China is harvesting organs from prisoners while they are still alive

Sunday, February 21, 2016 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: organ harvesting, political prisoners, China

---

(NaturalNews) It's tough being a political prisoner in China, and in more ways than one. You can be beaten, tortured, starved, neglected – and have your organs removed, even against your will.

As noted by the The Anti-Media and Newsweek, the government in Beijing is facing increased global scrutiny and outcry over new allegations that authorities regularly harvest the organs of political prisoners.

Several respected investigators from around the world who have been looking into the allegations have come to agree that thousands of prisoners have had organs taken by the Chinese state – forcefully, and often without anesthesia. Many of the victims are members of the banned religious sect Falun Gong, a forbidden group that was created in 1992 (the official state religion in China is no religion, because its communist leaders want the people to worship them). As such, admitted members of the sect are regularly persecuted by the government.

As reported by The Anti-Media:

Religious persecution is a serious threat for many people in China — in spite of the fact that the Communist government does not espouse an official state religion.

No anesthesia

Over the years, various communist regimes in Beijing have jailed members of a number of dissident groups including Falun Gong, Christians and Tibetans. Many of the incarcerated have charged their captors with severely abusing them, including forced organ harvesting. The mistreatment and forced procedures date back at least to the 1990s and is said to include the extraction of corneas, kidneys and livers.

"It is known that Chinese surgeons perform the removal procedure [on political prisoners] and sometimes the 'donor' has still been alive during this process—the organ-removal process is what actually kills them," researcher Katrina Bramstedt told Newsweek.

Adds The Sydney Morning Herald:

A former Chinese hospital worker and doctor's wife, whose identity was withheld, [said] that her husband had removed the corneas of 2000 people while they were still alive. Afterwards the bodies were secretly incinerated.

Not surprisingly, China has the second-highest transplant rate in the world, with amazingly short transplant wait times of just two-to-three weeks.

"Somebody's being killed for the organs," human rights lawyer David Matas told the Morning Herald. "There's no other way to explain what's happening."

Chinese officials have denied that organs are being taken from anyone other than volunteers. That said, Chinese President Xi Jinping has said the transplant program would be ended by August, and blamed former security chief Zhou Yongkang for any problems.

However, in an SBS Dateline episode titled "Human Harvest: China's Organ Trafficking," one Chinese medical student said he recalled seeing blood still pumping out of one "donor" whom he said was still alive when he cut into the body. He added that he removed that individual's liver and two kidneys, and said the procedures under which he operated were unusually sloppy and quick.

'Still alive'

"The documentary revealed how patients are secretly placed into incinerators in hospital boiler rooms while they are still alive — after organs are removed from their bodies," The Anti-Media noted.

The documentary noted further that, during an eight-year investigation, the Chinese government removed some 11,000 organs from political prisoners without putting them under anesthesia every year.

A United Nations investigation^[PDF] in 2008 also concluded that the government was harvesting the organs of political prisoners.

The report said that "organ harvesting has been inflicted on a large number of unwilling Falun Gong practitioners at a wide variety of locations, for the purpose of making available organs for transplant operations.

"Vital organs including hearts, kidneys, livers and corneas were systematically harvested from Falun Gong practitioners at Sujiatan Hospital, Shenyang, Liaoning province, beginning in 2001."

Sources:

TheAntiMedia.org

Newsweek.com

SMH.com.au