Reports of organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China

The first series of allegations were based on apparent eye-witness testimony of two individuals, and directed specifically at the Sujiatun Thrombosis Hospital in Shenyang, Liaoning province.^[3] The story received some deal of media attention. Within one month, some third party investigators, including representatives of the US Department of State, said that there was insufficient evidence to support this specific allegation.^[4] A few months after the Sujiatun incident, in July 2006, former Canadian Secretary of State, David Kilgour, and Human Rights Lawyer David Matas, published a report of their investigation into the reports of organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners in China. Their report titled ''"Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China"'' concluded that large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners are victims of systematic organ harvesting, whilst still alive, throughout China and that the practice is still ongoing.^[5] Kilgour and Matas state that several pieces of evidence contained in their reports are publicly verifiable. ^[5]

Investigative reports from Sky News and BBC add evidence to the findings of the Kilgour-Matas report.^[6] The Christian Science Monitor says the report?s evidence is circumstantial but persuasive.^[7] The Chinese Embassy in Canada dismissed the Kilgour-Matas report soon after its release as "rumors and totally groundless," though their response was met with strong skepticism from Amnesty International.^[8] On August 2006, a Congressional Research Service report said that some of the report?s key allegations appeared to be inconsistent with the findings of other investigations, though the report does not provide details.^[9] The US state department maintains that "[i]ndependent of these specific allegations, the United States remains concerned over China?s repression of Falun Gong practitioners and by reports of organ harvesting."^[10] Kilgour and Matas maintain that the issue has yet to be properly unaddressed.

U.N. special rapporteur Manfred Nowak, in December 2007 said "The chain of evidence they [Kilgour and Matas] are documenting shows a coherent picture that causes concern."^[11] In November 2008, the United Nations Committee Against Torture made a strong statement on the matter, citing Nowak's note that an increase in organ transplant operations coincides with ?the beginning of the persecution of [Falun Gong practitioners]? and who asked for "a full explanation of the source of organ transplants." The Committee stated that it is concerned with the information that Falun Gong practitioners "have been extensively subjected to torture and ill-treatment in prisons and that some of them have been used for organ transplants." They called for the state to immediately conduct or commission an independent investigation of the claims of organ harvesting, and take measures to ensure that those responsible for such abuses are prosecuted and punished.^[12]

The Sujiatun case

On May 20, 2006, Mr. David Kilgour conducted an interview in the United States with the ex-wife of a Chinese surgeon, who, according to her statement, was involved in removing corneas from live Falun Gong prisoners of conscience. She stated that her ex-husband, a neurosurgeon, was involved in removing cornea from more than 2000 live prisoners - from end of 2001 to October 2003. According to her statement, the victims were injected with a drug that caused heart failure and had their organs removed, often, while the patient was not yet brain-dead. Later the victims would be moved to other rooms for extraction of other organs.^[14]

The Washington Times also reported on the case. A journalist seeking political asylum in the United States, "Jin Zhong", also claimed knowledge of the harvesting operation, and added that hospital workers had taken jewelry and watches from the dead and sold them.^[15]

Earlier reports on the issue include a 2001 report that appeared in The Washington Times of a doctor, who, according to his statement, was involved in removing corneas and harvesting skin from more than 100 executed prisoners, "including one who had not yet died". Wang Guoqi, a "burn specialist", said in his written statement that he had also seen other doctors remove vital organs from executed prisoners and that his hospital, the "Tianjin Paramilitary Police General Brigade Hospital", sold those organs for enormous profits. The Laogai foundation said that it had gone to "great lengths" to verify Wang's identity and that both the foundation and congressional staff members found the doctor's statements "highly credible." Wang's detailed statements, provided to The Washington Post by The Laogai foundation, include the dates and places of executions, the names of doctors involved in organ removals and graphic descriptions of the medical procedures.^[16]

According to a 2006 Congressional Executive Commission report, Huang Jiefu, China's Vice Minister of Health, had indicated in July of 2005 that as high as 95% of organ transplants in China derive from execution.^[17] The report states that circa 65% of "capital offenses" in China are for nonviolent "crime".^[18]

International response

On Apr 19, 2006, Sky News went undercover with cameras inside Chinese hospitals where nurses and doctors confirmed readily-available organs are taken from prisoners, and that the hospital's abundance of donors is due to its close connections with Chinese security forces. Sky News' Website says that "China has been accused of taking organs from executed prisoners to supply the international transplant market. British surgeons say there is evidence that prisoners are being selected as potential donors before they are killed."^[19]

On June 13, 2006, Edward McMillan-Scott, vice president of the European Parliament, said he believed that nearly 400 hospitals in China shared the lucrative trade in transplant organs, with websites advertising new kidneys for $60,000.^[20]

Doubt

A Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman rejected the claims as a ?lie... not worth refuting.? The Chinese government maintains that the hospital is incapable of housing more than 6,000 persons, there is no basement for incarcerating practitioners as alleged, and that there was simply no way to cremate corpses in secret, continuously, and in large volumes.^[21]. Amnesty International, responding to Chinese government's statements on the issue, pointed out that it considers them to be "at odds with the facts in view of the widely documented practice of the buying and selling of organs of death penalty prisoners in China."^[22]

Harry Wu, known for his investigations of Laogai, was also skeptical of the claims. He claims to have sent investigators to the Sujiatun scene, on March 12th, 3 days after the story surfaced, but did not find evidence for the alleged concentration camp.^[23] He claimed the Sujiatun story was merely hearsay from two witnesses: "No pictures, no witnesses, no paperwork, no detailed information at all, nothing."^[24]

In an interview, David Kilgour states, in response to Harry Wu's allegation, that "everything that Harry is talking about happened after March the 9th, when, basically, the whistle was blown" and the authorities had time to clean up.^[25] Kilgour and Matas later accused Wu of bad faith for drawing his conclusions without interviewing the witnesses.^[5]

A Congressional Report stated on April, 2006 that U.S. representatives were "allowed to tour" the facility and "found no evidence that the site is being used for any function other than as a normal public hospital." US embassy said their staff visited the site twice, the first time unannounced one week after the report surfaced, the second with official cooperation after three weeks.^[4]^[10]. The report continues that "[i]ndependent of these specific allegations, the United States remains concerned over China?s repression of Falun Gong practitioners and by reports of organ harvesting."^[10]. Commenting on the issue, Kilgour and Matas state in an appendix to their revised reports: "We were aware of these visits when we wrote our reports, but did mention them because we did not find them significant. We would not have expected these visitors to find anything even if the initial reports of organ harvesting from the ex-wife of the surgeon were true. An operation leaves no trace in an operating room after it is completed. Operating rooms are cleaned up, sanitized, made antiseptic after each and every operation."^[5]

Some news reports, including by The Epoch Times, contend that the Chinese authorities had cleaned up by the time the investigations were done. Ethan Gutmann,adjunct fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, writing in the Weekly Standard, says that "three weeks is a long time by Chinese construction standards," referring to the timeline from when the story broke to when the US State Department officials conducted their more detailed investigation. "Is the State Department certain its officers toured an unaltered facility? Did they take an architect with them? Collect forensic samples? Sift through ashes? Interview any hospital personnel privately, off-site? And on their tour, did they reject the company of the inevitable CCP handler or hospital operative? If the answer to these questions is no, then the Americans' findings are interesting but hardly dispositive," Gutmann says, "The visitors could easily have missed a walled-off underground facility."^[26]

Phoenix TV, a Hong Kong-based broadcaster with Chinese-state sanctioning, aired a video claiming flaws in the Sujiatun story.^[27] The video claimed the hospital size and staffing capacity was too small to house thousands of prisoners; that the incinerator was only used to heat water, not burn corpses; that the hospital denied The Epoch Times witness, "Annie", was their employee as claimed; that the area around the hospital is highly populated and large movements of people would be noticed; that doctors interviewed denied involvement in any such activities, and that the Sujiatun hospital is incapable of organ transplantation anyway. The programme also attacked the Kilgour-Matas report. The transcript to the program is hosted on a Chinese state-media site which attacks Falun Gong, and has also been distributed by the Chinese Communist Party's embassies and consulates.

On August 22, 2008, David Kilgour and David Matas issued a press release stating that the veracity of the telephone transcripts of Chinese doctors admitting to selecting Falun Gong practitioners for transplant, documented in their report, was inadvertently further strengthened by the Phoenix TV video. The evidence was based on voice analysis of Dr. Lu Guoping from the video, combined with a prior audio recording of an admission from the same doctor. In an audio recording obtained by Kilgour-Matas' investigators, Lu Guoping admits that he and his colleagues go to prison to select Falun Gong practitioners for transplantation. In the video, the doctor, while admitting that he was contacted by the investigators, denies making the incriminatory statements documented in the Kilgour-Matas report. The video makes no mention of the audio recordings. Based on analysis of Lu Guoping's voice from the video, Kilgour and Matas were able to verify the identity of the doctor as being the same as the person making the admission in the audio recording.^[28] "In the TV video, the doctor admits that he was the person interviewed in the audio recording but denies, when presented with a transcript, that he said what our audio records him as saying," Kilgour and Matas write. "Yet, on the audio, what the doctor denies saying is interspersed seamlessly with what the doctor admits saying. Once the doctor, in the video, admits to saying most of what is in the audio, the conclusion that he said everything he is recorded on the audio as saying is inevitable. Only through video and the audio in combination do we have the admitted implication of this doctor and his hospital in Guangxi in the organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners and the hospital in Guangzhou in the nationwide organ sourcing of Falun Gong practitioners." ^[29] In a letter to the Chinese embassy in Canada, they wrote: "Denial (of the abuse of organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners) in the face of such compelling evidence which has the official sanction of the Government is no longer an option. The only option which remains is ending this horrible crime." ^[28]

The Kilgour-Matas Report

Phone-call transcripts from the Kilgour-Matas Report^[5]
1. Call to Dr. Lu, Nanning City Minzu Hospital, Guangxi M: "...Could you find organs from Falun Gong practitioners?"
Hosp: "Let me tell you, we have no way to get (them). It's rather difficult to get it now in Guangxi. If you cannot wait, I suggest you go to Guangzhou because it's very easy for them to get the organs. They are able to look for (them) nation wide. As they are performing the liver transplant, they can get the kidney for you at the same time, so it's very easy for them to do. Many places where supplies are short go to them for help..."
M: "Why is it easy for them to get?"
Hosp: "Because they are an important institution. They contact the (judicial) system in the name of the whole university."
M: "Then they use organs from Falun Gong practitioners?"
Hosp: "Correct..."
M: "...what you used before (organs from Falun Gong practitioners), was it from detention centre(s) or prison(s)?"
Hosp: "From prisons."
M: "...and it was from healthy Falun Gong practitioners...?"
Hosp: "Correct. We would choose the good ones because we assure the quality in our operation."
M: "That means you choose the organs yourself."
Hosp: "Correct..."
M: "Usually, how old is the organ supplier?"
Hosp: "Usually in their thirties."
M: "... Then you will go to the prison to select yourself?"
Hosp: "Correct. We must select it."
M: "What if the chosen one doesn't want to have blood drawn?"
Hosp: "He will for sure let us do it."
M: "How?"
Hosp: "They will for sure find a way. What do you worry about? These kinds of things should not be of any concern to you. They have their procedures."
M: "Does the person know that his organ will be removed?"
Hosp: "No, he doesn't."
- 2. Call to Shanghai Jiaotong University Hospital?s Liver Transplant Centre:
M: I want to know how long [the patients] have to wait [for a liver transplant].
Dr. Dai: The supply of organs we have, we have every day. We do them every day.
M: We want fresh, alive ones.
Dr. Dai: They are all alive, all alive?
M: How many [liver transplants] have you done?
Dr. Dai: We have done 400 to 500 cases? Your major job is to come, prepare the money, enough money, and come.
M: How much is it?
Dr. Dai: If everything goes smoothly, it?s about RMB 150,000? RMB 200,000.
M: How long do I have to wait?
Dr. Dai: I need to check your blood type? If you come today, I may do it for you within one week.
M: I heard some come from those who practise Falun Gong, those who are very healthy.
Dr. Dai: Yes, we have. I can?t talk clearly to you over the phone.
M: If you can find me this type, I am coming very soon.
Dr. Dai: It?s ok. Please come.
M: ? What is your last name?...
Dr. Dai: I?m Doctor Dai.

The report presents 33 strands of evidence which the authors say leads to the positive conclusion. Singularly, the authors maintain, the pieces of evidence do not prove the allegations, but their combination was the deciding factor. ?Where every possible element of disproof we could identify fails to disprove the allegations, the likelihood of the allegations being true becomes substantial.?^[5]In 2007, they presented an updated report under the title: "Bloody Harvest: Revised Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China."

They qualify that there are inherent difficulties in verifying the alleged crimes. For example, no independent bodies are allowed to investigate conditions in China, eyewitness evidence is difficult to obtain, and official information about organ transplantation is often withheld.^[5] On July 6, 2006, Matas told reporters that the Chinese government, which has repeatedly denied similar allegations,^[31]^[32] refused entry visas to China for the pair to investigate further.^[33]

The pair say that corruption is rife in China, which provides an incentive to break the law and make profit from selling organs, and that there is no self-governing body for transplant ethics.

Details on the source of organ transplants

China has no organized donation system, as in western countries. There is also a cultural aversion to organ donation, such that even if there were a system in place, donations would be scarce. The authors say these factors severely limit the availability of voluntarily donated organs for transplant.

Healthcare and army facilities in China are self-reliant for funding, and hospitals are known to profit from illegally selling organs of death-row prisoners. The authors allege that this policy might be easily transferred to Falun Gong practitioners: "The Falun Gong constitutes an additional prison population which the authorities vilify and dehumanize even more than executed prisoners sentenced to death for criminal offences."^[34]

Of 60,000 organ transplants officially recorded between 2000 and 2005, 18,500 came from identifiable sources; the source of 41,500 transplant organs could not thus be explained.^[35] In a later article published in 2007, Kilgour and Matas say that traditional sources of transplants such as executed prisoners, donors, and the brain dead "come nowhere near to explaining the total number of transplants across China." They said that "the only other identified source which can explain the skyrocketing transplant numbers is Falun Gong practitioners."^[34]

The authors note the very short waiting times in Chinese hospitals for transplants. One hospital boasts a wait of one week for a transplant, another claims to provide a liver in two weeks. In Canada, the waiting time for a kidney can be up to 32.5 months. The survival period for a kidney is between 24-48 hours, and a liver about 12 hours. The authors contend that only a large bank of living 'donors' could account for the ?astonishingly short? waiting times.

The authors refer to a number of interviews with organ recipients, who gave similar accounts. The organ transplant surgery is ?conducted in almost total secrecy,?^[5] the recipient is not told the identity of the donor or shown written consent, the identity of the doctor and nurses are often withheld, recipients and their families are often told the time of the operation immediately before it occurs, operations sometimes take place in the middle of the night, and ?The whole procedure is done on a 'don't ask, don't tell' basis.?^[5]

They recount the anecdote of an individual who received an organ from a military-run hospital.

Admissions on phone

According to the reports, one of the callers, referred to in the report as caller "M" , called into 80 something hospitals out of which 10 hospitals admitted they use Falun Gong practitioners as organ suppliers, 14 hospitals admitted they use live organs from prisoners and 10 hospitals said the source of organs is a secret and they could not reveal it over the phone. Caller N made calls to close to 40 hospitals in China, out of which 5 admitted to using Falun Gong practitioner organs. N also made calls to 36 various detention centres and the Courts in China, out of which 4 admitted to using Falun Gong practitioner organs. Kilgour and Matas note that when the called party was directly asked if they use Falun Gong practitioners' organs, the typical response got was that "the caller did not expect this question at all, and would pause for a while to think how to respond. After the pause, about 80% did not admit that they used Falun Gong practitioners' organs. About 80% of those who did not admit to using Falun Gong practitioners' organs did admit that they use live bodies who are prisoners. Less than 10 people simply hung up the phone once they heard the question about Falun Gong practitioners."^[5]

Kilgour and Matas state that one of them met with the callers in Toronto on May 27th, 2006 to discuss the routing, timing, recording, accuracy of the translations from Mandarin to English and other features of the calls. They also state that one of them listened with a certified Mandarin-English interpreter to the recorded telephone conversations and that the accuracy of the translations of the portions of them used in their report is attested to by a certified interpreter with the Government of Ontario. In the report, they conclude "that the verbal admissions in the transcripts of interviews of investigators can be trusted. There is no doubt in our minds that these interviews did take place with the persons claimed to be interviewed at the time and place indicated and that the transcripts accurately reflect what was said. Moreover, the content of what was said can itself be believed."^[5]

Chinese organ transplant websites

Kilgour and Matas, in their report, point to the information found on several Chinese hospital websites which they describe as "self-accusatory". For instance, in the 'question and answer' section of such a site is found:

The FAQ section from another chinese organ transplant website, referred to by Kilgour and Matas in their report, states:

The Website of Changzheng Hospital Organ Transplant Centre, as archived on March 2005, states "...Currently, for the liver transplant, the operation fee and the hospitalization expense together is about 200,000 yuan ($66,667 CND), and the average waiting time for a liver supply is one week among all the patients in our hospital...." Kilgour and Matas note that the pages were removed from hospital's website after March 9, 2006 when the allegations first arose.

Many such websites show graphs with soaring organ transplantation figures?these start going up after 1999, when the persecution of Falun Gong began. In addition, many such website state that the organs can be found "immediately". The CIOT website advertises the waiting time for a kidney transplant as being "as short as a week and no longer than a month"^[41], while the average waiting time for such a transplant in other countries is more than 5 years.^[42] They note that while the majority of the pages were removed shortly following the release of the investigative reports, archived versions of the same are still accessible online.^[5]

Organ transplanting is a highly profitable industry in China. The report provides a list of prices in US dollars found on Chinese transplant websites in April, 2006. These range from US$62,000 for a kidney, to US$130,000-160,000 for a heart. The authors write that they have no way of following the 'money trail', but that the lack of transparency is questionable.

Falun Gong specific considerations

Their report gives background to human rights violations in China, in particular the persecution of Falun Gong, including the campaign to incite public hatred toward the group, and the widespread torture of practitioners in custody.

Kilgour and Matas state that one of the ?most disturbing? moments in researching the report was the discovery of a massive population of imprisoned Falun gong practitioners who remained unidentified. Falun Gong prisoners of conscience may refuse to give their names for fear of persecution against their families. In these cases, no one outside the prison system knows their whereabouts. They state that there is a significant lack of representation among freed Falun Gong practitioners, from those who failed to self identify while they were imprisoned?these 'disappearances', the authors contend, are ready candidates for live organ harvesting.^[5]

The authors also point to evidence that Falun Gong practitioners are systematically blood and urine tested, and have their organs examined while in custody, while other prisoners, who are not practitioners, are not tested. "This differential testing occurs in labour camps, prisons and detention centres. We have heard such a large number of testimonials to this effect that this differential testing exists beyond a shadow of a doubt."^[5]

Practitioners are not told the reason for being tested or examined; Kilgour and Matas write that it is not for health purposes, "For one, it is unnecessary to blood test and organ examine people systematically simply as a health precaution. For another, the health of the Falun Gong in detention is disregarded in so many other ways, it is implausible that the authorities would blood test and organ examine Falun Gong as a precautionary health measure."^[5]

They also point out that blood testing is a pre-requisite for organ transplants, and that donors need to be matched with recipients "so that the antibodies of the recipients do not reject the organs of the donors."^[5]

This is also an avenue of proof/disproof, according to Kilgour and Matas, because "The mere fact of blood testing and organ examination does not establish that organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners is taking place. But the opposite is true. If there were no blood testing, the allegation would be disproved. The widespread blood testing of Falun Gong practitioners in detention cuts off this avenue of disproof."^[5]

Practitioners regularly die in custody due to torture or ill-treatment, "In a few cases, between death and cremation," Kilgour and Matas say, "family members of Falun Gong practitioners were able to see the mutilated corpses of their loved ones. Organs had been removed."^[34]

Recommendations

The report concludes that the allegations of China's harvesting organs from live Falun Gong practitioners are true; that the practice is still ongoing and calls for a ban on Canadian citizens traveling to China for transplant operations.^[43]^[44]^[45]

Reception of the Kilgour-Matas report

Corroborative reports

In April, 2007, a PhD Thesis from Yale University pointed out that the "exceedingly short waiting times, batch transplants, surging transplant volume and the lack of demand-induced upward pressure [in China's organ transplant industry] on price and waiting times could not be explained by a demand-driven market model." The thesis concludes: "analysis shows that they can be explained by a supply-driven model with a large inventory of unwilling living organ suppliers selected from detained Falun Gong practitioners. There is no group in China?s prison system other than Falun Gong practitioners that has the requisite population size, health and intensity of persecution to explain the rapid growth in the organ industry from 2000 to 2005. An accumulating number of non-economic evidence supports the conclusion of this analysis."^[49]

Professor Tom Treasure MD MS FRCS F, of Guy's Hospital, London, in a March 2007 article entitled "The Falun Gong, organ transplantation, the holocaust and ourselves," published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, confirms the plausibility, from a medical standpoint, of the allegations. He analyzes some of the events leading to the Holocaust in which medical personnel were involved and compares these to the circumstances surrounding the Falun Gong persecution, statistics on transplantation in China, and general practices related to transplantation. "As the allegation unfolds, the story seems horrific to the point of being beyond belief. So alarmed was I on learning of this allegation that I struggled to make sense of it. The element of the story that horrifies me most, if it is true, is that it is my medical colleagues, the doctors, who perpetrate these acts." On the substance of the conclusions of the Kilgour-Matas report, he says: "What makes it credible are the numerical gap between the reported number of transplants compared with what is possible in other countries, the short waiting times and the confidence with which operations are offered in the global health market, and the routine blood testing of the Falun Gong."^[50]

In May 2008 two United Nations Special Rapporteurs reiterated their previous request for the Chinese authorities to adequately respond to the allegations of organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners.^[51] They also asked the authorities to explain the source of organs for the sudden increase in organ transplants in China since 2000. The request was a follow-up to previous communication on August 11, 2006, made with Sigma Huda, UN Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons. In 2006 the three Special Rapporteurs drew on information submitted by individuals and volunteer groups, including FalunHR, raising questions about the identifiable sources of organs, the short waiting times for finding perfectly-matched organs, and the correlation between the sudden increase in organ transplants in China and the beginning of the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. In 2006 Chinese authorities responded only with categorical denials, and failed to address the critical issues raised by the Special Rapporteurs, according to a syndicated MarketWire report.^[51] The follow-up communication by Ms. Jahangir and Mr. Nowak, sent on January 25, 2007, also called on the authorities to address the issues. In November 2008, the United Nations Committee Against Torture made a strong statement on the matter. The Committee, citing the UN special Rapporteur's note that the increase in organ transplant operations coincides with ?the beginning of the persecution of [Falun Gong practitioners]?, stated that it is concerned with the information that Falun Gong practitioners "have been extensively subjected to torture and ill-treatment in prisons and that some of them have been used for organ transplants." The Committee called for the state to immediately conduct or commission an independent investigation of the claims of organ harvesting, and take measures to ensure that those responsible for such abuses are prosecuted and punished.^[12]

Another investigation was independently undertaken by European Parliament Vice President Edward McMillan-Scott. Mr. McMillan-Scott was able to go to China on a fact finding mission on May 19-21, 2006 where had the opportunity to interview two witnesses Cao Dong and Niu Jinping. About his meeting with Cao Dong, Mr. McMillan-Scott reports that on being enquired "whether he was aware of any organ harvesting camps in China. He said he definitely knew of them and knew people who had been sent to them. He had seen the cadaver of one of his friends, a Falun Gong practitioner, with holes in his body where the organs had been removed." Shortly following his meeting with McMillan Scott, Cao Dong was arrested. The authorities transferred him to Gansu province and issued an arrest warrant. He was prosecuted in December on four alleged charges. The judges ruled that the case could not go to trial because the case fell within the jurisdiction of the 610 Office in Beijing [the office charged with persecution of the Falun Gong].^[5]

Mixed response

An article by Glen McGregor in the Ottawa Citizen on November 24, 2007, raised issues which he perceived as apparent difficulties in the Sujiatun story, doubting that the hospital could have been the site of organ harvesting as alleged. He also questioned the conclusion of the Kilgour-Matas report, and doubted the strength of some of the evidence. McGregor referred to Harry Wu?s doubts, complaining of the lack of official paperwork, and lack of people who have emerged to talk about the issue. McGregor wrote: "Depending on who you believe, the Kilgour-Matas report is either compelling evidence that proves the claims about Falun Gong? or a collection of conjecture and inductive reasoning that fails to support its own conclusions?. He said he was one of the few journalists who had not treated the report as fact, and said he was likened to a holocaust denier by Matas and Kilgour. He claims that Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the UN?s Special Rapporteur on torture have not "confirmed" the reports of organ harvesting.^[52] To be noted that this could be because, as the Amnesty International points out, of the "lack of transparency surrounding such practices" .

McGregor admitted that he had been flown to China to "inspect" Sujiatun on a trip sponsored by the Chinese Medical Association (CMA); in his article he defended this by characterizing it as a non-government organization which has criticized Beijing?s policies. A letter by the Falun Dafa Association was later published in the Ottawa Citizen, saying that the CMA receives its funding from the communist regime, that more than half of its presidents have also been Chinese minister or deputy minister of health, and that the association had years earlier taken an active role in the persecution of Falun Gong, which made ?any investigation arranged or sponsored by this organization immediately lose? its credibility.?^[53]

Four days after McGregor's article, Matas and Kilgour published a response in the same newspaper. The reporter, they wrote, maintained that the Chinese authorities should not be regarded as guilty based on circumstantial evidence, "no matter how overwhelming." They rhetorically suggested that only if McGregor saw "a smoking scalpel, a confessing surgeon or a surviving organ 'donor'" would he support the conclusion of their report. They emphasized the totality of the evidence they had collected, re-examined the avenues of proof and disproof available, and argued that two other independent reports had come to the same conclusion. "It is easy to take each element in isolation, and say that this element or that does not prove the claim. It is their combination which led us to the chilling conclusion to which we came," they said.^[34]

Amnesty International has stated that it is "continuing to analyze sources of information about the Falun Gong organ harvesting allegations, including the report published by Canadians David Matas and David Kilgour." Amnesty points out that there is "a widely documented practice of the buying and selling of organs of death penalty prisoners in China." The report from Amnesty continues to say that while "it is unknown how many Falun Gong practitioners are being executed by the Chinese authorities...various sources indicate China may be executing between 10,000-15,000 people a year."^[54]

A Congressional Research Service report by Dr Thomas Lum considered that the Kilgour-Matas report relied largely on making logical inferences, without bringing forth new or independently-obtained testimony. According to Lum, Kilgour and Matas' conclusions rely heavily upon transcripts of telephone calls with reported PRC respondents, and the credibility of the telephone recordings is questionable, due to the Chinese government's controls over sensitive information.^[4]

Kilgour and Matas maintain that they do not base their conclusion solely on the telephone calls. In an interview on Lateline, Kilgour vouched for their veracity, stating that he could make the phone records and digital recordings available on request.^[55] He qualified that the caller contacted numerous hospitals across China, "and... many of the people were smart enough to say they shouldn't say this, but about 15 across the country people were either vain enough, or foolish enough or honest enough, to fess up to what was available..." "China is such a big country and the system is so massive, they weren't able to tell everybody, 'Don't say a word'... as recently as June... these calls were being put through and in some cases these extraordinary admissions were being made."^[55]. Kilgour and Matas state that their conclusion "comes not from any one single item of evidence, but rather the piecing together of all the evidence" they have considered. The report states that "each portion of the evidence considered is, in itself, verifiable and, in most cases, incontestable".^[56]

Changing transplant policies

On June 3, 2007, in response to David Matas' presentation of his study to an organ transplant conference in Jerusalem, the Chinese embassy in Israel said: "There is no live organ bank in China and there is no intention to open one."^[57] Rabbi Yosef Shalom Eliashiv prohibited Jews from deriving any benefit from Chinese organ harvesting, "even in life-threatening situations". Other Rabbis oppose the use of Chinese organs for transplants.^[58]

On August 14, 2006, the US National Kidney Foundation (NKF)issued a statement expressing "deeply concern" over the reports as well as opposition to organ transplant tourism in general.^[59]^[60]

In December 2006, the Australian Health Ministry announced the abolition of training programs for Chinese doctors in organ transplant procedures in the Prince Charles and the Princess Alexandra Hospitals and the banning of joint research programs with China on organ transplantation. ^[61].

The Medical Post, on March 11, 2008, reported that a petition signed by 140 Canadian Physicians "urging the Canadian Government to issue travel advisories warning Canadians that organ transplants in China are sourced almost entirely from non-consenting people, whether prisoners sentenced to death or Falun Gong practitioners", was submitted to the Canadian House of Commons.^[62]^[63] In February 2008, Canadian Member of Parliament Borys Wrzesnewskyj introduced a bill that would make it illegal for Canadians to get an organ transplant abroad if the organ was taken from an unwilling victim. Wrzesnewskyj states that the final impetus to introduce the bill was the findings of the Kilgour-Matas report.^[64].

In early 2007, Israeli health insurance carriers stopped sending patients to China for transplants.^[65] This was in part related to an investigation in which Israeli authorities arrested several men for tax evasion in connection with a company that mediated transplants of Chinese prisoners? organs for Israelis. One of the men had stated in an undercover interview that the organs came from ?people who oppose the regime, those sentenced to death and from prisoners of the Falun Gong.?^[66]

In October 2006, the Chairman of the Taiwan Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), Joseph Wu, stated that Taiwan condemned, "in the strongest possible terms", China's harvesting of human organs from executed Falun Gong practitioners.^[67] In August 2007, a statement from Hou Sheng-mao, Director of Taiwan's Department of Health, urged Taiwanese Doctors to not encourage patients to get commercial organ transplants in mainland China.^[68]

Response of Chinese authorities

The Chinese Embassy in Canada replied to the first version of the Kilgour-Matas report immediately upon its release on July 6, stating that China abided by World Health Organization principles that prohibit the sale of human organs without written consent from donors. The authors were accused of wanting to smear China's image. "[T]he so-called 'independent investigation report' made by a few Canadians based on rumors and false allegations is groundless and biased." The Chinese Embassy in Washington also said the allegations were "totally fake" and said the Chinese government had already investigated the claims and found them meritless.

Amnesty International, responding to statements from the Chinese government, stated:

The January, 2007 revision of the Kilgour-Matas reports state that the Chinese government claim of having "consistently abided" by the relevant World Health Organization principles is unsubstantiated by facts. They note that the Chinese Transplantation Network Assistance Centre Website until April, 2006 carried a price list for transplants, archived version of which are still available online^[70] and also that many individuals can attest to paying for organ transplants in China. They state that the Chinese government's claim of written consent being obtained beforehand is also belied by the facts. They note Human Rights Watch documenting that consent is obtained from executed prisoners in only a minority of cases and that "the abusive circumstances of detention and incarceration in China, from the time a person is first accused of a capital offense until the moment of his or her execution, are such as to render absurd any notion of "free and voluntary consent.""^[71]

Matas told the United States Committee on International Relations that he and Kilgour are reinforced in their conclusions by "the feeble response of the Government of China." He says that despite their resources and inside knowledge, they have not provided any information to counter the report. "Instead," he said, "they have attacked us personally and, more worrisome, attacked the Falun Gong with the very sort of verbal abuse which we have identified as one of the reasons we believe these atrocities are occurring."^[72]

David Matas says that he and Kilgour find it hard to take take the Chinese government's line seriously, "China will deny all abuses of human rights in the most frivolous manner imaginable," he said at a public forum in Brisbane.^[73] "David Kilgour and I have been around the world talking about our report, and have engaged with the government of China on human rights abuses. And the types of response we get are silly in the extreme," Matas said. According to Matas, the Chinese government claimed the report is "filled with rumors," though "every single piece of evidence in the report is independently verifiable." He said that the Chinese government "very often... manufacture[s] quotes. They say we said something, put it in quotation marks, and then disagree with this manufactured quote... our report is on the website, and you can word check it and see that these manufactured quotes are not real. So it?s hard for us to take these kinds of opposition seriously..." What they?re engaged in is propaganda and disinformation, rather than real debate."^[73]