Wed. Aug. 8 2007 8:31

CTV.ca News Staff

[Editor note: In this CTV news article about the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the reporter listed many troubling things taking place in China, one of which is organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners.]

First it was poisoned pet food. Then crippling pollution. Street buns made of cardboard. Toys with lead paint. Executions of corrupt officials. And then the human rights issues ... from Tibet to Shanghai.

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The recent headlines out of China hung like a dark cloud over Wednesday's celebrations heralding a year to go until the 2008 Olympics. The games are an opportunity for China to prove itself on the world stage, yet no matter how great the national efforts at improvement, the headlines tell these other stories.

When China was awarded the games six years ago, the International Olympic Committee didn't have such a great reputation either. At that time, for the IOC to make a pact with a corrupt quasi-dictatorship nation emerging from third world status -- well, it just seemed like more business-as-usual.

In 2001, IOC officials spoke of the good the Olympics would do, in helping speed China's democratic reforms and human rights progress.

Human rights organizers used the occasion of the one-year buildup celebration to say the 2008 Games slogan "One World, One Dream", should also apply to the people of China.

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Organ harvesting

China's reputation took another hit when Canadian politicians put the spotlight on troubling accusations that the country was harvesting vital organs of jailed Falun Gong dissidents.

The Chinese Embassy in Ottawa dismissed a report -- by then Liberal MP David Kilgour and international human rights lawyer David Matas -- which said the ongoing practice began in 2000.(1)

Members of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement outlawed in China, claimed thousands of their imprisoned practitioners have been victims of organ harvesting.

"They take both kidneys, then the heart and the skin and the corneas and the liver, and your body is then thrown in the incinerator," Kilgour said in a July, 2006 press conference.

(1) An Independent Investigation into Allegations of organ Harvesting of Falun gong practitioners in China (http://investigation.go.saveinter.net/)

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Source http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070808/china_issues_070808/20070808/