May 12, 2006

Falun Gong

You may recall that when Pres. Hu Jintao of China met with Pres. Bush of America, the two gentlemen were rudely interrupted. Of course, the protestor was hauled away. (Ironically, Bush had just been bloviating on his favourite theme of Freedom)

What was the fuss about? The lady is a member of the Falun Gong. This is a new sect that has proven widely popular in China. A bit too popular for the boys in the Communist Party's liking. At one time, membership in Falun Gong exceeded that of the Party itself. So it was banned, and has been suffering persecution for years.

What the protestor, Wang Wenyi, was trying to express was a very serious allegation. If true, and it looks like it might be, this is a terrible development. Many overseas Falun Gong are charging that Chinese hospitals are now harvesting organs from Falun Gong prisoners for sale to wealthy overseas clients.

There's a fair bit of evidence to back it up. Investigators have run a bit of sting operation, phoning the Chinese hospitals known to do organ transplants for foreigners. Here is one of the recorded exchanges;

Case No. 2 (a hospital in Shandong Province)

Investigator: a kidney from a person who practices Falun Gong is disease-free; do you have any of those types…

Doctor: Umh…We have more and more such kind now, and in April we will sure to get even more.

Investigator: Why there are more in April?

Doctor: I cannot not tell you about it, because it relates to…it doesn’t mean…We don’t need to explain to you about it because it cannot be explained…
More of the same can be found here.

For China to be harvesting organs from executed criminals is nothing new. That's bad enough, but if they are now killing people whose only crime is practising a kind of Qi Gong, and making a few yuan off their parts, that's unspeakable.

You might think about that next time you're loading up on cheap consumer crap at Wal-Mart.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

you wrote:

"...making a few yuan off their parts, that's unspeakable.

You might think about that next time you're loading up on cheap consumer crap at Wal-Mart."

That's a bit of leap, isn't it?