Founding Statement

 

Illegal organ trafficking in China is certainly one of the largest state crimes of this century. It has been revealed that this barbaric trade in human body parts involves the on-demand supply of organs from “prisoners of conscience” – in many cases while they are still alive – for Communist Party cadres and their families, as well as wealthy people inside and outside of China.

  These facts have been supported by many pieces of evidence of high accuracy, such as investigations which were conducted by a well-known Canadian human rights lawyer and former Canadian cabinet member over a period of 10 years; and by interviews carried out by an American journalist with more than 120 people; as well as the testimony of an exiled Uyghur surgeon who carried out operations on prisoners.

  China has been explaining that the organs are sourced from “death-row prisoners”. However, the number of executions and the number of transplant operations do not match up. The Chinese government’s official figure for the number of transplant cases per year is 10,000, but according to the latest investigative report, the actual number is estimated to be 6 to 10 times that figure. The report points out that lives of “prisoners of conscience” imprisoned for their beliefs have been lost in the tens of thousands.

  Who are these “prisoners of conscience” who disappear into the darkness in their tens of thousands every year?

  It is thought that most of them are minority ethnic groups such as Uyghurs and Tibetans, or cultivators of Falun Gong and other religious followers. According to the US State Department country reports, labour camps in China accommodate 250,000 prisoners who are mainly held for their beliefs or are political dissidents. Some Western experts on China point out that more than a half of the labour camp population is cultivators of Falun Gong. It is believed that these labour camps are acting as “living organ donation banks”, which supply organs on demand.

  Monitoring by the international community towards this unbelievable atrocity in modern society is becoming stricter. Recently, in June 2016, US Congress adopted Resolution 343 which states, “the killing of religious or political prisoners for the purpose of selling their organs for transplant is an egregious and intolerable violation of the fundamental right to life” and presented six items for resolution including “calls on the Government of the People’s Republic of China and Communist Party of China to immediately end the practice of organ harvesting from all prisoners of conscience”. Prior to the US resolution, the EU Parliament passed a resolution in 2013. Different parliaments around the world have been passing resolutions condemning or demanding investigations to stop the “evil practice” of “organ pillaging” in China. Israel, Spain, Italy and Taiwan have already changed their laws and are restricting transplant tourism from their own countries.

  In today’s globalised world, can Japan alone observe this “evil practice” with arms folded? No, it cannot. Because China is our neighbouring country we have already been complicit in this live organ business whether knowingly or not.

 There are relevant testimonies supporting the fact that several hundreds of Japanese have been to China and received organ transplants. It has been revealed that several large transplant hospitals in the northeast of China set up beds mainly for Japanese patients. According to the latest report (“An Update”), it is revealed that many transplant doctors in China learned the latest transplant technology in Japan and returned back to China.

 We herewith demand the total abolition of organ pillaging and trafficking that is currently being carried out, and set up the “Association to Consider Organ Transplantation in China” and we appeal as follows:

  • We appeal to the media so that many media will cover this crime of organ pillaging in China to let Japanese citizens know about this important human rights issue.
  • We appeal to the Japanese government to release a condemnation statement against China to stop organ pillaging, which is an unprecedented persecution in all of history.
  • We appeal to the Japanese Diet, asking for a law to ban Japanese citizens from visiting China to receive an organ transplant.
  • We appeal to the Japanese medical and related communities to make sure Japanese advanced medical technology is not complicit in organ pillaging from “prisoners of conscience” in China even indirectly.

January 2018
Hideaki Kase
Founder Representative
Association to Consider Organ Transplantation in China