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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 |