Japan urged to crack down on organ patients in China

Wednesday • October 18, 2006

Todayonline.com

A former senior Canadian official urged Japan to issue a travel advisory for transplant patients against visiting China due to its alleged use of organs from executed prisoners.

David Kilgour, Canada's former secretary of state for Asia, and human rights lawyer David Matas wrote a report -- denied by China -- that Beijing harvested organs from members of the banned Falungong spiritual movement.

"Japan should be raising this issue with China and use its political clout to get the practice to stop," Kilgour told a press conference in Tokyo, one stop on an Asian tour.

"Why can't Japan for example issue a travel advisory telling organ tourists that if they go to China the organs they get may well be coming from some young man or woman in good health who has been executed a la carte?" he said.

Matas said that Japan should pass legislation requiring the written consent of organ donors in China.

"People leave Japan, they go to China, they do something that if it were done in Japan it would be a crime," Matas said.

Kilgour and Matas said they met with Japanese officials Tuesday but have yet to receive an official response.

In their report issued in July after a two-month investigation, the pair implicated dozens of Chinese hospitals and jails of alleged harvesting of organs.

The Chinese government has dismissed the study as planted by the Falungong, which was banned in 1999 after unnerving the Beijing leadership with its organizational talent.

China said in March it would ban the sale of human organs after reports that Japanese and Malaysians had died in botched transplants. But China admits that inmates on death row may "donate" their organs.

The British government in April advised its nationals to think twice about going to China for transplants due to the risk that the organs may come from convicts without their consent.

Japan has a backlog of thousands of patients waiting for transplants due to strict laws on donating organs, leading hundreds of people to head to China for body parts. — AFP

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