Toronto Sun
 

By Peter Worthington

David Kilgour is one of those guys destined to make waves -- never for self-aggrandizement, always on moral issues of principle.

At age 64, he's been around the hoop. A former Crown attorney, he was first elected to the House of Commons as a Tory in 1979. He's served in the cabinet, quit the party and joined the Liberals, quit the Liberals to sit as an independent and eventually quit politics in 2006 after 26 years as an MP.

Every political decision he's made seems based on principle. How many can say that? Belinda Stronach? David Emerson? I don't think so. In 1990, he and Nova Scotia MP Pat Nowlan quit the Tories to protest the GST -- something Liberal Sheila Copps promised to do, but did so only after polls showed she'd be safely re-elected. So much for principle.

In 2005, Kilgour's disgust at the Chretien sponsorship scandal provoked his remark that Canada looked like "a northern banana republic," had him publicly musing about re-joining the "new" Conservative party.

He stayed in the party after Paul Martin became PM and assured him Canada would send extra troops to Darfur, where preventing genocide was a Kilgour cause. Martin reneged on his promise, and Kilgour quit the Liberals and sat as an independent.

He also despaired of the Liberals' policy on same sex-marriages, and chose not to run in the 2006 general election. Again, principles dictated his decisions.

Back in the early 1980s, Kilgour took issue with me when I was critical of the leadership of Joe Clark. At the time I mistakenly assumed he sought brownie points within the party. Untrue. He was motivated by conviction.

What's interesting about Kilgour is not that he's variously been called "a maverick, independent wild man from Alberta, a loose cannon, joker in the deck," etc., but that he is a happy warrior with a clear conscience and 20/20 vision on what's right and wrong.

His present cause is China, and allegations that organs of political prisoners are being "harvested" and sold -- a touchy subject that many back away from.

Kilgour and Winnipeg human rights lawyer David Matas have investigated as far as they can and have issued a detailed report on China's alleged harvesting of organs from Falun Gong dissidents whose greatest (only?) sin, is its growing popularity in China.

Falun Gong is a benign, apolitical meditative and exercise philosophy that has a world-wide following and which Beijing brands as a "cult" and declared illegal in 1999 -- and has been persecuting ever since; intimidation abroad, imprisonment at home.

If substantiated, the Chinese practice of removing cornea and vital organs from otherwise healthy Falun Gong people, and selling them to those who need transplants -- sometimes on a week's notice -- is an obscenity of historic proportions that should cause world outrage.

Back in March and April, I wrote about this horrific policy. The newspaper Epoch Times is one of the few publications pursuing this story -- certainly not the CBC or Globe and Mail, which both have correspondents in China who'd be expelled if they probed deeply.

Kilgour and Matas were refused visas to China to investigate, but they've done their best to get evidence, interview witnesses, check references.

They've phoned a dozen hospitals and detention centres in China and received confirmation Falun Gong practitioners are being held until their "living" organs can be sold. The Kilgour report is available at www.investigation.redirectme.net.

Unidentifiable sources

According to their report, the China Medical Organ Transplant Association recorded 60,000 transplants between 2000 and 2005 -- with only 18,500 of those organs from identifiable sources. In other words, 41,500 organ transplants were unidentifiable -- likely from Falun Gong prisoners.

Kilgour and Matas say the number of liver transplant at hospitals jumped from 22 in 1999 to 500 in 2006.

Transplants in that time frame went from 135 to 4,000.

Organ transplants are lucrative to the state, which introduced new laws July 1, ostensibly to control the practice. In Shenyang City, where the hospital is connected to the prison for Falun Gong members, it's claimed corneas sell for $30,000, livers $130,000, lungs $170,000, kidneys $62,000.

Shamefully, little has been written about living transplants in China, or the admitted practice of using death row prisoners.

"Frankly, we're very encouraged by the interest in our report, and how seriously it is being taken," said Kilgour, on the eve of going to Brussels to deliver his report to members of the European Parliament.

A reason why there's reluctance to believe China is indulging in living transplants is that it's a profitable business source. Countries reluctant to make waves, retreat into silence which becomes de facto collusion.

Silence in the face of evil is not David Kilgour's way. Sadly, there are few like him in seats of power.

At least his Jiminy Cricket voice reminds people that evil should not be ignored.

http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Worthington_Peter/2006/07/16/pf-1686885.html