'Silence makes us all complicit'

Speak up for human rights with your voice, wallet

By Caspin Lange

It saddens me to learn, and here state, that there are still atrocities occurring on Earth reminiscent of the Holocaust. It has been only three weeks since I found out that the United States is doing business with terrorists who have murdered an estimated 50,000 citizens for their organs to sell at high prices to foreigners from countries like the U.S. and Canada. I put myself in the shoes of a man being taken from my home, imprisoned, blood-typed, and then eventually brought unconscious and, while living, having my kidneys and liver removed so that some other person could live. My internal organs all clinched at the thought.

I read numerous articles online before coming across Canadian Secretary of State David Kilgour’s Web site, where I read something that made me cry. It was a report titled “Bloody Harvest: Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Live Falun Gong Practitioners in China,” by Kilgour and international human-rights lawyer David Matas.

Their investigations led them to conclude that since 1999 the Chinese government has imprisoned more than 50,000 Falun Gong meditators, blood-typed them, taken their organs while they were alive, and sold them on the world market. More than 50 hospitals around China, alleged to have participated in this atrocious procedure, were investigated. More than a dozen openly admitted to using organs from Falun Gong practitioners. Most of the hospitals offered kidneys, livers, hearts and corneas for transplant within a week. The usual wait for an organ transplant with the proper blood-type match in New York City is four to five years.

David Kilgour and I have been communicating via e-mail for two weeks now. He has assisted in giving me information to help make United States citizens aware of this atrocity. My question is this: Why have the mass media not reported this like the BBC and Canadian news have?

I urge people to learn more—log onto Kilgour’s report site at http://organharvestinvestigation.net/. And to take it a step further, stop supporting businesses that support the Chinese government. For example, 70 percent of the products sold at Walmart are made in China. Wouldn’t our grandfathers have wanted to know if they were buying toaster ovens made by Nazis?

Buy local. And speak out against atrocity. Silence makes us all complicit.

http://www.newsreview.com/chico/content?oid=932628