falun Gong members who had been persecuted in China and escaped.

Investigators phoning to Chinese hospitals were able to order organs for transplant, purported to be from Falun Gong members, according to the report. Kilgour and Matas conclude:

“We have concluded 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.

Their vital organs, including hearts, kidneys, livers, corneas, were virtually simultaneously 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.”

Further, the report said: “Our conclusion comes not from any one single item of evidence, but rather the piecing together of all the evidence we have considered. Each portion of the evidence we have considered is, in itself, verifiable, and in most cases, incontestable. Put together, they paint a damning whole picture.”

“To many people, it is unbelievable,” said Shirley Chen, a member of the group which has been picketing the Chinese Consulate in Vancouver for the past five years.

At the Chinese Consulate in Vancouver on both Monday and Tuesday, the phone rang, but no one answered the calls placed by The Times. Chen said that for many years there have been reports in mainstream western media about the use in China of transplant organs obtained upon victims of the death penalty.Since a crackdown on the Falun Gong in China seven years ago, the availability of organs for transplant has grown rapidly and inexplicably.

“In North America (people) wait four to six years (for a suitable organ) and the same is true in Europe,” Chen said. “The possibility of getting a match is one in 200.”

Yet in China, an organ of a suitable match can be obtained in a week or two, no more than a month, she said.

In China, there were more than 8,000 kidney transplants and 4,000 liver transplants, in 2005 alone, she said.

The death penalty for other crimes can not explain this huge number of transplants, Chen said.

“Given the difficulty of getting a matching organ, one in 100, it means they have a living organ bank.”

“This is a horrible crime challenging every human being and we all need to take action,” Chen said.

The Falun Gong members are circulating a petition, seeking in support and intervention by the Canadian government.

For information: www.falundafa.org