...Any national government whose medical professionals are executingwithout any species of prior judicial proceeding members of an officiallydisapproved spiritual community, as has been occurring for more than half adecade across China to numerous Falun Gong practitioners, isself-evidently unsuited to host the Olympic Games in its capital city.
If agents of the same government are selling the vital organs-livers,kidneys etc-of such prisoners of conscience for high prices and often toorgan tourists, the case for a games boycott or shunning by governments, spectators, prospective event sponsors and athletes becomes even more compellingunder the Olympic Charter and a host of United Nations instrumentsdealing with human dignity for all people.
I hasten to stress here that the Falun Dafa community present in approximately seventy countries is not calling for a boycott or shunningof the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The boycott effort is coming from othersof us who are deeply worried about the worsening state of human rights in China generally.
The government of China has continuously denied that it is engaged in organ seizure activities, which David Matas has termed "a new form of evil onthis planet". It has, however, not responded to the 33 kinds of evidence Matas and I have gathered in various parts of the world as proof in ourrevised report ( available in 17 languages at organharvestinvestigation.net). It was notany of the 33 in isolation but the combination of all of them that ledus to the chilling conclusion we reached.
Among the sources of proof and disproof we examined were these:
The waiting times for organ transplants in China are astonishingly short, days and weeks, contrasted with months and years in the rest ofthe world. Hospital websites in China boast short waits for all organs for those who can pay large sums.
Corruption is a major and continuing problem in China, large profits being made from transplants and the general lack of control.The prices charged foreigners vary from US$ 30,000 for corneas to 180,000 for liver/kidney combinations.
President Jiang Zemin, then leader of the governing party and government in China, decided in the summer of 1999 that the then estimated 70-100million Falun Gong practitioners in the country posed a threat to the government. He declared a brutal war, which involved imprisonment,systematic torture and forced labour for thousands of practitioners. The mediademonization and dehumanization of Falun Gong practitioners across the country since mid-1999 appears to have exceeded what was directed at persons convicted of capital offences.
Based on my own observations of Falun Gong practitioners in the about 35of the countries where they now live, it is clear that there are profound differences in the value systems of Falun Gong and the CCP. For example, the guiding principles of the first are Truth, Compassion and Forbearance. Those of the latter are closer to polar opposites. It is also clear that practitioners were determinedly non-political across China until the persecution began in mid-1999.
The government of China gave its military-the PLA-the authority to raisemoney privately. It is now heavily involved in organ transplants butoperates outside the rules of the civilian health system. Transplants are performed in military hospitals and in civilian ones by militarypersonnel.
Falun Gong practitioners have been arrested in huge numbers sincemid-1999 and held without trial until they renounce their beliefs. Our report names more than three thousand Falun Gong practitioners who died as a resultof torture; if the government is willing to murder large numbers of themthrough torture, it's easy to accept that it will do the same crime through organ seizures.
Many Falun Gong practitioners, seeking to protect their families andwork colleagues, refuse to give their names upon arrest, therebybecoming especially vulnerable. Only Falun Gong prisoners are regularly blood tested and physically examined for a terrible reason which is nowevident.
The usual sources of organs for transplants in China-executed convictedprisoners, donors and brain dead persons-come nowhere near in numbers to explaining the rapidly rising number of transplants across the countrysince the persecution began and are the only other explanation for wherethe 'donors' come from.
In researching our report, Matas and I had persons calling calling hospitals and detention centres throughout China posing as familymembers of persons who needed organ transplants. In a wide variety oflocations, those who were called asserted that Falun Gong practitioners(reputedly healthy because of their exercise regime) were the source ofthe organs. We have recordings and telephone bills for these calls.
We also interviewed the ex-wife of a surgeon from Sujiatun who had said her husband personally removed the corneas from approximately 2000anaesthetized Falun Gong prisoners Sujiatun hospital in Shenyang city innortheast China during the two year period before October, 2003. Hertestimony was credible to us.
There have been two investigations independent from our own which haveaddressed the same questions we have addressed whether there is organharvesting of Falun Gong practitioners in China �V one by Dr. Kirk Allison of the University of Minnesota, another by a European Parliament Vice-President, Edward McMillian-Scott. Both have come to the same conclusionwe did. These independent investigations corroborate our own conclusion.
Conclusion:
The hardship a Games boycott would create for the affected athletes isenormous. The consequences for humanity, however, of having OlympicGames go ahead in the capital of a country where innocent Chinese citizens continue to be murdered for their vital organs are evengreater. If the killing seizes across China, this particular call (my own) for aboycott will also cease.