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And You Thought North Korea Was Evil
From the Catholic Herald UK:
A Miss World contestant is exposing a practice that the communist regime doesn’t want you to hear about
The scalpel cut into the chest and blood gushed out, recalled an unnamed policeman in Shenyang, China. At that time, we had been interrogating and severely torturing her for about a week. She already had countless wounds on her body. We used electrical batons to torture her.
The policemen described how a secretive government office had sent over two men: one a military surgeon, the other a graduate from a medical university. “No anaesthetics were used. They cut her chest with a knife without shaking hands, he said.
When the woman, who belonged to the banned Falun Gong movement, shouted out in defiance, the surgeon hesitated. But after a nod from his superior, he continued. It was extremely horrible,” the policeman said. I can imitate her scream for you. It sounded like something was being ripped apart.
When I look at the Choose A Category box for this essay I’ll have to admit I’m not sure there is a choice that can express my anger, and then the sadness that I feel for this woman who died such a horrible death. My faith tells me that the angels cried out to God for vengeance. My faith also tells me that God is not Santa Claus and there will be judgement.
She was murdered for her organs, organs that will be made available for transplant, transplant for a profit.
Today in China thousands of prisoners of conscience – potentially including unregistered house church Christians – are strapped to operating tables and cut apart by force. Their vital organs are then extracted and sold for use as transplants. In China, surgeons’ scalpels have become weapons of murder and those who wield them have become accomplices to a barbaric trade.
A new report published in June claims that forced organ harvesting is now occurring on a scale far larger than previously imagined. The researchers conducted a meticulous forensic inquiry into the public records of 712 hospitals in China carrying out liver and kidney transplants.
They concluded that between 60,000 to 100,000 organs are transplanted each year in Chinese hospitals. One hospital alone, the Oriental Organ Transplant Centre at the Tianjin First Central Hospital, is performing more than 6,000 transplants a year. China officially claims 10,000 organ transplants per annum, but the authors contend that this is easily surpassed by just a few hospitals. The evidence points to what human rights lawyer David Matas called the mass killing of innocents in his testimony to the US Congress.
This brings me to the film The Bleeding Edge. I have not seen it, but I plan to. We spend so much time trying to avoid looking at evil in a vain effort to believe that evil, if we cannot see it will cease to exist. Which is the fondest hope of those that practice evil, to include those that provide, and those that participate in Organ-Tourism.
The screening of The Bleeding Edge, hosted by John Bercow, Speaker of the House of Commons, was a significant step forward in an international campaign to bring this evidence to the attention of policy-makers. Earlier this year Anastasia Lin and the journalist Ethan Gutmann testified at hearings held by the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, along with Dr Enver Tohti, an Uighur surgeon who admits to having conducted one operation to forcibly remove organs from a prisoner. “In China, the government does not treat people as human beings,” he said.
The US Congress and the European Parliament have passed resolutions condemning forced organ harvesting in China. On October 11 there will be a debate in the House of Commons. Soon after that the MP Fiona Bruce will table an early day motion calling on the United Nations to conduct an inquiry, and urging Britain to ban citizens from travelling to China for organ transplants (research indicates that some Britons have travelled to China for this purpose). Campaigners are also urging the Government to gather statistics and ensure transparency around so-called “organ tourism”. They want Britain to consider a travel ban on medical personnel and government officials in China who are directly engaged in organ harvesting.
The Bleeding Edge won an award earlier this year from the Catholic Academy of Communication Professionals, which praised the film for its “artistic achievement” and said it “enriches with a true vision of humanity”. Pope Francis has described the organ trade as “immoral and a crime against humanity”. Catholics in Britain should watch the film and join the campaign to urge our Government to work with others to end this horrific crime.
The Bleeding Edge Trailer:
Human Harvest Trailer:
Published in General
Kyrie eleison
Well, sanctions against Japan in 1940 sure made a difference to Pearl Harbour…
I think if you expect government to do something, you will be disappointed.
On a personal level, we can stop buying goods made in China. We can write to the heads of major corporations that do business in China and tell them that we won’t do business with them as long as they do business with China. We can talk to our friends and try to get them to do them same. If Donald Trump’s candidacy means anything, surely it means if enough people get pissed enough about something, they can rock the boat. But are we willing to do without our iPhone7? Are we willing to pay more for clothing not made in China? Are we willing to shop at more expensive stores to avoid Chinese products? If not, isn’t our outrage just moral preening?
For those of who are not Christian, please share the meaning.
Sorry, it is Greek for Lord have mercy, the response is Christ have mercy, and the last response is once again Lord have mercy. It is said at every Mass, except on Holy Saturday during Easter week.
For a more detailed description follow the link.
Stop allowing the Chinese to send their students to the United States for starters. That’s one heck of a leverage point that the United States government can and should be using.
We also need a much more robust United States Navy 7th fleet to continue to put pressure on the Chinese Communist dictatorship’s expansion and intimidation efforts.
This is the only logical outcome of atheistic Leftism. The Human Being in this world view whether in the womb or not is merely an instrument or a resource to used or harvested for the benefit of the ideology. Fifty million dead innocents since 1973 is our record and given time we will being growing humans for our use with little cultural qualms.
Objectively any person who doesn’t ask God for forgiveness or finds the murder of fifty million innocents acceptable is a functional atheist because the only God they really believe in resides in their mind.
Thanks, Doug. I’ve heard it in English when I’ve visited Catholic churches.
I’m a free trader at heart since it’s to the economic benefit of the United States and also creates incentives for nations that trade with each other not to engage warfare with each other lest they cause self-inflicted economic damage.
But I’m increasingly more sympathetic to the idea of an tax on Chinese communist evil and I don’t really care if it costs me money on my end. Fine, you want to be a pack of murderous crap weasels? Enjoy the tariffs! Send the angry revolutionary mobs my regards!
Yes, both the North Korean and China’s regimes are evil.
I am a free trader too, but I don’t think this is about economics, but about the recognition of evil. And I am not suggesting government sanctions (though I wouldn’t oppose them in this case). Free trade doesn’t mean I have to buy the cheapest option on the shelf.
They can have one of my organs. I’m going to wretch out my spleen after reading this.
Don’t ever say that if you decide to visit China.
I also think that much of the world understands that if you push China too hard, it will be completely willing to kick as many collective asses as it feels necessary. So there is a lot of … talk.
We’re all agreed on the moral aspect of this, but I have a technical question. What is the reason for doing the organ harvesting on someone who is awake and alive? I understand that the organs will be fresher from a body that is still alive versus one that’s been dead for a couple hours. But I would think the cost of sedation would be well worth it. How is a surgeon supposed to remove organs without damaging them when the person they are coming from is thrashing around and screaming from the pain? Is it just evil for the sake of evil, or is there some practical reason for doing it this way?
Read Escape from Camp 14. In North Korean prison camps, guards will reward diligent inmates with time with female inmates. The children that result are kept in the camps; both parents are enemies of the state, the children must be tainted as well. I have no doubt that forced organ harvesting happens in the DPRK as well, its just a lot harder to get news out of there. And if it doesn’t happen, it is only because people are afraid that having a liver from a public enemy would make you politically suspect.
I was wondering about this as well. Presumably, restraints are cheaper than sedation. And they are enemies of the State, so suffering is, to some extent perhaps, desired.
You cannot harvest organs from some who has died. they are no longer viable. I suspect that in the case of China it is a form of retribution and the less people you have involved in the actual process and confining the process to a detention center maintains some secrecy.
It brings to mind Himmler’s speech at Posen regarding the Final Solution: “This is a glorious page in our history that has never been written and shall never be written.” A glory in dark shadows.
My understanding is that you can, but only for a very short time frame.
The current crop of leaders in Mainland China have been described as ‘less ideological, more pragmatic – and more brutal’; perhaps in a column of Bill McGurn or Bret Stephens – I don’t recall…But it seems frighteningly accurate.
I believe in part it depends on the definition of “dead.” Transplant organs often come from people who have been declared “brain dead,” but their heart is still beating. The traditional definition of “dead” was “heart has stopped” and once the blood stops circulating the time window to harvest organs before they die is very, very short.
So at the risk of sounding like an apologist, I’d want much better evidence than this unlinked study (which I suspect is the one that estimated forced organ harvesting must be happening based on statistics and probability) and a thriller movie (compelling, but not a documentary) before taking action against the Chinese government. They have admitted issues with organ donation programs, reformed policies, etc., but for the claim that live anesthetic-free harvesting is happening right now, in the present, as a state-sponsored program originating in Beijing is not yet supported with hard evidence.
Based upon your comment I did a cursory internet search on the number of transplants based upon nation. I found that China is not mentioned when you search on a nationwide scale. China is mentioned when you specify China but no comparisons are offered to other nations. I find that curious. I’ll offer two links based upon China alone.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/23/asia/china-organ-harvesting/index.html
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/1842647/china-perform-record-number-organ-transplants-despite-ban
Now one can look at the Chinese reaction to problems in the past, and accept their apology and move on. The question becomes are the Chinese telling us what we want to hear. I’m not sure why so many different people would be painting a false narrative about Chinese abuses concerning transplanting organs. China is hardly a transparent society.
Exactly
There are clear and marked discrepancies between the number of transplants reported and the number of donors available in China – that is undisputed, and as far as I know, entirely unexplained by the government. Death row prisoners have unquestionably been used as donors, and there’s a huge amount of anecdotal evidence that political prisoners have too. For me, there’s a big leap between that and the idea that there’s widespread operations on political prisoners while alive and without anesthesia, and that this practice is somehow official state policy. A lot of human rights abuses in China are the function of local leadership taking actions while Beijing turns a blind eye (perhaps for plausible deniability; certainly to maintain public faith in the central government).
The problem with specific accusations like this one is that almost all of the evidence is coming from one of two propaganda machines: that of the Chinese communist party or of Falun Gong. Both have histories of stretching the truth and cannot be considered fully reliable, though I reserve more skepticism on cases like this for the CCP.
But on the questions of what exactly is happening, how widespread is it, and is it official policy, there’s no where near enough credible evidence to implement economic sanctions, or revive some sort of Chinese Exclusion Act like policy retaliating against Chinese students, as some have suggested above. What it does suggest is that human rights abuses in China continue to be consistently alleged and ought to be better investigated, though with the recognition that sending the UN in to do so invites a secondary commission composed of Chinese and perhaps Iranian investigators to investigate police shootings of black men in the United States.
The only sanction you could apply would be to stop Organ-Tourism from Great Britain or the United States. To suggest that those that have received a death sentence should then be used as a source of organs for wealthy foreigners or wealthy Chinese citizens is immoral regardless of whether or not organ removal takes place in a hospital. China does not have an open or transparent justice system and there is no way to know who is actually providing the organs whether it is a peaceful dissident or a common criminal.
The UN is totally useless. One only has to look at Syria, the Crimea, Africa, North Korea, and eventually trying to monitor Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons. There is also the problem of UN peacekeepers that have engaged in widespread sex trafficking of minors. The UN should have been moved out of the US a long time ago, perhaps to Switzerland.
I agree, and I don’t think anyone is suggesting otherwise. The lack of transparency means we really don’t know what’s going on in China. But that reinforces to me that the more explicit allegations in the OP need more evidence before any action is contemplated.
I have read stories about the people who manage to escape from North Korea into China being either sent back to North Korea or enslaved by the Chinese.