Panorama, an Italian weekly news magazine, published an article exposing China’s barbaric practice of forced organ harvesting, that is, procuring transplant organs from living, unconsenting, prisoners of conscience, and killing them in the process.
Refuting Chinese Embassy’s Accusations
In a statement published on its website, the Chinese embassy in Italy accused the article author of plagiarism and attacked those who presented credible evidence of forced organ harvesting as “anti-China” and “human rights abusers.” The embassy even said the United States “fabricated the forced organ harvesting to defame China.”In response to the Chinese embassy’s statement, Panorama immediately published another article, “China has violated the medical ethics rules on organ transplants.” It said, “It should be remembered that China spreads false news 24/7 about the prison camps where Uyghurs, Falun Gong members, thousands of political prisoners are being held; and hid the real facts of the pandemic from the beginning.”
“The case of illegal organ transplants taken from prisoners in China is a topic that has been discussed for many years and about which the most important international authorities have repeatedly asked the Chinese government for clarity.”
The article noted that the Chinese government violated two core values of medical ethics. First, it violated the dead donor rule, which prohibits the removal of an essential organ from a living person.
The authors quote a peer-reviewed study published in the world’s leading medical journal the American Journal of Transplantation. One of the authors is Professor Jacob Lavee, a medical advisor on risk management for Sheba Medical Center and member of the ethics board of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation. He established and managed Sheba’s heart transplant unit and served as president of the Israeli Transplant Society. The peer-reviewed study found, from Chinese journal articles, 71 cases showing the organs were harvested prior to the donor’s death.
According to the same study, the second ethics rule China violated is the ban on doctors’ participation in the execution of prisoners.
VOC: Beijing Desperate to Deflect Attention from its Rights Abuses
In an email to The Epoch Times, Michal Harmata, spokesperson for the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC), refuted the Chinese embassy’s accusation that “the VOC was established by U.S. intelligence agency to demonize China.”“The ongoing efforts by the Chinese Communist Party to discredit VOC reflect an increasing desperation by Beijing to deflect attention from its human rights abuses. As VOC’s China Studies team have documented, the CCP is guilty of brutal crimes—and the free world is starting to push back.”
Rejection of Embassy’s Request
Sarah Cook, Research Director for China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan at Freedom House, told The Epoch Times that “Panorama’s response is an excellent example of journalists’ protecting local press freedom and serves to expose and rebuff the Chinese government’s pressure, as well as to remind readers of the credible facts on which the original report was based.”
“We also found that journalists and others in democracies are pushing back, standing up for fact-based reporting, including on topics like the persecution of Uyghurs and Falun Gong practitioners in China.
“This incident in Italy perfectly captures those dynamics. It is part of a larger pattern of Chinese embassy representatives reaching out to local news outlets that publish reporting the CCP doesn’t like, questioning its credibility, and implicitly or explicitly asking them to reconsider its publication.”
Cook also gave examples of Chinese influence that was successful, like an incident in Kuwait when an interview with Taiwan’s foreign minister that the Arab Times removed from its website under pressure.
“But often, the reaction from local journalists is indignation and rejection of the embassy’s request, an important way of protecting local press freedom.” Cook said.
