This article was first published in January 2010.

(Minghui.org) In 2006, The Epoch Times newspaper broke a stunning story about what is undoubtedly one of the most horrible atrocities to be committed by any government, not only in modern times, but in all of recorded history. As documented in the investigative report, "Bloody Harvest," by noted human rights lawyer David Matas and former Canadian Secretary of State for the Asia-Pacific region David Kilgour, there is overwhelming evidence of the Chinese Communist regime's chilling role in systematically murdering Falun Gong practitioners, harvesting their organs while they are alive, and making huge profits from doing so. In response to the international outcry, the Chinese regime has attempted to explain away one of the main pieces of circumstantial evidence--the meteoric rise in the number of organ transplantations in recent years and the extremely short wait times in a culture notoriously averse to organ donation--by stating that it has harvested organs from executed criminals after their deaths. Faced with undeniable evidence, it has attempted to escape culpability for a monstrous atrocity by admitting to a lesser crime. In this report, we will show evidence that directly contradicts this claim and lends further credence to the serious charges leveled against the Chinese regime.

VIII. Evolution of live organ harvesting

1. Isolated cases

Over the years, the process of harvesting organs from living Falun Gong practitioners evolved. The initial alleged cases of organ harvesting occurred on those practitioners who died in forced labor camps as a result of torture. As early as 2000 there were reports of death cases related to organ harvesting. This could explain why the number of organ transplants in mainland China began to increase in 2000.

On December 22, 2000, the Minghui/Clearwisdom website posted the following news from China: "According to insiders, some police officers in Mainland China are plotting with doctors and looking to sell the organs of Falun Gong practitioners for huge sums of money." "One source indicates that a certain hospital in the city of Shijiazhuang specializing in Chinese medicine has received six such requests." [47] This might have been the earliest report of the CCP's organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners.

On February 16, 2001, Ren Pengwu, male, 33, a technician at the Harbin City Third Thermal Power Plant in Heilongjiang Province, was arrested for distributing informational materials exposing the staged Tiananmen "Self Immolation" incident. He was detained at the No. 2 Detention Center in Hulan County. Before dawn on February 21, he was tortured to death. Without obtaining the family's permission, the police authorities removed all of Ren Pengwu's organs before hastily cremating his body. [48]

Hao Runjuan, female, a practitioner from the Baiyun District in Guangzhou City, was arrested in late February 2002. She died on March 18, 2002, after suffering brutal torture in the Baiyun Detention Center. The police autopsied the body while the family members were unaware of anything at all. When the family was notified to identify the body, it had been rendered unrecognizable. [49]

Sun Ruijian, male, 29, a practitioner from Ningde City, Fujian Province, was arrested in November 2000 when he went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong. On December 1, 2000, his family was notified that Sun Ruijian had died from "jumping out of a moving car" while under public security escort. When his wife saw Sun's body, it had been autopsied, and Sun's eyes had a noticeable bulge. [50]

Fu Keshu, 53, a practitioner and a retired teacher from the No. 1 Elementary School in Kaiyang County, Guizhou Province and her nephew, 34-year-old Xu Genli, disappeared in the Jinggang Mountain area in November 2005. In late April 2006, their bodies were discovered in the Wuzhi Peak area of Jinggang Mountain. Their heads had been shaved, and there were no eyebrows on their faces. Their eyeballs were missing. Xu's chest and abdomen had been cut open. Their families believed that their organs might have been harvested and their bodies disposed of. [51]

According to a person who was detained in the Baiyun District Drug Rehabilitation Institute, several drug addicts beat up a Falun Dafa practitioner, which was seen by the Institute's doctor. The doctor said, "Don't hit his kidneys, they're useful!" On several occasions he heard doctors there tell the drug addicts when they were suffering from withdrawal, "If you want some drugs, go beat up those Falun Dafa practitioners, but be careful not to touch their eyes and abdomens." [52]

2. Large-scale live organs harvesting

The transition of individual organ harvesting cases to large-scale live organ harvesting was enabled by the following conditions:

Condition 1: The appearance of "concentration camps"

We have discussed in previous sections that many practitioners who refused to reveal their names or addresses were detained in undisclosed locations. These military-controlled concentration facilities provided the physical conditions needed for large-scale, live organ harvesting.

Condition 2: Policy to "defame their reputations, bankrupt them financially and destroy them physically"

The persecution of Falun Gong was initiated by Jiang Zemin, who mobilized the entire state apparatus in his campaign. The 610 Office adopted a policy to "defame their reputations, bankrupt them financially, and destroy them physically" in an attempt to eradicate Falun Gong.

According to Li Baigen, former director of the Reconnaissance and Design Administration Division of the Beijing Municipal Commission of Urban Planning and Design, and who currently lives in the United States, on November 30, 1999, three senior officials at the 610 Office summoned 3,000 government officials and held a conference in the Great Hall of the People to discuss the persecution of Falun Gong, since more and more Falun Gong practitioners had continued to come to Beijing to appeal, despite several months of harsh suppression. During the conference, Li Lanqing, head of the central 610 Office, verbally relayed the new policy from Jiang Zemin, which was to "defame their reputations, bankrupt them financially, and destroy them physically."

This policy was never communicated as a written document. The outside world learned of this through practitioners who were detained in the brainwashing centers, forced labor camps, or prisons. Many of them stated in articles published on the Minghui website that, while in detention, they had heard the police or 610 Office personnel mention this policy.

A derivative of the policy is "beating them to death counts as suicide," another common practice of some police officers in dealing with practitioners who refuse to give up their beliefs. Although the number of death cases of practitioners who died as a result of the persecution continues to grow (by 2009, at least 3,300 practitioners are confirmed to have died), the police officers responsible for these deaths were never punished by the CCP regime. On the contrary, they were recognized as model officers of the anti-Falun Gong campaign and rewarded with promotions and financial incentives.

Condition 3: Huge financial profits from the organ transplants

As stated earlier, expensive fees make organ transplants tremendously profitable, which is a powerful motivating force, particularly in an officially atheist country.

Condition 4: Hatred instigated by slanderous propaganda, from the staged "Tiananmen Self Immolation" incident to live organ harvesting

Since the beginning of the persecution, the CCP regime has fabricated countless lies to slander Falun Gong. A typical example is the "Tiananmen Self Immolation," staged by the CCP regime in an effort to instigate nationwide hatred of Falun Gong. Live organ harvesting is part of the physical genocide of Falun Gong practitioners, driven by this hatred and the temptation of financial gain.

During the 53^rd session of the Sub-Commission on the Promotion

and Protection of Human Rights, International Educational Development had discovered that the self-immolation cited by the Chinese Government, which was being submitted as "proof" that Falun Gong was an "evil cult," had in fact been staged. [53]

The CCP's overwhelming deceptive propaganda indeed instigated hatred among the general public in China, paving the way for those who participated in the live organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners several years later, but who otherwise may have refrained out of moral concerns.

It was the persecution by the CCP and the huge financial incentives that drove the individual cases of organ harvesting to large-scale live organ harvesting. According to insiders, large-scale live organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners began to surface in late 2001.

The following diagram illustrates this evolution:

At present, there are still a large number of Falun Gong practitioners detained in the hundreds of forced labor camps in China. Many reports published on the Minghui website reveal that families of those who died from torture could not see their loved ones' bodies, which were forcibly cremated by the police. We have enough reason to believe that organ harvesting still continues on practitioners who die from torture, and it will not end until the persecution stops and all detained practitioners are released.

3. A small step from "using death row organs" to "live organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners"

The initial reaction of many people when they first heard of the live organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners was, "How could that be possible? How could doctors do such a thing?"

If China had an organ donation system as many western countries do, and if there had never existed the practice of organ harvesting from death row inmates, then the allegations of live organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners might indeed seem far-fetched. However, organ harvesting from death row inmates has been in practice for several decades. Some executed death row inmates were not completely dead when their organs were removed. Their cases were close to live organ harvesting. With this as a backdrop, and after the CCP regime labeled Falun Gong practitioners as "enemies of the state" ( a worse situation than that of death row inmates), moving from "using death row organs" to "live organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners" was but a small step.

Testimony of Annie, whose ex-husband participated in live organ harvesting

In Bloody Harvest, The killing of Falun Gong for their organs, one of the authors, David Kilgour, interviewed Annie (pseudonym), the ex-wife of a Chinese surgeon who removed corneas from Falun Gong practitioners.

According to Annie, her ex-husband began to take corneas from Falun Gong practitioners at the end of 2001. His hospital was only responsible for the removal, not the transplant. He was a neurosurgeon but was asked to remove corneas. Before being pushed into the operating rooms, the Falun Gong practitioners were given an injection to cause heart failure. Initially he did not know these living people were Falun Gong practitioners. In the beginning, fearing information could leak out, different organs were removed by different doctors in different rooms. Each time after the surgery he would receive a large sum of money, and given cash awards several dozen times his normal salary. Later on, as the doctors continued to get money, they no longer feared repercussions. They started to remove the organs together. During one operation when he collaborated with other doctors, he learned that the bodies were Falun Gong practitioners. Annie learned this information in 2003. Later that year they divorced.

We can see that the customary practice of harvesting the death row organs played a key role in live organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners. With the policy of "beating them to death counts as suicide," plus the deceptive and slanderous propaganda against Falun Gong, doctors became insensitive towards the "donors," treating them as death row inmates.

Flowchart of Live Organ Harvesting

Based on information provided by Annie, the following diagram illustrates the flowchart of live organ harvesting.

Different parties are involved in different steps, as seen on the flowchart. The doctors who perform organ harvesting may or may not be the ones who do the organ transplant surgeries. Therefore not every doctor is likely to know the whole picture. If asked where the organs come from, different doctors may provide different answers due to their involvement at the different steps in the process. More importantly, given that the source of organs is controlled by the military, it is very difficult for the outside world to know the entire procedure.

"Death row inmates" used as an excuse to shirk responsibility

From what we have learned, the common mentality of most organ transplant surgeons in China is that they are unwilling to ask questions about the true identities and backgrounds of the donors. The more surgeries they do, the more money they make, the better they get recognized, the more research papers they can publish, the faster they get promoted, and the less they want to learn about the source of organs. They do not have any qualms as long as they can make themselves believe that the organs were indeed from death row inmates. They follow the process to perform surgeries and do not give too much thought to whether the donors are indeed death row inmates or Falun Gong practitioners.

Every party in this process chooses to believe that the organs were harvested from death row inmates to shirk their responsibility:

1. As a result of CCP brainwashing, the military police have treated Falun Gong practitioners as mental patients or death row inmates.

2. Doctors who performed organ harvesting chose to believe that the donor lying on the operating table was a death row inmate, even if the donor was still alive, since they were accustomed to harvesting organs from executed death row inmates who were not completely dead.

3. Doctors who did not participate in organ harvesting but performed organ transplant surgeries were more likely to believe that the organs they received were from death row inmates instead of Falun Gong practitioners.

In Annie's ex-husband's case, he initially believed that the donors were death row inmates. By the time he learned that they were Falun Gong practitioners, he had become indifferent and was driven by the desire to make more money. Since death row organ harvesting has become a common practice, participants in the live organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners tend to treat them as death row inmates.

Yet, those Falun Gong practitioners whose organs were harvested alive are not traditional "death row inmates." Live organ harvesting amounts to cold-blooded murder. As the truth became known, out of fear, those participants decided to keep silent, and this has added to their crimes.

Doctors addicted to organ transplant surgeries

On January 26, 2005, Jiefang Daily published a story entitled "Nine-Hour Miracle," on Xia Qiang, director of the Organ Transplant Center in the Shanghai Renji Hospital, who was "addicted to liver transplant surgeries." On one occasion, Xia drove 140 kilometers to take a 72-year-old patient to the hospital for a liver transplant. The patient had several life-threatening illnesses - cirrhosis, liver cancer, stones in both kidneys and renal failure, and had been bedridden for a couple of months. The patient needed a liver-kidney transplant. Xia was driven to break the liver-kidney transplant record in Asia, where the oldest recipient was 65. Xia told the reporter: "I am crazy about liver transplants. I am addicted to them. I have to see patients every day, otherwise I do not feel settled. I have to do at least two to five liver transplant surgeries a week, and I am not afraid of failures. I'll learn my lessons and continue the next day." [54]

It is a good thing for a doctor to be so committed, and there is nothing wrong with pursuing success. However, when a doctor is addicted to organ transplants and has to do several surgeries a week to get satisfaction, all he will care about is how to get endless organ supplies. In that case, how many of them would care whether the donors are death row inmates or Falun Gong practitioners?

"Life unworthy of life" - How the Holocaust happened

Many historians believe that the Holocaust was a natural result of Hitler's promotion of racial cleansing under the Nazis. In 1920, Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche introduced a new concept, "Life unworthy of life," in their book, Allowing the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Life. Those considered to be "deviant" or a "source of social turmoil" in Nazi Germany and the occupied areas of Europe fell under this designation, which included the mentally ill, people with disabilities, political dissidents, criminals, Jews, and "non-whites" or non-Caucasian peoples. [55]

According to psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, the author of Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, the policy went through a number of iterations and modifications: "Of the five identifiable steps by which the Nazis carried out the principle of 'life unworthy of life,' coercive sterilization was the first. There followed the killing of 'impaired' children in hospitals; and then the killing of 'impaired' adults, mostly collected from mental hospitals, in centers especially equipped with carbon monoxide gas. This project was extended (in the same killing centers) to 'impaired' inmates of concentration and extermination camps and, finally, to mass killings in the extermination camps themselves." [56]

While it is a huge step from "respect of all lives" to "mass killing of Jews," it was only a small extra step from "destruction of life unworthy of life" to "mass killing of Jews."

Similarly, it would have been a huge step to "live organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners" had there never been organ harvesting from death row inmates. But it was only a small extra step from "harvesting death row organs" to "live organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners."

The following graph depicts the environment and conditions under which live organ harvesting could exist.

References

[47] Clearwisdom.net, "Policemen Scheme to Sell the Organs of Jailed Falun Gong Practitioners," December 22, 2000, http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2000/12/22/5759.html (English version: http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2000/12/31/3661.html)

[48] Clearwisdom.net, "Falun Gong Practitioner Ren Pengwu Was Murdered and All His Bodily Organs Were Removed by the Hulan County Police in Heilongjiang Province," April 19, 2001, http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2001/4/19/10084.html (English version: http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2001/4/21/6812.html)

[49] Clearwisdom.net, "Further Facts Regarding the Death Case of Dafa Practitioner Hao Runjuan, Fatally Tortured at Baiyun District Detention Center of Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province," July 6, 2002, http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2002/7/6/32910.html (English version: http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2002/7/11/24004.html)

[50] Minghui.net, "Request to Investigate the Cause of the Death of Sun Ruijian," December 16, 2000, http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2000/12/16/4707.html

[51] Clearwisdom.net, "Organ Harvesting Suspected in the Murders of Ms. Fu Keshu and Mr. Xu Genli, Practitioners Visiting the Jinggang Mountain Area (Photos)," August 8, 2006, http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2006/8/8/135079.html (English version: http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2006/8/12/76758.html)

[52] Clearwisdom.net, "International Community's Immediate Attention Needed: Bodily Organs Removed and Sold From Falun Dafa Practitioners Tortured to Death in China," June 16, 2004, http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2004/6/16/77099.html (English version: http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2004/6/25/49505.html)

[53] United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, "Terrorism, Transnational Corporations, Traditional Practices Discussed," Press Release by United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, 53rd session. August 14, 2001,

http://www.unhchr.ch/huricane/huricane.nsf/0/D1D7C610CB97B340C1256AA9002678B0?opendocument

[54] Jiefang Daily, "Nine-Hour Miracle," http://old.jfdaily.com/pdf/050126/jf05.pdf (content no longer accessible)

[55] Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche, Die Freigabe der Vernichtung Lebensunwerten Lebens (Allowing the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Life), 1920.

[56] Robert Jay Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, 1986.