Author exposes organ harvesting State and health officials told members of Chinese sect are being killed for transplants

By PAUL GRONDAHL, Staff writer Times Union, Wednesday, June 6, 2007

ALBANY -- The allegations of Chinese citizens being imprisoned and murdered and their bodily organs sold for tens of thousands of dollars sound so gruesome and far-fetched that they defy imagination.

But a growing body of evidence that seems to confirm the grisly practice has led to a groundswell of demonstrations and calls for boycotts of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing if the Chinese government, which denies "organ harvesting," does not allow an independent investigation.

"The evidence is overwhelming," said David Kilgour, a former member of Parliament and secretary of state in Canada. Kilgour spoke Tuesday in Albany at a legislative forum and urged state lawmakers and health department officials to post public warnings for New Yorkers about organ harvesting.

Those allegedly targeted in China for persecution, imprisonment and even slaughter for their organs are members of Falun Gong, a sect that practices meditation and exercises meant to enliven mind, body and spirit. The group has an estimated 70 million devotees in China. It ran afoul of Chinese Communist Party orthodoxy and members have been imprisoned in large numbers by Chinese authorities since 1999.

Kilgour and co-author David Matas, who wrote the investigative report "Bloody Harvest," estimate 41,500 organ transplants using Falun Gong prisoners have been done in the past five years.

Kilgour conceded he has not personally witnessed such atrocities, but based the report on phone interviews with former detainees and Web sites of organ transplant brokers in China.

Sold piecemeal on the black market, the organs in a healthy human body can fetch up to $500,000, Kilgour said. He described a large and lucrative underground industry of "organ tourists" who travel to China to receive an organ transplant in a week or two after waiting months or years in the United States.

"We need to stop people being killed on demand like lobsters in a tank," he said.

Several state legislators listened to accounts from Kilgour and others, including Falun Gong members who had been harassed or detained.

"We need to do everything we can to correct this incredible abuse of human rights," said Assemblyman Jack McEneny, an Albany Democrat. He said he was setting up a meeting with state Department of Health officials. A department spokesman was not available for comment.