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China’s Organ Trade: Crime Under the Surgical Light

[FEATURE]
The surging organ transplant business in China harbors a hidden crime – organs are being removed from living Falun Gong practitioners; two witnesses who escaped from China expose the shocking news to the media.

Sixty years ago, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called the Nazis’ deliberate and systematic extermination of European Jews a "crime that has no name." The world cried, "NEVER AGAIN!"

But since then, genocide—as the new crime came to be called—has continued to occur. Recently, a horrifying story leaked out of China: Thousands of detainees in a communist government-sanctioned underground concentration camp have had their organs removed for organ transplant operations before they were killed and secretly cremated.

Sujiatun in the Media Spotlight

Sujiatun, a quiet suburban town near Shenyang, a major city in northeastern China, has been in the news for the past month. On March 8, 2006, Jin Zhong, a journalist who fled China, revealed in an interview with The Epoch Times that there was a secret concentration camp in Sujiatun where organs from live Falun Gong practitioners were taken for organ transplant operations.

Mr. Jin said he came across the underground concentration camp while researching the regime’s response to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Mr. Jin then discovered that a large secret prison had been built and as many as 6,000 Falun Gong practitioners were incarcerated at the facility. "The hospital is harvesting the prisoners’ organs, including kidneys, livers, and corneas," he said. "The organs are then sold to patients, from both China and abroad, who need organ transplants."

Mr. Jin told the story again in an interview with Radio France International, which was aired on March 19 and 20. The news was also picked up by several other media, such as The Washington Times, National Review, and the Agence France Presse.

After Mr. Jin’s revealing story, a second witness—the ex-wife of a surgeon at the facility who was involved in harvesting organs from live Falun Gong members—came forward to testify that the concentration camp was actually under the auspices of the Liaoning Provincial Thrombosis Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, where she had worked. An interview with her revealed some of the brutal measures used at the camp in the treatment of the prisoners detained there:

"My ex-husband had the habit of writing diary notes. One of his notes described such a story: After the patient lost consciousness, a little bag dropped from the patient’s pocket when the clothes were cut open with a scissors. When the box was opened, there was a round Falun emblem inside and a piece of paper saying, ‘May Mommy [Have] a Happy Birthday!’

"My ex-husband was severely traumatized by the stimulus…{mospagebreak}

"Because I couldn’t accept the fact that he was involved in organ harvesting from live Falun Gong practitioners, we divorced. I myself was also severely hurt and traumatized. If it was not my husband who told me what he had done, I could not have believed there is such a thing. I am not a Falun Gong practitioner. …In the last couple of years, to tell you the truth, I have felt extremely guilty as a Chinese with conscience."

Drawing on sources within China, the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG), a U.S.-based NGO, released a report stating that the Sujiatun death camp is being steered by provincial-level Communist Party officials in Liaoning Province, as well as Shenyang City officials. Particularly involved are managers in health bureaus, who stand to gain the most financially. The report portrays an efficient machine driven by profit and a confidence born of state backing. The camp is said to be running "a systematic procedural practice" that began as early as 2001.

According to WOIPFG President John Jaw, the Falun Gong practitioners who were held in the Sujiatun camp were likely arrested on extra-judicial grounds and administratively sentenced. "They have been detained for their affiliation with the Falun Gong, as opposed to having committed some sort of criminal act," he said.

After three weeks’ silence, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang denied the existence of the concentration camp in a press conference on March 28, and termed organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners an "absurd lie." Qin also invited news reporters to Sujiatun to investigate. On March 30, the Sound of Hope radio station and WOIPFG announced their acceptance of the invitation, followed by other media organizations.

Organ Transplants a Booming Industry in China

Organ transplant surgery began in China in the early 1980s and has flourished in the past quarter century. Many top hospitals recently built new facilities or expanded existing organ transplant centers. Numerous other hospitals have followed suit in this lucrative business. There are 368 hospitals in China that engage in kidney transplants, and more than 200 of them can perform liver transplantation, according to official statistics reported by Phoenix TV on March 26, 2006.

For example, the Tianjin Orient Organ Transplant Center was founded in December 2000 as a spin-off of the Tianjin First Center Hospital.[1] It is the largest organ transplant center in Asia, with the capacity to handle nine liver transplant operations and eight kidney transplant operations simultaneously. The number of kidney transplants increased from 77 in 2001 to 436 in 2005, while the number of liver transplants ballooned from eight in 1998 to 647 in 2005.{mospagebreak}

Some Major Organ Transplant Centers/Institutions Established or Expanded After 2000
 
Tianjin Orient Organ Transplant Center
Organ Transplant Center of the Chinese People’s Armed Police General Hospital
Organ Transplant Center of People’s Liberation Army Number 309 Hospital
The Transplantation Center of China Medical University
Organ Transplant Center in Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University
Organ Transplant Center of Zhengzhou University First Affiliated Hospital
Peking University Third Hospital Liver Transplantation Center
Beijing Organ Transplantation Center (Beijing Chaoyang Hospital)
Shanghai Organ Transplant Center
Transplantation Center of Tongren Hospital, Beijing

With the recent rapid expansion of organ transplant centers around the country, hospitals are now actively going out to recruit foreign patients from rich countries. For example, the China International Transplantation Network Assistance Center (CITNAC) was founded in 2003 by the transplant institute at the First Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University in Shenyang.[2] This transplant assistance center mainly focuses on foreigners and recruits patients for several major organ transplant hospitals in China, including the Transplantation Center of China Medical University in Shenyang, Beijing Organ Transplantation Center (Beijing Chaoyang Hospital) in Beijing, and Zhongshan Hospital of Fudan University in Shanghai.

According to information posted on the official website of the People’s Liberation Army’s Number 309 Hospital, the organ transplant center is an important profit-making department. The center, with a staff of 78, brought in revenues of 16 million yuan (US$2 million) to the hospital in 2003, an amount that was expected to reach 30 million yuan (US$3.75 million) in 2005. "The organ transplant center is our revenue leader. In the first half of 2004 we received 13.57 million yuan (US$1.7 million) and will break 30 million yuan (US$3.75 million) by year’s end."[3]

The reason behind such high profitability is the scarcity of human organs available for transplant. The information posted on the CITNAC website describes the difficulties of getting an organ transplant in Japan:

"There are now about 13,000 patients who want to receive an organ transplantation in Japan. Japan Organ Transplantation Network Center handed out approximately 70,000,000 voluntary organ donor cards in April 2001, but there were only 14 brain-dead patients who had donated their organs for transplantation. There are many patients facing death because they cannot obtain the organs they need. The cost of a liver transplant abroad is about 50,000,000-60,000,000 yen, and even then it is not certain an organ donor can be found, even in the U.S. It is the regrettable fact that it is difficult to find donors for patients who need organ transplantation. And many patients die while waiting."[4]{mospagebreak}

CITNAC then makes the sales pitch:

"Do you know that over 100 kidney transplants and more than 20 liver transplants are successfully completed in the China International Transplantation Network Assistance Center annually? And quite a number of Japanese patients are helped." "Viscera providers can be found immediately! Please contact us before the state of your illness gets worse. (In accordance with Chinese law, the viscera are provided by state-owned hospitals.)" "When you want to apply for an organ, you should make a payment of $5,000 to our appointed account. Once we confirm the money has been deposited in our account, we can provide you with a formal organ application. It may take only one week to find a suitable donor, the maximum time being one month because kidney transplants require a HLA tissue match. We will send the information about the organ donor to you one week before the operation."[5] (Underlines added by Chinascope for emphasis.)

Table 1. CITNAC Price List for Organ Transplants

Organ(s) Cost of Transplant
Kidney US$62,000
Liver US$98,000-130,000
Liver-kidney US$160,000-180,000
Kidney-pancreas US$150,000
Lung US$150,000-170,000
Heart US$130,000-160,000
Cornea US#30,000
Source: CITNAC websote.

Behind these successes in organ transplantation, however, lurks a serious problem. International human rights organizations and the U.S. Congress have long suspected that the Chinese communist regime systematically takes organs from executed prisoners without their consent.

Furthermore, Tsing Dao Daily reported in November 2005 that Huang Jiefu, Deputy Minister of Health, acknowledged that the majority of organs for transplant came from executed prisoners.[6] It further reported that less than five percent of organs for transplants came from donors while over 95 percent came from executed prisoners.

Sources of Human Organs In China{mospagebreak}

Efforts have been made to investigate, report on, and discuss China’s organ harvesting practices since 1995 by human rights organizations, public media, and Western governments.

Table 2. Samples of Investigative Reports on Organ Harvesting in China

Date Investigations Location in China
3/2006 WOIPFG Investigation Report [I & II] Sujiatun, Liaoning Province
6/27/2001 U.S. Congressional hearing: Dr. Wang Guoqi of the Tianjin Military Hospital spoke of his direct involvement with organ harvest Multiple locations
1/9/2000 The South China Morning Post, Hong Kong Guangzhou, Guangdong Province
11/1997 Penhouse: November issue feature by reporter Catherine Field Guangzhou, Guangdong Province
10/15/1997 ABC News Prime Time Live broadcast detailing evidence of organ harvesting in China’s military hospitals Nan Fang Hospital, First Military Medical University, Guangzhou
1995 U.S. Congressional hearing: Illegal Trade in Huamn Body Parts Multiple locations
8/1994 Human Rights Watch: China Organ Procurement and Judicial Execution in China Multiple locations

Role of the Chinese Communist Government

Regime officials play integral roles in every step of the organ harvesting procedure-from the sentencing of prisoners to death, to the extraction and transplantation of their organs without their consent. The entire process requires coordination by various government agencies. Doctors screen death-row prisoners’ blood tests before their executions to determine blood type and a prisoner’s suitability as a potential organ source. Once results are confirmed, the courts set an execution date and doctors are notified to ready their patients to receive the transplants. Directly after the prisoner receives a single shot to the head, officials confirm death, and organs are quickly removed and placed in a solution for transport to a nearby hospital. Patients pay a great deal of money for such surgeries. The money that flows into the hospitals is also shared by the courts and prisons for bribes, information on upcoming executions, and blood tests. In China’s "organ business," the courts, the police, the prisons, and the hospitals work hand in hand.{mospagebreak}

The Chinese communist government’s involvement in the practice of organ harvesting began with the promulgation of the Rules Concerning the Dissection of Corpses in 1979 from China’s Public Health Ministry. This document asserts the legality of using corpses and organs of executed prisoners in experimental research. In the 1981 Reply Concerning the Question of the Utilization of Corpses of Criminals Sentenced to Death, the Chinese Ministry of Justice made clear its approval of the practice. This document describes organ harvesting as "very necessary from the standpoint of medical treatment and scientific research." These earlier rulings were soon followed by China’s first national directive on executed prisoners and organs for transplant. This document, the Provisional Regulations on the Use of Dead Bodies or Organs from Condemned Criminals, was signed in 1984. It stipulates the conditions under which health personnel may harvest organs from executed prisoners, the procedures for coordination of prison and public security officials with transplant doctors, and the confidentiality of the process. Although it was promulgated at the national level, it is a directive. It is not a law and has never been passed through the Chinese People’s Congress (See appendix on page 18).

The Strike-Hard Campaign: Capital Punishment Used to Supply Organ Demands

The entire system of organ harvesting in China would not be possible were it not for the Chinese communist regime’s policies regarding capital punishment. Since Amnesty International began publishing records of worldwide executions in 1993, China has continuously held the distinction of conducting more executions every year than the rest of the world combined. This figure remains constant despite the fact that Amnesty’s recorded executions are limited to those published in China’s open-source press materials. They represent only a fraction of the true number, which in China is considered a state secret.

One earlier, well-known case was Ms. Zhong Haiyuan. Ms. Zhong, a young political prisoner who was a teacher at a middle school in Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province, was executed. While she was still alive, her kidneys were removed. She was shot twice in the head but did not die, according to Lao Gui, a well-known Chinese journalist at the China Legal Daily who interviewed the police officer who executed Zhong, at her execution on April 30, 1978. Medical personnel were allowed to take her body into a specially erected operating facility on the prison premises and to remove both kidneys while she was still alive. One kidney was transplanted into the body of the son of a high-ranking military officer, a deputy battalion commander of the Nanjing Military Region who had earlier arranged for officials at the Jiangxi prison to facilitate the operation.[7]

The following is an excerpt of the testimony of Wang Quoqi, a doctor at the Paramilitary Police Tianjin General Brigade Hospital in Tianjin, China, given at the June 27, 2001, U.S. Congressional hearing:{mospagebreak}

"My work required me to remove skin and corneas from the corpses of over 100 executed prisoners… Once notified of an execution, our section would prepare all necessary equipment and arrive at the Beicang Crematorium in plain clothes with all official license plates on our vehicles replaced with civilian ones. … Each criminal had identification papers in his or her pocket that detailed the victim’s name, age, profession, work unit, address and crime. Nowhere on these papers was there any mention of voluntary organ donation, and clearly the prisoners did not know how their bodies would be used after death."[8]

Dr. Wang further testified that in October 1995 in Hebei Province, he administered a shot of heparin to the prisoner before execution to prevent blood clotting. The police told the prisoner that it was a tranquilizer to prevent suffering during the execution. The prisoner "responded by giving thanks to the government." After he was shot, "the prisoner had not yet died, but instead lay convulsing on the ground. We were ordered to take him to the ambulance anyway, where urologists Wang Shifu, Zhao Wingling, and Liu Wiyou extracted his kidneys quickly and precisely. When they finished, the prisoner was still breathing, and his heart continued to beat."

Penthouse reporter Catherine Field said in her investigative report in November 1997 that in Guangdong Province, which has a growing number of big-spending foreign customers, "there have been three cases of prisoners who were still alive when put on the operating table." On one occasion, "a surgeon was removing a kidney from a patient – a person who had been executed and proclaimed brain dead when the ‘corpse’ grabbed the doctor’s arm." She says the source for the story was the doctor himself, "still traumatized several months after the incident."[9]

The Strike-Hard Campaign is another tool China’s communist regime uses to enforce control throughout the Chinese population. The Chinese authorities’ Strike-Hard Campaign calls for heavy sentences in the crackdown on targets during major political events such as the opening of the Communist Party Congress. Prisoners are subjected to public sentencing rallies and public executions, and executed in large numbers during these crackdowns.

According to Radio Free Asia, rights groups have long charged China with a deliberate policy of linking the criminal justice system and local hospitals in an attempt to meet the growing demand for transplants, especially since Chinese hospitals became proficient at performing these operations in the early 1990s. They also accuse the authorities of skipping over the question of consent, either with coerced agreements before the prisoner is executed or simply by cremating the bodies of those executed so no evidence remains.{mospagebreak}

An Established Business

The harvesting of prisoners’ organs does not take a long time. "We are experienced; we have done this for many decades," said Yang Ailing, deputy director of the Kidney Department of Xuchang Central Hospital.

In an interview with Radio Free Asia’s Mandarin service, a nurse at the No. 3 Hospital in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, answered, "Mostly, yes," when asked if transplant organs were taken from the bodies of executed prisoners.

Asked if the organs were removed from the bodies before death, she replied, "Of course they are."

"They are living organs…very healthy," the nurse told RFA reporter Fang Yuan.

According to the official state-run media source CCTV.com, Zhongyang Shen, with the Beijing Armed Police Hospital, was the doctor who successfully completed the first Chinese liver transplant operation on May 14, 1994. Prior to this, 64 liver transplant operations were tried in China, but none were successful. The Armed Police Hospital’s own website reports that Dr. Shen has performed 1,600 liver transplants as of March 16, 2006. In April 14, 2005, the Armed Police Hospital conducted five liver transplant operations within 24 hours under Dr. Shen’s direction, a record for all the military hospitals.

It has also been reported that in emergency cases, patients were transferred from other hospitals to the Armed Police Hospital. In these cases, the doctors operated on the patients immediately. No difficulties in finding or matching the organs have ever been mentioned. No waiting time was ever specified or mentioned.

The Unexplained Abundance of Organs Available in China

The Donor-Recipient Matching Process

The United States has the most advanced organ transplant technology and citizen-supported organ donation system, yet it is still difficult for patients to get needed organs. Take kidney transplants as an example: A patient is usually on the waiting list for an available kidney anywhere from six months to years.

According to the National Kidney Foundation in New York, the transplant waiting list is for individuals who are waiting for a nonliving donor kidney transplant at a transplant center.[10] The median waiting time nationwide was more than three years for those listed in 1999. The number of transplants from nonliving donors remains around 9,000 per year, thanks to those Americans who generously donate their organs after death. Individual transplant centers across the United States maintain waiting lists with as many as 500 to 1,500 candidates.{mospagebreak}

Once a kidney becomes available from a nonliving donor, the transplant center conducts a matching process to decide who is eligible to receive it. Candidates are matched to kidneys based on such factors as blood group (A, B, 0, AB), tissue type (approximately 150 different kinds), length of time on the waiting list, and medical condition. According to the National Kidney Foundation, the chances of getting a perfect kidney match from a natural brother or sister (usually as a live donor) is about 25 percent, while from a nonliving donor (not related by blood), the chance is about 6.5 percent.

The same holds true for liver transplants. In the United States, there are more than 17,500 patients on waiting lists, with more added each day. Almost 5,000 patients receive transplanted livers every year, but more than 1,700 patients on the waiting lists die each year.[11] The matching requirements for liver transplants are less restrictive than kidney transplants; the minimal requirement is matching blood type.

What is the process in China? Organ transplantation in China requires the same match for blood type and tissue type, but the numerical relation between donor and recipient groups are different from that in the United States.

In the United States, a large pool of patients is waiting at any given time for a single available kidney. The matching process is to find the perfect recipient on the waiting list for the newly available kidney. The chances of finding a perfect match are very high.

In China, most of the Chinese patients cannot afford an organ transplant. The recipient pool is much smaller, and many in the pool are foreigners who come from other countries as new patients. The matching process in this situation is reversed: When a foreign patient has applied for and paid for an organ transplant, the organ transplant center needs to find a matching kidney for this particular patient. Taking the 6.5 percent average chance as the standard, the hospital needs to have access to at least 16 organ sources to find a match for one patient.

This reversed matching process presents another problem. A vital organ such as a kidney is only suitable for transplant within 24 to 48 hours after the demise of the donor. For that reason, American organ transplant centers require their patients to get to the center within a reasonable time (6 to 10 hours) once a matched kidney is found. However, according to the China International Transplantation Network Assistance Center (CITNAC), the reverse is happening in China-Chinese hospitals promise to find matched organs for foreign patients and then notify the patients a week before the operations. The only possible scenario for this type of reversed matching process-as horrible as it is-is that the hospitals have access to live organ donors waiting to be killed.{mospagebreak}

The Unexplained Organ Bank

The expansion of the organ transplant business in China has had to deal with the difficulty of obtaining the necessary organs. It is a tradition in China that one’s body must remain whole after death, so Chinese people are, in general, reluctant to donate their organs-neither live organ donation nor organ donation after death is considered acceptable. Live kidney donation accounts for only about one percent of all the kidney transplants performed in China, according to official statistics.[12]

Chinese law currently does not recognize "brain death," so organs can only be obtained from cadavers. For all these reasons, China should be facing an extreme shortage of organs for transplant. Yet in reality, the organ transplant centers appear to have an abundant supply of live organs that they are eager to sell to foreigners.

In the following information posted in a Q&A on the China CITNAC website, one can see how confident this Shenyang organization is that it can get live organs for sale:

Q: Are the organs for the pancreas transplant from brain dead patients?
A: Our organs do not come from brain dead victims because the state of the organ may not be good.

Q: How long does it take to find a donor for the operation after applying?
A: The time taken to find a donor may be as little as one week, but with a kidney transplant, where a HLA tissue match is needed, it may take up to one month to find a donor. December and January are the peak season for donors. Patients applying at this time experience the shortest waiting period for a suitable donor. For a patient who is still working, this is the best time to apply for transplant surgery
.[13]

At a press conference on March 25, 2005, in Jakarta, Indonesia, representatives from the Guangzhou Organ Transplant Center and the North Jakarta Hospital announced the establishment of a joint medical program, whereby the Chinese would supply human organs needed for the patients at the Indonesian hospital. Liao Dehuai, a representative of and a surgeon from the Guangzhou Organ Transplant Center, stated that each year over 200 Indonesian patients went to Guangzhou for kidney transplants.[14]

In a December 24, 2004, news report in the Chinese Chenbao newspaper, Associate Professor Wu Gang with the First Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University stated that there was an abundant supply of kidneys for transplant patients in Shenyang.{mospagebreak}

The source of that "abundant supply of kidneys" in those Chinese hospitals remains puzzling. Even if all the death row prisoners are counted as potential organ donors, there are only 4,000 to 10,000 of them each year, and most of them do not consent to be organ donors.[15] In addition, many factors can reduce the number of organs that qualify for organ transplant: Some of those prisoners are not suitable organ sources due to poor health or disease; a portion of them are executed in remote areas far away from the big cities; and most of the executions are conducted in groups at specified times (usually before big holidays), which makes it even more difficult to find a suitable match for the available organs at other times. Yet kidney transplants have reached over 5,000 per year since 2000, according to statistics by the Chinese Society of Organ Transplantation [Editor’s note: the number only reflects the transplants conducted in the hospitals registered in the Chinese Society of Organ Transplantation].[16]

Covering Up the Evidence?

It has been reported that, as a result of the public attention being focused on this matter—and as a result of overseas media and investigative teams shining a light on these surgical procedures—Chinese authorities have transferred all Falun Gong practitioners in the Sujiatun facility to unknown locations and have completed preparing the facility for an international investigation.

According to press reports, the U.S. government announced on April 14, 2006, that it had toured the facility at Sujiatun twice and found "no evidence that the site is being used for any function other than as a normal public hospital." While it is plausible that the U.S. government has now taken the first steps to try to uncover the truth about what has been happening in China’s hospitals and labor camps, it would be surprising if a couple of tours of the facilities had yielded any other result.

References:

[1] http://www.ootc.net/
[2] http://en.zoukiishoku.com/
[3] http://www.309yizhi.com/
Exchange rate:approximately 1 US dollar = 8 yuan.
[4] http://en.zoukiishoku.com/
[5] http://en.zoukiishoku.com/
[6] http://www.worldjournal.com/wj-ch-news.php?nt_seq_id=1275791
[7] "Baoshi Huangye de Nüfan" ("Female Prisoners Die Violent Deaths in the Wilderness"), by Lao Gui, China Spring, September 1992, pp.76-91.
[8] http://wwwc.house.gov/international_relations/107/73452.pdf
[9] "Chinese Takeout." Penthouse, November 1997.
[10] http://www.kidney.org
{mospagebreak}

[11] http://www.ucsfhealth.org/childrens/medical_services/organt/liver/conditions/ldonor/signs.html
[12] Min Zhilian: Journal of Transplant (in Chinese), March 2004 issue, Vol. 2, No. 1, page 21
[13] http://en.zoukiishoku.com/
[14] http://www.epochtimes.com/gb/6/3/27/n1268239.htm
[15] http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/headlines05/0405-07.htm
[16] Second Academic Exchange Conference of Organ Donation and Transplants, organized by Health Minstry of China, June 3, 2004

Appendix 1: 1984 Provisional Regulations on the Use of the Dead Bodies or Organs of Condemned Criminals

I. Those criminals who are sentenced to death and executed immediately must "be executed by means of shooting in light of the relevant provision in the Criminal Law. When the execution is over, the dead bodies could be otherwise dealt with only after death is confirmed by the supervising procurator on the spot.

II. The dead bodies or organs from condemned criminals after execution or the remains can be collected by their family members.

III. The dead bodies or organs of the following categories of the condemned criminals can be made use of:

1. The uncollected dead bodies or the ones that the family members refuse to collect;
2. Those condemned criminals who volunteer to give their dead bodies or organs to the medical institutions;
3. Upon the approval of the family members.

IV. The following provisions must be observed regarding the use of dead bodies or organs from condemned criminals:

1. The units making use of the dead bodies or organs must maintain the technical level of and be provided with equipment necessary for the medical scientific research or transplantation, they must be examined, approved and granted "special permits" by the Department (Bureau) of Public Health of the provinces or autonomous regions within whose jurisdiction these units are located, and they must go to Bureau of Public Health of the Municipality or District for record.

2. The use of dead bodies shall be arranged in an unified way by the Bureau of Public Health of the Municipality or Prefecture, which shall contact the People’s Court and the units using the dead bodies respectively in accordance with the order of importance and urgency and the principle of comprehensive use.{mospagebreak}

3. After the execution order of death penalty is issued, and there are dead bodies that can be directly used, the People’s Court should inform in advance the Bureau of Public Health of the Municipality or Prefecture, which shall pass on the information to the units using the dead bodies and grant them permits to use the dead bodies; copies should be sent to the People’s Court responsible for the execution of death penalty and the People’s Procuratorate in charge of the on-the-spot supervision. The units using the dead bodies should contact the People’s Court on their own initiative, within the prescribed time limits of the execution of death penalty by the People’s Court. As to the dead bodies that could be used only upon the approval of the family members, the People’s Court is to inform the department in charge of public health, which will consult the family members, and consequently reach written agreement in relation to the scope of use, disposal after use, disposal expenses and economic compensation and etc. The Bureau of Public Health of the Municipality or Prefecture shall, according to the agreement, grant the units the certificates to use the dead bodies; copies should be sent to the units concerned. When the condemned criminals volunteer to give their dead bodies to the medical institutions, there should be formal written certificates or records duly signed by the same, which should be kept in the People’s Court for future reference.

Appendix 2: Organ Transplants in China Surge During April

Following the testimonies in March by two witnesses who disclosed that live Falun Gong members were being killed in a secret concentration camp and that their organs were harvested for transplants, reporters from Sound of Hope Radio made phone calls to major hospitals in China. They contacted the organ transplant departments in the hospitals to assess the current situation. From their conversations with the doctors, the reporters accidentally discovered that the incidence of organ transplantation in China has suddenly surged in April, and major hospitals there are working overtime to perform organ transplants.

Most of the medical doctors who answered the phone gave the same guarantee—there will be an unusually large number of organ donors before May 1. After that date, the source of donors will be drying up. Following is an excerpt from the transcripts of the phone interviews conducted by reporter Tang Mei with medical doctors from various hospitals in China:

Doctor A: "April. We should have a lot of organs before the end of April. We are getting more and more supply of organs, but you have to seize the opportunity. Do you know what I mean? After this period of time, the supply will dry up. After the end of April, there will be a period where we will have nothing. We just won’t have any supply of organs! If you don’t have an organ transplant when there is a supply, you are leading yourself to a dead end when the supply disappears!"

Doctor B: "You will have to get it done by May 1. This week and next week! After May 1, we will have very few organs."{mospagebreak}

Doctor C: "If you want to come for an organ transplant, you must try to come before May."

Doctor D: "All of our donors are in their 20s and 30s. They are very healthy. We guarantee livers and kidneys from living human beings. The livers are whole livers. For some blood types, we have donors right now."

Doctor E: "Normally they are in their 20s and 30s. I can guarantee they are very healthy and the organs are fresh."

Reporter: "Is it a whole liver?"
Doctor E: "A whole liver. A whole liver."

Reporter: "I heard some of the donors are young and healthy people in their 20s and 30s."
Doctor F: "Yes! That’s right!"

Doctor G: "(We should be able to find an organ) from a donor of AB blood type. It should be available these days."

Reporter: "Do you mean kidneys from living people?"
Doctor H: "Yes. We also supply livers from living people!"

Reporter: "Livers from living people?"
Doctor H: "Yes! Yes!"

Reporter: "I heard you can supply organs from young, healthy people in their 20s and 30s?"
Doctor I: "Yes! Yes!"

Reporter: "I heard they are harvested from living human beings."
Doctor I: "Yes! Yes! Yes!"

Reporter: "Some labor camps imprison Falun Gong practitioners and then harvest their organs when they are alive?"
Doctor I: "…Right!"

Doctor J: "There are 30 patients right now waiting in line for organ transplant operations."

Reporter: "Are you all working overtime for organ transplant operations?"{mospagebreak}

Doctor K: "Yes! Yes! Yes! We have several organ transplant teams here working around the clock! We have a total of four teams that can perform organ transplants!"

Reporter: "Are you doing a lot of organ transplants lately?"
Doctor L: "Well, that’s that!"

Translated by CHINASCOPE from Audio recording available at
http://pkg.dajiyuan.com/pkg/2006-04-12/may1.mp3