16106. (David Matas & Hon. David Kil­gour) Bloody Har­vest: Revised Report into Alle­ga­tions of Organ Har­vest­ing of Falun Gong Prac­ti­tion­ers in China [report]

David Kil­gour has been one of Canada’s longest serv­ing Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment (27 years), as a Cab­i­net Min­is­ter, and as Sec­re­tary of State for Asia-Pacif­ic Affairs. Few Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment are as wide­ly respect­ed. One jour­nal­ist has writ­ten: “in the past 25 years, no Cana­dian could take this kind of moral time-test and pass with such fly­ing colours as David Kil­gour.” — and no Cana­dian politi­cian comes even close to him as a con­sis­tent and prin­ci­pled advo­cate of human rights. He has pub­lished four books on var­ied sub­jects, rang­ing from Espi­onage to Cana­di­an-Amer­i­can rela­tions. David Matas is a lawyer and lec­turer on con­sti­tu­tional law, inter­na­tional law, and civ­il lib­er­ties. He was in the Cana­dian Del­e­ga­tion to the Stock­holm Inter­na­tional Forum on the Holo­caust, and since 1997 has been the Direc­tor of the Inter­na­tional Cen­tre for Human Rights & Demo­c­ra­tic Development.

These men were approached by a Wash­ing­ton-based coali­tion of Human Rights groups with a request to do an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion and report on alle­ga­tions of live-organ har­vest­ing from polit­i­cal dis­si­dents by the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty, which have long been made by fol­low­ers of the Falun Gong med­i­ta­tion move­ment, both in and out of Chi­na. To quote the authors: “When we began our work, we had no views whether the alle­ga­tions were true or untrue. The alle­ga­tions were so shock­ing that they are almost impos­si­ble to believe. We would have much rather found the alle­ga­tions to be untrue than to be true. The alle­ga­tions, if true, rep­re­sent a dis­gust­ing form of evil which, despite all the deprav­i­ties human­ity has seen, are new to this plan­et. The very hor­ror made us reel back in dis­be­lief.After the Holo­caust, it is impos­si­ble to rule out any form of deprav­ity. Whether an alleged evil has been per­pe­trated can be deter­mined only by con­sid­er­ing the facts.

A pre­lim­i­nary report was released in 2005, to which China’s rulers respond­ed with invec­tive and rabid, irrel­e­vant denun­ci­a­tions of the Falun Gong. This sec­ond report was made to incor­po­rate addi­tional evi­dence. The method­ol­ogy of the the inves­ti­ga­tion can­not be fault­ed, and nobody has been able to refute its data, evi­dence, or conclusions.

What does the report conclude?

Based on our fur­ther research, we are rein­forced in our orig­i­nal con­clu­sion that the alle­ga­tions are true. We believe that there has been and con­tin­ues today to be large scale organ seizures from unwill­ing Falun Gong prac­ti­tion­ers. We have con­cluded that the gov­ern­ment of Chi­na and its agen­cies in numer­ous parts of the coun­try, in par­tic­u­lar hos­pi­tals but also deten­tion cen­tres and ‘people’s courts”, since 1999 have put to death a large but unknown num­ber of Falun Gong pris­on­ers of con­science. Their vital organs, includ­ing kid­neys, liv­ers, corneas and hearts, were seized invol­un­tar­ily for sale at high prices, some­times to for­eign­ers, who nor­mally face long waits for vol­un­tary dona­tions of such organs in their home countries.”

How many of the vic­tims were first con­victed of any offence, seri­ous or oth­er­wise, in legit­i­mate courts, we are unable to esti­mate because such infor­ma­tion appears to be unavail­able both to Chi­nese nation­als and for­eign­ers. It appears to us that many human beings belong­ing to a peace­ful vol­un­tary orga­ni­za­tion made ille­gal eight years ago by Pres­i­dent Jiang because he thought it might threat­en the dom­i­nance of the Com­mu­nist Par­ty of Chi­na have been in effect exe­cuted by med­ical prac­tion­ers for their organs.

Our con­clu­sion comes not from any one sin­gle item of evi­dence, but rather the piec­ing togeth­er of all the evi­dence we have con­sid­ered. Each por­tion of the evi­dence we have con­sid­ered is, ion itself, ver­i­fi­able and, in most cas­es, incon­testable. Put togeth­er, they paint a damn­ing whole pic­ture. It is their com­bi­na­tion that has con­vinced us.”

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