Just
how one of the biggest stories ever reported can be kept from the
western press as well as it has, escapes me. Epoch has been going
the lone wolf on this and yet it really needs the mass market
treatment to haul it out into the light. We are getting real
admissions both direct and indirect as to what is going on.
Imagine
Hitler’s Henchmen babbling away to the media.
This
stuff must be kept secret, yet we are seeing continuing disclosure
leak out. The investigations have also forced folks to find ways to
distance themselves before the boot drops as it must.
Chinese Officials’
Denials on Organ Harvesting Suggest Culpability
By Matthew Robertson,
Epoch Times June 10, 2013
Recently, the man
in charge of reforming China’s abusive organ transplantation system
took part in two high-profile attempts to defend his record and
reform efforts, but both attempts seemed to only make matters worse.
Huang Jiefu was the
deputy minister of health of China, and is now the head of the Organ
Transplantation Committee (OTC), a body set up to oversee what is
being called a new system of transplantation, meant to move away
from the reliance on executed prisoners (whether death row or the
religious kind is another question).
In an attempt to clear
his name over a recent controversy associated with an honorary
professorship he received from the University of Sydney, Huang held a
press conference in Beijing in mid-May. A Chinese official holding a
private address for the foreign media is rare.
Huang is significant
because he has been lauded by Western doctors and medical
institutions for what they regard as his efforts to move China away
from using executed prisoners as a source of transplant organs.
But during the press
event, he admitted on the record to having himself removed and
transplanted organs from executed prisoners—an act that would
violate a number of international medical ethics codes, and certainly
that of the University of Sydney, which gave him the honorary
professorship. And he also defended the use of prisoners for their
organs, despite the fact that this ethical violation was what drove
the establishment of the new system he has been congratulated for.
It was already
suspected, based on Chinese official press reports, that Huang had
carried out transplants from executed prisoners. But the direct
admission was surprising and harmful, according to Doctors Against
Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH), a medical advocacy group based in
Washington that has argued against Huang’s award.
“Huang’s
transplant practice conflicts with the university’s code of
conduct,” DAFOH said, in a statement on its website referring to
the controversy involving the University of Sydney. “Huang
[said] the world needs to be understanding and give China a chance.
The distorted call for ‘a chance’ is like a slap in the face
of the tens of thousands of innocent lives who did not have a
slightest chance and were killed for their organs.”
More recently, a
Chinese propaganda website was host to more remarks meant to assuage
critics, but which merely invited further scrutiny.
In the interview,
Huang said: “Our country has a very strict law: organs donated from
death row inmates must have the inmate’s signature, and must have
the signature of the family. I say this very responsibly: every
single case has these signatures, and we don’t go against the
wishes of the individuals involved. It is under these circumstances
that it’s carried out.”
On the surface, this
sounds like a helpful position for a Chinese health official to take:
it indicates that all transplant operations were carried out with the
consent of the donor, which is in line with international standards.
But according to David
Matas, a researcher of organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners
in China, the claim, if true, would be problematic for the regime,
and leave a lot more explaining to do.
To understand why
requires going back a few years. Until November 2006, the official
position of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was that no transplant
organs came from death row prisoners. The regime reversed that
position when Huang admitted to Chinese state media that “most of
the organs from cadavers are from executed prisoners.”
That admission took
place amid emerging evidence that living Falun Gong practitioners
were being killed for their organs, and had become the primary source
of organ transplants in China. Many thought it was a tactical
maneuver meant to throw the spotlight off the Falun Gong question.
No one actually knows
exactly how many prisoners are executed in China, and the Communist
Party considers the number a state secret.
Experts pointed to
a gaping hole, however, between the number of prisoners
executed—there are minimum and maximum bounds that researchers work
within—and the number of transplants conducted in China over any
given period. From 2000 to 2005, according to David Matas and his
colleague, former Canadian parliamentarian and crown prosecutor David
Kilgour, that number sat at 41,500. Most of what filled the
breach is suspected of being practitioners of the Falun Gong
spiritual discipline, which is persecuted in China.
Huang, by now saying
that every transplant from an executed prisoner came with their
signature of consent and that of the family, just lowered the number
of organs that we are told to believe came from executed prisoners:
the figure could never have been 100 percent of executed prisoners,
and even 50 percent would be stretching it, given the high rates of
blood disease among prison detainees, which render their organs
unsuitable for transplant.
As if to make sure all
the bases were covered, in the same interview as Huang, Shi Bingyi, a
major figure in the Chinese medical-military organ transplantation
system, was quoted denying knowledge of organ harvesting from
practitioners of Falun Gong.
Without making a
factual claim, Shi said that he “absolutely does not believe”
that practitioners of Falun Gong were harvested for their organs
while alive.
Shi is currently a
deputy chairman of the organ transplantation branch of the Chinese
Medical Association; he used to be head of transplantation at the
People’s Liberation Army’s 309 Hospital. He was pictured in his
military regalia in an official shot with a bright red background.
The remarks by Shi and
Huang were published on May 28 on the website Kaifeng, which said
that they were based on interviews given to China Radio
International. Kaifeng is the most vitriolic of anti-Falun Gong
propaganda websites, associated with the 610 Office, the secretive,
extralegal Party organ set up on June 10, 1999 to oversee the
persecution of Falun Gong. The office was the key instrument used by
Jiang Zemin, the former regime leader, to implement the campaign,
drawing on unchecked police and security powers and using a variety
of illegal and extralegal measures.
Multiple searches for
the names of Huang and Shi did not reveal any trace of the interviews
on the website of China Radio International (CRI). Neither CRI nor
Kaifeng responded to emails asking why.
Ethan Gutmann, a
researcher of organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience in China,
believes that Shi’s remarks were part of an attempt to pre-empt
Western media attention on the issue of organ harvesting from Falun
Gong.
“They want to
preempt it, and strangle it,” he said in a telephone interview from
his home in London. Gutmann said that a “tipping point” was
slowly taking place in the media sphere about organ harvesting from
Falun Gong practitioners, and the remarks were made in preparation.
“Now when they’re asked, they can say ‘Oh, that’s an old
issue, we’ve already denied that.’”
He said, though, that
regardless, “the issue’s not going away.”
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