A disturbing new report compiled by journalist Ethan Gutmann, human rights lawyer David Matas and former Canadian politician David Kilgour suggests China is harvesting the organs of its political prisoners.
In the 718-page paper, Matas, Gutmann and Kilgour point out the discrepancy between China's hospital records and the Chinese government's official figures, reports Quartz. While government statistics put the number of organ transplants completed in China at 10,000 in 2015, the report's authors say many hospitals claim to complete thousands of transplants on their own, suggesting the actual figure is much higher. By Gutmann's estimate, China performs somewhere between 60,000 and 100,000 organ transplants per year.
There are legal problems associated with this high number of organ transplants and the hospitals themselves, as the report says only 164 hospitals have received permission to complete organ transplants, according to Quartz. However, hundreds of hospitals which applied for organ transplant permission in 2007 and did not receive approval continue to perform the surgeries anyway.
Yet the most disturbing part of China's lucrative organ transplant industry is where these organs are coming from. The report's authors claim the Chinese government is sourcing its organs from executed prisoners – China is among the top three nations in the world to exercise capital punishment – and selling them to hospitals.
Though the Chinese government says it has made efforts to stop this organ harvesting, human rights activists argue otherwise. Quartz writes: “The report cites interviews with detained individuals that claim political prisoners are routinely given blood tests that other prisoners are not, in an effort to ensure their organs remain healthy enough to be transferred to another individual.”
The prisoners being executed are mostly associated with the Falun Gong, a religious organization which is often critical of the Chinese government, however verifying this information can be a challenge, as both the Chinese authorities and the Falun Gong themselves have their own set of biases.
[Photo via Quartz]
