Original Post

The BBC has produced an undercover report highlighting the Chinese governments ongoing habit of executing prisoners and harvesting their organs, which are then offered for sale to rich customers in need of new body parts. One hospital told the BBC reporter that it could provide a liver for about $100,000.

The practice was first widely exposed back in in June 2001, when Chinese doctor Wang Guoqi testified before the U.S House of Representatives Subcommittee on Human Rights  that this was a commonplace occurrence. The Chinese Communist party promptly accused him of lying. Chinese Foreign Ministry officials labelled his testimony "a vicious slander against China" and "sensational lies".

A subsequent 2005 report in the Times quoted Huang Jiefu, China's Deputy Health Minister, who admitted that its useage was so widespread that it was in need of regulation;

"We want to push for regulations on organ transplants to standardise the management of the supply of organs from executed prisoners and tidy up the medical market".

The practice dates back to (at least) the 1980's and was not reported on in the western media until March 1993, when Amnesty International brought it to public attention. This was followed in 1994 by a Human Rights Watch report, entitled 'Organ Procurement and Judicial Execution in China' which stated;

China's extensive use of executed prisoners as a source of organs for medical transplantation purposes, a problem which so far has received somewhat less international attention, likewise creates serious cause for concern on a number of basic human rights grounds.

The consent of prisoners to use their organs after death, although required by law, appears rarely to be sought. In some cases, prisoners and their families are not even informed that the organs will be removed, although in others, the families are given cash payments. Since the prisoner's body is cremated immediately after execution and any last written will or statement can be censored by the authorities, moreover, family members have no way of ascertaining whether or not organs have been removed.

The execution procedure prescribed by Chinese law (shooting in the back of the head), is sometimes violated in order to expedite harvesting of prisoners' organs. According to Chinese legal authorities, some executions are even deliberately mishandled to ensure that the prisoners are not yet dead when their organs are removed.

The lack of adequate judicial safeguards in China, coupled with the existence of government directives allowing political offenders and other nonviolent criminals to be sentenced to death, virtually guarantee that a significant number of wrongful executions will take place. Some of those unfairly sentenced may be unwitting organ donors.

The use of condemned prisoners' organs involves members of the medical profession in the execution process in violation of international standards of medical ethics. Chinese doctors participate in pre-execution medical tests, matching of donors with recipients and scheduling of operations, often on a first-paid, first-served basis.

Full report here.

A Guardian newspaper report on 13 September 2005 contained claims that Chinese cosmetics companies were also profiting, by stripping the skin and tissue from both prisoners and aborted foetuses, and then using the harvested skin to develop collagen and wrinkle treatments for inclusion in beauty products for sale in Europe.

Comment

Perhaps we should not be surprised by the brutality of a regime that systematically suppresses dissent with a system of censorship, totalitarian enslavement, torture and murder. A state which forcibly controls the birth rate of its population and maintains the death penalty for minors, is hardly likely to consider that the rights of those it holds imprisoned, are of any greater consequence, than those of a herd of cattle.

China's hereditary oligarchy, continues to be one of the most disgusting and repugnant regimes currently oppressing a third of the people of planet earth. The fact that it is so routinely tolerated, and so rarely criticized, says a great deal about the current state of freedom in our increasingly inter-connected world.