The CCP’s organ harvesting death camps
In the morning of December 9, 2013, legal representatives and medical experts from six countries, including Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas, Executive Director of U.S. based Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH) Dr. Torsten Trey, Spanish human rights lawyer Carlos Jimenez Iglesias, British kidney specialist Dr. Adnan Sharif, French transplant surgeon Dr. Francis Navarro, and myself, a human rights lawyer from Taiwan, went to Geneva to meet with a UN lawyer and a China specialist representing the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay. We presented UN officials with discs of scanned DAFOH petitions calling for an end to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners, which garnered approximately 1.5 million signatures. The signatures were collected from 53 countries and regions in five continents in five months.(1) Among the 1.5 million, the largest number—about 600,000—were from Asia. Nearly 5,000 physicians from Taiwan signed the petition appealing to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights with the following requests:- Call upon China to immediately end forced organ harvesting of detained Falun Gong practitioners in China.
- Initiate further investigations that lead to the prosecution of the perpetrators involved in this crime against humanity.
- Call upon the Chinese government to immediately end the brutal persecution of Falun Gong, which is the root cause for forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners.
The officials did not question the source of the “death camp” allegations. They listened with somber attention, took notes, but did not respond. Faced with 1.5 million voices and the allegations of the existence of death camps, the officials’ silence was disappointing, but not surprising. The UN’s attitude in dealing with the Chinese Communist Party’s human rights violations over the years had been taciturnity. Nonetheless, we have not given up our efforts to seek justice. In the West, it is said that, “To keep silence in the face of evil is to be cruel to good people.”
In March and May of 2014, we visited the institutions of the European Union, the European Parliament, the U.S. State Department, and the U.S. Congress, to further expose the ongoing atrocities of forced organ harvesting in China since the start of the persecution of Falun Gong. At every meeting, I explained, to the best of my knowledge, the death camps’ existence in China and called for a swift investigation and an end to the CCP’s crimes against humanity. Unfortunately, once again, officials did not ask for the source of these allegations, nor has there been any action to further investigate or to demand that the CCP immediately end its forced organ harvesting atrocities. While it is indeed difficult for the international community to deal with this issue, humankind must confront it with courage and must not sidestep this ongoing international human rights disaster.
To date, the CCP is still unwilling to face up to the allegations of harvesting organs from living Falun Gong practitioners, and has turned a blind eye to the 2013 resolution passed by the European Parliament and the 2014 U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee resolution, both of which condemned the CCP’s organ harvesting of living Falun Gong practitioners, requested an international investigation and asked to bring the perpetrators to justice. During 2015, Chinese military doctors gradually came forward to testify against the military for colluding with the Chinese public security authorities and judicial bodies in the murderous acts of organ harvesting. Falun Gong Human Rights Attorney Group, DAFOH, Taiwan International Organ Transplant Care Association, and the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong have collected incriminating evidence of CCP officials, judicial officers, and medical personnel, as well as urging international organizations to expose the government’s dark secret of organ harvesting in an effort to stop these atrocities.
Meanwhile, people ask how the CCP could employ such brutal measures as live organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners and set up organ harvesting death camps against Falun Gong. If we probe deeper into the root cause, we will find that the key factor began in 1999, with then-CCP leader Jiang Zemin’s aim to “eradicate Falun Gong,” which became a guideline for the repression campaign. All of Jiang’s accomplices were urged to use all means to implement the eradication. “Organ harvesting” and “death camps” were recklessly developed from such a destruction of human nature “extermination policy” led by Jiang.
The history of genocide shows that there must be an ambitious egomaniac with control over a nation, who—with pertinacious paranoia—will use all mechanisms to exterminate against any hated races or groups. The most tragic example of this was Hitler’s atrocities against the Jewish people, while the most shocking extinction campaign in the 21st Century is Jiang’s bloody suppression of over a hundred million Falun Gong practitioners in China.
- Killing members of the group;
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
- Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”(6)
Jiang Zemin is not only the violator of the three most serious crimes under international criminal laws, but he is also, above and beyond the ultimate evil in the destruction of humanity and human nature.
Jiang planned to eradicate Falun Gong within three months. His approach was to first manufacture “widespread hatred” toward Falun Gong among the general population, and then lead the entire nation onto a path of hatred for practitioners so as to promote the idea throughout the country that the “extermination campaign against Falun Gong is dealing with a public enemy.” China has always had a strong tradition of respect and reverence toward gods and the heavens. The general public was not unfamiliar with Falun Dafa’s spiritual beliefs. Among the 100 million who benefited from this cultivation practice, before the crackdown, were Party members and government officials who had openly given high praise to Falun Gong. Furthermore, the CCP had always been very clear that Falun Gong practitioners had neither ambition in politics nor interest in the affairs of the communist regime. Therefore, the only way Jiang could destroy the known goodness of Falun Gong was to take full advantage of all means and tactics of struggle that the CCP had accumulated since the beginning of its reign, by creating bigger lies and deeper hatred, as well as using more absolute violence to turn the original positive social ambience toward Falun Gong around.
What is also worth observing is that, although the Chinese people have repeatedly experienced the CCP’s numerous political campaigns and are very well aware of the ruthlessness that the communist regime employs in eliminating political dissidents, most people have failed to realize that the essential prerequisite of Jiang’s agenda to eradicate Falun Gong was to first “stir up people’s instinct of being vicious and jettison humanity’s most lofty nature of innate goodness.”
Jiang establishes a pervasive extralegal eradication mechanism
As a head of state in 1999, Jiang set up a goal to exterminate Falun Gong within 3 months, He utilized all state and party machines to complete this goal. But “eradication” is not legally allowed in the West or the East. Bypassing constitutional law and other domestic laws, he established an extrajudicial mechanism to execute his genocide plan, penetrating from the Central government down to all local jurisdictions. On June 10, 1999— about a month before the nationwide suppression of Falun Gong—Jiang personally set up a specialized mechanism solely dedicated to persecuting Falun Gong, similar to the Nazis’ Gestapo and the Communist Cultural Revolution Group: The “CCP Central Committee Leadership Team to Handle the Falun Gong Issue,” its executive office is known as the “610 Office”, a reference to its date of origin. According to the report of the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, the set up or operations of the Leadership Team and its 610 Office are classified information, which the CCP has never made public.(7)Although Jiang was unable to bring about the eradication of Falun Gong within his timeline, he was effective in establishing a full mechanism of genocide whose tentacles have stretched to the local districts and have taken root throughout the country. There is no public record of when all the various levels of leadership teams, from the CCP’s Central government to every province, city, county, district, and township, were established. After the crackdown commenced, all 610 Offices without any legal authorization, began to direct and coordinate the nation’s administrative and judicial mechanism, including the departments of public security, procuratorate, administration of justice, security and others, to investigate, arrest, prosecute, and bring to trial all participants of Falun Gong activities. According to incomplete statistics, there are at least one million full-time and part-time staff working at different levels in a multitude of 610 Offices throughout China, enjoying ample funding, subject only to the Party Committee and to the highest level of the 610 Office.
Since the Cultural Revolution, Jiang has been the only CCP leader to capitalize on his position, maximizing all government resources in a highly organized, coordinated effort—extrajudicial mechanism—to persecute the Chinese people. Since the start of the persecution since 1999, the 610 Party machine has been running day and night, from the urban districts to rural regions, severely torturing Falun Gong practitioners physically, in an extreme effort to transform their spiritual beliefs.
Jiang, with envy and hatred toward Falun Gong, concocted an atmosphere of terror in Chinese society with his hand-picked and personally nurtured posse members that included former director of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee (PLAC), Luo Gan, Chinese security Tsar, Zhou Yongkang, the infamous Bo Xilai, Xu Caihou, and others, turning “the entire Chinese society into a big prison,” treating kind and gentle Falun Gong practitioners as enemies, breaking up many families of Falun Gong practitioners. On the evening of February 8, 2002, Yang Lirong, a 34-year-old female Falun Gong practitioner of North Gate Street, Dingzhou City, Baoding district, Hebei Province, was strangled to death by her husband. The husband, a driver for the Bureau of Standard Measurement, could not withstand the unrelenting pressure of harassment and intimidation by the police. Terrified of losing his job, he grabbed his wife’s throat the morning after a police visit, causing her death by suffocation, rendering their ten-year-old son without a mother. He immediately reported the incident to the police, who arrived at the scene within minutes. They promptly cut his wife open and removed her organs from her still-warm body. An official from the Dingzhou Public Security Bureau exclaimed, “That was not an autopsy! That was operating on a living person!” [Minghui.org September 22, 2004 report].
Under Jiang Zemin’s mad wish to eradicate Falun Gong in both flesh and spirit, the victimized have not only been Falun Gong practitioners but also their families and friends. Lawyers that have come forward to defend Falun Gong practitioners ended up being persecuted and tortured as well. These lawyers include Gao Zhisheng, who became widely known as “the conscience of China,” Tang Jitian, Wang Yonghang, and other lawyers. In addition, there are numerous citizens who were implicated in the persecution for signing petitions officially with their fingerprints in red ink to request the court to release innocent Falun Gong
Jiang’s persecution of Falun Gong can indeed be called “the biggest human rights disaster of the 21st century”
1. Extent of the persecution: In addition to the Chinese mainland, the persecution has extended to Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other countries and regions where there are Falun Gong practitioners and CCP Consulates.
2. Mechanisms and means of the persecution: The mechanisms involve the comprehensive use of all diplomatic, military, national security, education, propaganda, administrative, judicial and financial systems. The means include brainwashing, prolonged violent beatings, baton shocks, gang rape and sexual assault, administration of psychotropic drugs, forced labor, sleep deprivation, slandering, forcing practitioners to give up their beliefs and admit guilt, coercing other practitioners to recant, sham trial, denial of justice, vicious forced-feeding, and so on.
The most notorious is the Masanjia Labor Camp, where Falun Gong practitioners are subjected to as many as 20 different kinds of torture methods.(11) Yi Liping, a female Falun Gong practitioner from Tieling City, Liaoning Province, was sent to Masanjia Labor Camp three times for a total of 18 months. In April 19, 2001, she and eight other female Falun Gong practitioners were put into male prison cells at the Zhang Shi Male Labor Camp in Liaoning Province. Several were tortured to death, some suffered from mental disorders while in detention, and others choose to remain silent under high pressure. Beijing resident Liu Hua was sent to Masanjia Labor Camp for appealing to the government. Liu recalled, “My cellmate Xin Shuhua, from Benxi city, Liaoning Province, told me that she was one of the 18 female Falun Gong practitioners who was locked up in a male prison cell where they were all gang-raped repeatedly.”(12)
Overseas, the CCP uses its embassies and consulates not only to collect personal information of Falun Gong practitioners and their relatives and friends, but also to conspire with pro- CCP media to slander Falun Gong overseas, paying gangsters to attack Falun Gong and disrupt Falun Gong anti-persecution activities. Particularly in the United States, Canada, South America, Australia, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, the pro-CCP thugs to harass and assault Falun Gong practitioners who clarify the truth and expose the atrocities of the persecution to Chinese and other tourists in major tourist attractions. Their tactics include incitement to hatred, violence, and damage to property.
Of all the CCP’s forms of persecution, the most heinous one has to be forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners. In 2006 in Washington, DC, when a nurse with the alias of Annie, whose ex-husband was a neurosurgeon at the Liaoning Provincial Thrombosis Hospital, and a Chinese reporter with the alias of Peter came forward to share their knowledge of the CCP’s crimes. After their reports, Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas and former Canadian MP for the Asia Pacific region David Kilgour conducted an independent investigation into the allegations of China’s organ harvesting practices. With 52 pieces of evidence, they confirmed that the allegations of live organ harvesting were true, and called the CCP’s crime “an unprecedented evil on this planet.”(13)
3. Number of persecuted victims: Jiang started persecuting Falun Gong on July 20, 1999, depriving 100 million Falun Gong practitioners in China their fundamental rights, freedom of speech, belief, and assembly. Over the past 16 years, it has been difficult to estimate how many Falun Gong practitioners have been tortured, murdered, or killed for their organs. Countless overseas Falun Gong practitioners were attacked by thugs. Also, countless family members of Falun Gong practitioners have also suffered from the persecution.
4. Expenses of the persecution: At a 2003 press conference at the Canadian Parliament “Jiang Zemin’s Regime Draws Upon Massive National Financial Resources In Its Persecution of Falun Gong,” the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, by invitation of the Canadian Members of Parliament, presented a list of findings, which included a 4.2 billion yuan investment to construct brainwashing centers in December 2001. On July 4, 2001, ABC reported that almost half of the detainees in labor camps were Falun Gong practitioners.
In order to hold increasing numbers of Falun Gong prisoners, many provinces and cities spent large amount of money to build or expand labor camps. The Shanxi Province labor camp relocation project’s total investment amounted to 19.37 million yuan. In order to stimulate and encourage more perpetrators to participate in the persecution of Falun Gong, the Masanjia Labor Camp Director Su and Deputy Director Shao were rewarded 50 thousand yuan and 30 thousand yuan, respectively. In many areas, the reward for capturing a Falun Gong practitioner has reached several thousand yuan or even more than 10 thousand yuan.
In 2001, inside information from the CCP’s Ministry of Public Security revealed that the cost of arresting Falun Gong practitioners in Tiananmen Square alone was between 1.7 million and 2.5 million yuan per day, or from 620 million to 910 million yuan per year. From cities to remote rural areas, the local police force, the security bureaus, and officials from the 610 Office, hunt down Falun Gong practitioners everywhere. Reports estimate that Jiang hired at least a few million people to do his dirty work. Their total wages, bonuses, overtime pay, and subsidies for persecuting innocent people accounted for hundreds of billions of yuan each year.
According to the report by Taiwan Central News Agency in March 2003, on February 27, 2001, Jiang Zemin appropriated 4 billion yuan to install surveillance cameras aimed at monitoring Falun Gong practitioners. Large numbers of slanderous propaganda materials were published in various formats including books, brochures, VCDs and posters. At least two movies and a 20-episode anti-Falun Gong TV series were made to defame Falun Gong. A quarter of China’s economic resources are used to persecute Falun Gong, and it is one of reasons that the persecution can continue.
The source of funds are misappropriated from investments, common citizens’ hard-earned money, along with hefty illegal fines imposed on Falun Gong practitioners, their families, and their work units. Vast sums of money are spent on public security, national security, 610 Offices, and foreign affairs for persecution purpose.(14)
5. Continuity of the persecution: Starting from July 20, 1999, the day Jiang Zemin officially announced the suppression of Falun Gong, to date, every day, without interruption.
Despite the unprecedented viciousness of this human rights disaster, Jiang’s intention to “eliminate Falun Gong” has been doomed to fail from the beginning. Although the CCP’s repression tactics to “destroy,” “struggle,” and “strike hard” have been effective in the past, for Falun Dafa practitioners, with their staunch adherence to the tenets of “truthfulness, compassion, forbearance,” no amount of physical or sexual assault, no amount of electric shocks and no amount of extreme torture can deprive them of their spiritual beliefs. There are innumerable cases of Falun Gong practitioners who had been forced and coerced by the CCP to write “confessions” and “guarantees,” later return to their beliefs.(15)Largest international human rights lawsuit of the 21st century
The collaboration of Jiang and the CCP in the persecution of Falun Gong has resulted in the denial of justice for Falun Gong practitioners and in the persecution of their defense lawyers in China. On August 25, 2000, the second year of the repression, two Falun Gong practitioners filed criminal complaints with the Chinese Supreme People’s Procuratorate and the Chinese Supreme People’s Court against Jiang Zemin, Zeng Qinghong (Secretary of the Secretariat of the CCP Central Committee), and Luo Gan (Secretary of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee), for persecuting Falun Gong. They were immediately and secretly arrested by the police. One died, the other was injured.(16)After multiple failures to urge Jiang to end the persecution, overseas Falun Gong practitioners have filed criminal complaints, launched private prosecutions, and civil lawsuits against Jiang and his cohorts in 30 countries all over the world since 2002. Falun Gong Human Rights Attorney Group refers to those lawsuits against Jiang and other perpetrators as the “Global Lawsuit Against Jiang.” Falun Gong practitioners have filed criminal complaints and civil lawsuits against Jiang and other perpetrators in national courts overseas for their genocide, torture, and crimes against humanity, most serious crime under international criminal laws. In those legal proceedings, Falun Gong practitioners asked the courts to exercise universal jurisdiction and to issue a warrant to arrest defendants Jiang and other perpetrators. The “Global Lawsuit Against Jiang” is—in a most noble and upright manner— to clarify the truth of the persecution and to seek justice in democratic countries, after Falun Gong practitioners’ efforts failed in China’s judicial system and in the International Criminal Court.
Considering the number of national courts Falun Gong practitioners filed criminal complaints and civil lawsuits with, the ranks of the CCP leadership and senior officials being sued, and the transnational scale of human rights lawyers, “Global Lawsuit Against Jiang” can be called “the largest international human rights lawsuits of the 21st century.” It is unprecedented. In the “Global Lawsuit Against Jiang”, Jiang Zemin, Luo Gan, Liu Jing, Zhou Yongkang, Zeng Qinghong, and Bo Xilai, are considered the most notorious Party officials seriously involved in the persecution of Falun Gong. Hong Kong’s and Taiwan’s Falun Gong practitioners persecuted in mainland China have also launched a private prosecution and a civil lawsuit in Taiwan and Hong Kong courts, respectively against Jiang, Li Lanqing, and Luo Gan for genocide and torture.
- Countries or territories where Falun Gong practitioners filed criminal complaints, private prosecution or civil lawsuits against former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin for genocide, crimes against humanity and torture:
- Europe: Belgium, Spain, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Sweden
- America: United States, Canada, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Peru
- Asia: Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea
- Oceania: Australia, New Zealand
- Countries and territories where Falun Gong practitioners filed criminal complaints or civil action against CCP officials for genocide, crimes against humanity and torture:
- Europe: France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Sweden, Finland, Armenia, Moldova, Iceland, Spain, Sweden, Ireland, Denmark, Cypress, Russia, Austria, Switzerland
- Americas: United States, Canada, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Peru
- Asia: Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea
- Oceana: Australia, New Zealand
- Africa: Tanzania
- The incumbent or former CCP officials in the aforementioned countries or territories against whom Falun Gong practitioners filed criminal complaints or civil lawsuits:
- Luo Gan (Political and Legal Affairs Committee Secretary)
- Zhou Yongkang (Minister of Public Security, Political and Legal Affairs Committee Secretary)
- Zeng Qinghong (Vice-Chairman)
- Bo Xilai (Minister of Commerce)
- Li Lanqing (State Council Vice Premier)
- Liu Jing (Deputy Minister of Public Security)
- Zhao Zhifei (Hubei Province Public Security Bureau Chief)
- Liu Qi (Beijing mayor)
- Li Changchu (CCP Politburo Standing Committee Member)
- Xia Deren (Liaoning Provincial Party Committee Deputy Secretary)
- Wu Guanzheng (Shandong Provincial Party Committee Secretary)
- Wang Maolin (Central 610 Office Manager)
- Wang Xudong (Minister of Chinese Ministry of Information Industry, Hebei Provincial Party Committee Secretary)
- Zhao Zhizhen (Wuhan City Radio and Television Bureau Chief )
- Chen Zhili (Minister of Education)
- Jia Qinglin (Beijing Municipal Committee Secretary, Chinese People’s Political Consultative Committee Chairman)
- Su Rong (Gansu Provincial Party Committee Secretary)
- Xu Guangchun (Henan Province CCP Party Committee Secretary)
- Huang Huahua (Guangdong Province Governor)
- Wang Sanyun (Anhui Province Governor)
- Ji Lin (Beijing City Vice Mayor)
- Zhao Zhengyong (Shaanxi Province Acting Governor)
- Chen Zhenggao (Liaoning Province Governor)
- Wang Zuoan (State Bureau of Religious Affairs Bureau Chief)
- Ye Xiaowen (State Bureau of Religious Affairs Bureau Chief)
- Yang Song (Hubei Province Party Committee Deputy Secretary, local head of 610 Office)
- Huang Ju (State Council Vice Premier)
- Guo Chuanjie (Chinese Academy of Sciences Deputy Secretary, 610 Office Vice Group Leader)
- Li Yuanwei (Liaoning Province Lingyuan Prison Management Bureau Chief, local head of 610 Office)
- Jia Chunwang (Public Security Former Minister)
- Lin Yanchi ( Jilin Province Provincial Committee Deputy Secretary, 610 Office Group Leader)
- Sun Jiazheng (Chinese People’s Political Consultative Committee Vice-Chairman, Ministery of Culture Former Minister)
- Wang Yusheng (China Anti-Cult Association Vice-Chairman)
- Wang Taihua (Anhui Province Provincial Party Committee Secretary)
- Zhang Dejiang (Guangdong Province Provincial Committee Secretary)
- Chen Shaoji (Guangdong Province Political and Legal Affairs Committee Secretary)
- Shi Honghui (Guangdong Province Bureau Chief of Reeducation Through Labor Secretary and Party Committee Secretary)
- Guo Jinlong (Beijing City Mayor)
- •Qiang Wei ( Jiangxi Province Provincial Party Committee Secretary)
- Chinese embassies and overseas Communist organizations which Falun Gong practitioners have filed criminal complaints against, and civil lawsuits for battery and assault, destruction of property, harassment, slander and libel: USA, Indonesia, Canada, Germany, Korea, Russia, Malaysia, Japan, and the Philippines. In addition, Pan Xinchun, Canadian Chinese Embassy Deputy Counsel General; Li Bin, Korean Chinese Embassy Ambassador; Zhang Xin, Korean Chinese Embassy Counselor and five other counselors; also Sun Xiangyang, Malaysia Chinese Embassy Information Officer; and others have been charged.
- Falun Gong practitioners also filed legal complaints with International Criminal Court, the UN Committee against Torture, the UN Commission on Human Rights (formerly UN Human Rights Council), the European Court of Human Rights against Jiang, Zeng Qinghong, and the 610 Office for their persecution against Falun Gong.
Conclusion: “Beijing Trial” is a historical requirement
The wicked perpetrators of heinous crimes must face historic evaluation and should be tried in the court. Humanity as a whole, regardless of race or creed, craves justice and believes that good and evil will both be reciprocated in kind. Wisdom is gained and lessons are learned from past experiences. What can be understood from history can serve as the most vital tool in our search for peace and prosperity for humankind.After World War II, the “Nuremberg Trial” prompted human society to develop mechanisms to punish international heinous crimes, significantly impacting the advancement of international human rights laws. After the Trial, the International Human Rights Convention was developed for the prevention and punishment of crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, torture and other international norms to hold individuals accountable. The International Criminal Court came into being after that. The development of all these international justice mechanisms proves that atrocities must not be tolerated by mankind. Praising good and punishing evil will always be the standard for human history.
Jiang and countless numbers of officials at all levels in the Chinese government have played a role in planning and implementing the vicious persecution of Falun Gong. There is no better way to close this tragic page of history than to bring Communist villains who are responsible for the persecution of Falun Gong to trial. Jiang Zemin and his posse should be brought to justice in China, so that the Chinese people for all generations to come will forever remember these lessons in history, so that such heinous crimes so devoid of humanity will never happen again. The persecution of Falun Gong is a test of human conscience. After decades of torture, brutal repression and mass murder, the disintegration of the CCP is inevitable. A “Beijing Trial” is a necessary requirement. It is imperative!