[House Hearing, 112 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
ORGAN HARVESTING OF RELIGIOUS AND
POLITICAL DISSIDENTS BY THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY
=======================================================================
JOINT HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS
AND THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH,
AND HUMAN RIGHTS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
SEPTEMBER 12, 2012
__________
Serial No. 112-180
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey HOWARD L. BERMAN, California
DAN BURTON, Indiana GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York
ELTON GALLEGLY, California ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American
DANA ROHRABACHER, California Samoa
DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois BRAD SHERMAN, California
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
RON PAUL, Texas RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri
MIKE PENCE, Indiana ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
JOE WILSON, South Carolina GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
CONNIE MACK, Florida THEODORE E. DEUTCH,
JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska Florida
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas DENNIS CARDOZA, CaliforniaUntil 8/
TED POE, Texas 14/12 deg.
GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky
JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
BILL JOHNSON, Ohio ALLYSON SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania
DAVID RIVERA, Florida CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut
MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania FREDERICA WILSON, Florida
TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas KAREN BASS, California
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
ANN MARIE BUERKLE, New York
RENEE ELLMERS, North Carolina
ROBERT TURNER, New York
Yleem D.S. Poblete, Staff Director
Richard J. Kessler, Democratic Staff Director
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
DANA ROHRABACHER, California, Chairman
MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri
RON PAUL, Texas DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
TED POE, Texas KAREN BASS, California
DAVID RIVERA, Florida
------
Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman
JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska KAREN BASS, California
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri
ANN MARIE BUERKLE, New York THEODORE E. DEUTCH,
ROBERT TURNER, New York FloridaAs of 6/19/
12 deg.
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
WITNESSES
Mr. Ethan Gutmann, adjunct fellow, Foundation for the Defense of
Democracies, and Author, ``Losing the New China''.............. 8
Gabriel Danovitch, M.D., professor of medicine, UCLA Medical
School......................................................... 14
Damon Noto, M.D., spokesman, Doctors Against Forced Organ
Harvesting..................................................... 27
Charles Lee, M.D., spokesman and public relations director,
Global Service Center for Quitting the Chinese Communist Party. 36
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
The Honorable Christopher H. Smith, a Representative in Congress
from the State of New Jersey, and chairman, Subcommittee on
Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights: Prepared statement.... 5
Mr. Ethan Gutmann: Prepared statement............................ 10
Gabriel Danovitch, M.D.: Prepared statement...................... 17
Damon Noto, M.D.: Prepared statement............................. 30
Charles Lee, M.D.: Prepared statement............................ 38
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 52
Hearing minutes.................................................. 53
The Honorable Christopher H. Smith: Material submitted for the
record......................................................... 54
ORGAN HARVESTING OF RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL DISSIDENTS BY THE CHINESE
COMMUNIST PARTY
----------
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2012
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:30 p.m., in
room 2172 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Dana Rohrabacher
(chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations)
and Hon. Chris Smith (chairman of the Subcommittee on Africa,
Global Health, and Human Rights) presiding.
Mr. Rohrabacher. We call this hearing to order, and thank
my colleague, Chairman Chris Smith, for agreeing to hold this
hearing jointly between the Oversight and Investigations
Subcommittee and his Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights
Subcommittee. I also want to thank ranking members, Congressman
Russ Carnahan, Congresswoman Karen Bass.
The Chinese Communisty Party is a corrupt elite which
aggressively claims territory in the South China Sea, pilfers
U.S. intellectual property, steals American jobs, and conducts
massive espionage against our Government and private
enterprises. The CCP spends a vast amount of its time, energy
and resources maintaining its grip on power by suppressing the
rights of the Chinese people, ethnic groups such as the
Tibetans, the Uighurs, and yes, religious practitioners and
anyone who speaks up against the party's grip on power.
The CCP and its state security machine uses a wide range of
repression techniques including, not only limited to,
censorship, beatings, home imprisonment, forced labor camps,
those labor camps called the Laogai of course. And the most
ghoulish manifestation of this gangsterism is the forced
harvesting of organs of the political prisoners and religious
followers that it arrests, particularly of the Chinese
religious movement known as the Falun Gong.
Last year, the U.S. Commission on International Religious
Freedom found in their annual report that the Communist Party
of China maintains an extra judicial security apparatus called
the 6-10 office to persecute Falun Gong believers. It is
estimated that over half of the 300,000 believed in the Laogai
prisons are inmates who happen to be part of the Falun Gong.
Since the CCP began its crackdown in 1999, and began to
call the peaceful practice of the Falun Gong an evil cult,
thousands have been killed and their organs ripped out of their
body while they were still warm and transplanted into the
bodies of rich Chinese and foreign accomplices. Members of the
CCP do this in order to make themselves and their children
rich, and because the Falun Gong was and remains a peaceful and
indigenous movement which attracts tens of millions of
followers in China. The CCP cannot allow any independent group
in China to exist which can motivate so many people. Any group
the CCP does not control is a threat and must be penetrated,
subverted and destroyed. The Falun Gong has remained peaceful
even in the face of unspeakable brutality. This unbridled
obsession with destroying the Falun Gong unmasks the true
nature of the CCP.
I look forward to hearing the comments of our panelists.
And with us today we have Dr. Damon Noto, who is a spokesman
for the organization, Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting.
He graduated from Mt. Sinai Medical School and is currently an
attending physician at Hackensack University Medical Center in
New Jersey.
Then we have Dr. Gabriel Danovitch--I hope I am pronouncing
that correctly--is a professor of medicine at the David Geffen
School of Medicine at UCLA and medical director of the Kidney
and Pancreas Transplant Program at the Ronald Reagan Medical
Center, and is an expert on organ transplant tissues.
Then we have with us Dr. Charles Lee, who serves as the
spokesman for the Global Center for Quitting the Chinese
Communist Party. Sounds good to me. He was born in Communist
China and lived through the Cultural Revolution. After 1989 he
came to the United States. He is a Falun Gong practitioner, and
when he traveled back to China in 2003 he was arrested at the
airport and spent the next 3 years in a Chinese prison. This
occurred despite the fact that he is a U.S. citizen. While in
prison he was tortured and forced to make products, some of
which were later exported for profit to this country.
Dr. Ethan Gutmann is an accomplished author and currently
the adjunct fellow at the Foundation for Defense of
Democracies. He has written extensively on China including for
the Weekly Standard, National Review and for World Affairs
Journal. He is also the author of a book, ``Losing the New
China: A Story of American Commerce, Desire and Betrayal.'' He
earned his bachelor and master degrees in international affairs
from Columbia University.
I believe today's hearing is exceedingly important as we
stand in moral witness to the ongoing crimes of the CCP and the
possible accomplices that they have to these crimes right here
in the United States.
We now have Ms. Bass, did you have an opening statement?
Ms. Bass. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Chairmen Rohrabacher and
Smith, I want to thank you for holding this hearing, and I look
forward to learning more about this horrific practice. I noted
there is some differences in terms of the extent of this
practice on the practitioners of Falun Gong, but to me, the
idea that you would have the forced harvesting of human organs,
regardless, is just really deeply troubling. I know that the
March 2012 Wall Street Journal article notes that China
recently indicated that it plans to abolish the practice of
death row inmate organ harvesting over the next 5 years. I
don't why we would do that over the next 5 years and not
immediately.
And I would also like to know, and perhaps it will come out
in the testimony, since this is a new issue to me, when they
are harvesting these organs who are they for and who they go
to, are they exported around the world? Is this a profit making
business? All of that kind of information I look forward to
learning about from our witnesses, and thank you for taking the
time out to come.
Mr. Rohrabacher. We also have with us Chris Smith, and let
me just note that Chris and I have fought so many battles
together over the years and I have always been very proud that
these type of stands which--and let me just note, when you are
a Member of Congress, no matter what, there is going to be
somebody else that is trying to get your job in the next
election. And a lot of times Members of Congress only want to
tackle issues that are going to increase the number of
contributions to their campaign war chest. Standing up for
human rights does not increase the amount of money in your
campaign war chest. Chris has been here all of these years and
has been fighting the good fight, and it is an honor to have
you here and co-chairing this hearing.
Mr. Smith. Well, Mr. Chairman, thank you for inviting our
subcommittee, Ms. Bass and I and members of the subcommittee to
join you for this important hearing on the grave, but little
publicized human rights abuse occurring in China today, and
that has been for many years, organ harvesting.
I wanted to say very clearly for the record how grateful I
am for your leadership on human rights in China. Again, very
often there are far too few people willing to speak, not about
the human rights abuses in China but to do so with such
clarity. And I think as most of you know, as a former
speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, Dana Rohrabacher knows how to
phrase and how to cut right to the chase and has done so with
excellence since I have been here. So I want to thank you for
that extraordinary leadership.
What adjectives can be used to describe the Chinese doctors
and hospitals engaging in large scale harvesting of human
organs for profit? The ordinary words like concerned,
disturbing, appalling or shocking are inadequate, yet our
ordinary humanity shies away from words like barbaric. And in
the absence of firm statistics, open waiting lists,
tranparency, and the giving of consent, and even the number of
Chinese who have been sentenced to death, or condemned
prisoners who are said to have been the large number of organ
donors, we can't know for sure. But we need to change that and
the inquiry has to begin in earnest. All that has been done
years to date has set a very, very terrible record for the
Chinese Government's organ harvesting, but now we need to go
and make this a premier human rights issue.
I want to thank Dr. Charles Lee. He has been tenacious in
trying to get the Congress to focus on this important issue,
and so I thank him and I look forward to his testimony.
I would add paranthetically that as far back as 1998, June
4th and June 16th, I chaired a hearing on the sale of body
parts in the People's Republic of China, and we actually
brought in a guard who brought in pictures, Harry Wu was the
one who arranged it, and he authenticated, and we had
everything he said and everything he brought to us really raked
over the coals to make sure it was accurate and there was
absolutely no guile or mischief in his presentation. He sat
right where you gentlemen sat and talked about how they would
kill prisoners, mostly political and religious prisoners, but
not execute them, not kill them immediately, but take out the
desired organs and then finish the job of murdering that
individual. And whatever was needed, kidneys--what is it that
you need? They were able to put in the order, and then the
wardens at various prisons would fill that order.
The international transplant community, aware that their
life-extending skills might be abused or might set in motion
sales of organs by the poor, or favor the rich, have over the
years developed demanding protocols to assure that their
donations conform to strict ethical and procedural guidelines.
The Chinese Government says it is moving toward adherence of
these standards. I would say, let us not hold our breath. Let
us trust but verify, and in the absence of accurate information
can these assurances even be a little bit believed?
All this so far describes the ordinary transplant of such
organs as kidneys, livers, lungs, hearts, and corneas from
those recently deceased to those who can use them. I am
confident we will hear more from our witnesses about
transplants in China and where that nation falls short of
international standards and protocols.
Mr. Chairman, reports from India, Malaysia, and Israel, of
their citizens who traveled to China for transplants that were
botched, and the testimony of a few doctors and nurses now
outside of China, give disturbing evidence that China has
become a lawless zone where medical skills are for sale for
huge sums, where organs are said to come from prisoners, and
again we began documenting this back in 1998, and I am sure it
preceded even then when high officials or transplant tourists
with money need not wait for organs to become available,
because it is available because they execute a prisoner, where
profit and power run over the law or medical ethics, where
pious pronouncements are made by the government that they are
not doing this.
So far I have spoken of ordinary transplants, but there is
a graver prospect, that the Chinese military doctors may be
engaged in organ harvesting from living prisoners in Chinese
camps and prisons. The charge is that many victims are ethnic
minorities, and as Mr. Rohrabacher pointed out, members of the
Falun Gong, members of the spiritual movement unjustly held,
abused, subjected to psychological and physical torture for
nothing more than fidelity to truthfulness, compassion, and
forbearance. This possibility pushes, and this probability
pushes us into the horrific beyond, beyond the challenges of
our language making ``barbaric'' too calm of a word. If this is
true, even the powerful fraught legal term ``crimes against
humanity'' seems inadequate, leached of horror. For those who
doubt that horror could be sanctioned by a modern state, I
commend the recent article by one of today's witnesses, Ethan
Gutmann, and I ask that it be appended to record of this
hearing.
In the article of the Weekly Standard from last December,
he describes Xinjiang's procedure, removal of organs by teams
of surgeons in medical vans immediately after executions. One
doctor told him that some of the transplants came from still
living victims, and that comports with what we heard from
witnesses back in 1998 and since. He said the stories point to
systematic elimination of China's religious and political
prisoners, and of course they are making huge profits by doing
that.
Without objection, I would, since we were late in starting,
ask that my full statement be made a part of the record.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith follows:]
----------
Mr. Smith. But again, Mr. Chairman, I thank you for pulling
this hearing together because this barbaric human rights abuse
must be stopped, but to stop it we first have to further expose
it, which is why we have this panel. Thank you.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Ms. Bass, thank you for being here, and
Chris, thank you for being here.
This hearing goes to the heart of what America is really
all about, and if we don't care about things like this what
kind of country and what kind of people have we become? So
thank you to all the witnesses for coming here and helping to
expose this horrendous part of what is going on in the world
today.
What we are going to ask is each of the witnesses will have
5 minutes to summarize their position. If you have a longer
statement you can submit it for the record, and then we will
follow that with the questions from the committee to you after
you all have finished your opening statements.
So Mr. Gutmann, you may proceed.
STATEMENT OF MR. ETHAN GUTMANN, ADJUNCT FELLOW, FOUNDATION FOR
THE DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACIES, AND AUTHOR, ``LOSING THE NEW
CHINA''
Mr. Gutmann. Beginning in 2006, I began conducting
comprehensive interviews with medical professionals, Chinese
law enforcement personnel, and over 50 refugees from the Laogai
System, in order to piece together the story of how mass
harvesting from prisoners of conscience evolved in China. Based
on my research, the practice began in Xinjiang in the 1990s. By
2001, the practice expanded nationwide, with Falun Gong
providing a much larger, and frequently anonymous, pool of
potential donors.
My time today is very short. I too was skeptical when I
began my investigation. Some of you may be today. So instead of
offering my conclusions, I invite you to draw your own
conclusions from my evidence, 12 witnesses, each of whom fills
in a critical piece of the puzzle.
Harry Wu's research shows that harvesting criminals began
in the 1980s. By the early 1990s it had become systemic, a
practice involving organ donation consent forms and mobile
organ harvesting vans at execution sites. These donors were
criminals. Whether or not the criminals signed the forms under
duress, they had been convicted of capital crimes under Chinese
law.
My first witness, Nijat Abdureyimu, special officer, 1st
Regiment, Urumqi Public Security Bureau, doesn't dispute
that but he does note that by 1994, the doctors doing the
harvesting had become increasingly uninhibited. A fellow
officer, puzzled over the screams, ``like from hell'' that he
heard coming from a harvesting van. Two years later the
prison's medical director confessed to Nijiati that organ
harvesting from living human beings--they would expire during
the surgery of course--was now routine.
My second witness is Dr. Enver Tohti, general surgeon.
Based in an Urumqi hospital, under his supervisor's firm
direction, Enver performed a live surgical extraction of a
man's liver and kidneys on an execution ground. This execution
ground was commonly used for political prisoners. The man had
long hair, rather than a convict's shaved head. But there are
no fully credible allegations of doctors harvesting political
or religious prisoners until 1997, the year of the ``Ghulja
Incident.''
My third witness, a nurse who worked in a Ghulja hospital
in 1997, describes the hospital being turned upside down.
Arrest of any doctor who dared to treat a Uighur protestor. The
segregation of medical staff. Chinese doctors administering
slow-acting lethal injections to any Uyghur baby who had the
misfortune of being born a second child. Finally, she
describes, 6 months after the Ghulja incident, the case of a
21-year-old Uighur protestor harvested for his kidneys by a
Chinese military hospital.
This timing jibes with my fourth witness, a young doctor
ordered to blood-test prisoners in the political wing of an
Urumqi prison on behalf of six highly placed Party officials in
search of healthy organs.
The next eight witnesses, and I am going to skip their
names for the brevity, come from different backgrounds, were
held as prisoners in strikingly different facilities, yet they
all had two things in common. They were all practitioners of
Falun Gong, and they were all given strikingly similar medical
exams. The doctor would draw a large volume of blood, then a
chest x-ray, then a urine sample, probing of the abdomen, and
in most cases, a close examination of the corneas. Did the
doctor ask any of them to trace the movement of his light? Did
he wiggle his fingers to check their peripheral vision? No.
Only the corneas. Nothing involving brain function. The doctors
were checking the retail organs and nothing else.
Now I defy the Chinese authorities to furnish a plausible
explanation for such tests, or why these tests were given to
thousands of Falun Gong men and women, particularly women,
often matched with an individual guard to prevent any
disruption. Why were there special buses arranged to take Falun
Gong practitioners away after extensive blood testing? Or why,
as time progressed, ``Eastern Lightning'' Christians, or
Tibetan activists were given the same exams? Now I can't supply
a death count for those groups. But I estimate that 65,000
Falun Gong were murdered for their organs from 2000 to 2008.
Given my time limitations here, I request that you include
my recent chapter in State Organs, which explicitly explains
the methodology behind that number, along with two articles,
``China's Gruesome Organ Harvest,'' and ``The Xinjiang
Procedure,'' in the record of today's hearings. Anyone who
reads this material will quickly grasp the obvious, the demand
for the harvesting of political prisoners came not from triads,
but aging Party cadres. China is a surveillance state. It is
aimed at observing Party members and the military. Wang Lijun
himself was given an award for medical innovation in organ
harvesting, so ``Party Central'' knew about this. This was
state-run, and any reader will quickly grasp why the Quit-the-
Party movement cannot be a Reform-the-Party movement.
Ultimately, my writing and my testimony cannot do justice
to these 12 witnesses, but I can report one thing with
certainty. Every one of these witnesses that I mentioned has
consented to testify openly before this committee. Now the fact
is, these witnesses have begun to realize there is strength in
the collective narrative and in transparency, particularly in
the West, and particular if the U.S. Government facilitates
this transparency. Sadly, little support has come forward in
the 6 years since these first allegations have surfaced. Much
more evidence has accumulated since that time but our
Government has done little.
So I believe a tragedy is being played out, even in this
hearing today, for in the final analysis these witnesses are
the men and women who should be sitting in this chair today,
not me.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Gutmann follows:]
----------
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much for that testimony.
Dr. Lee, you may proceed.
Dr. Lee. Can I testify after these two doctors on my left,
please? Because I think that make more sense.
Mr. Rohrabacher. That will be just fine. Thank you.
Dr. Lee. Thank you.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Doctor, would you like to proceed?
STATEMENT OF GABRIEL DANOVITCH, M.D., PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE,
UCLA MEDICAL SCHOOL
Dr. Danovitch. Good afternoon, Honorable Chairman
Rohrabacher, Mr. Smith, Ms. Bass, Members of Congress,
congressional staff and guests. I am Gabriel Danovitch. I am a
professor of medicine at UCLA. I am also the secretary of the
international Transplantation Society (TTS), which is the NGO
for the WHO for matters of transplantation.
TTS and the International Society of Nephrology (ISN) are
co-sponsors of the Declaration of Istanbul on organ trafficking
and transplant tourism, a declaration that has been endorsed by
over 100 governments and professional organizations around the
world, and which works to support an end to the exploitation of
vulnerable organ donors around the world and to put a stop to
the use of organs of executed prisoners in China.
Let me say categorically that the recovery of organs for
transplantation from executed prisoners is regarded
internationally as an unacceptable abrogation of human rights.
The Chinese Ministry of Health has also said repeatedly that it
is not consistent with international standards, yet it
continues.
There may be doubts about the number, but there can be no
doubts about the Chinese own numbers that you can look up on
the Chinese Ministry of Health own Web site, CLTR, the China
Liver Transplant Registry, which as of August 2012, that is
last month, gives over 21,000 executed prisoners for liver
transplant. The numbers may be considerably more than that but
they are unlikely to be less than the Chinese Government's own
statistics. There was some dropoff in these numbers at the time
of the Olympic Games in China in 2008, under the influence of
Congress, but since that time those numbers seem to be
increasing.
The ease in which these organs can be obtained and the
manner that they may be allocated to wealthy foreigners has
engendered a culture of corruption which also affects living
donation where vending is rampant. Despite Chinese laws, there
are Chinese laws to this effect which are often flouted, and
statements by the Ministry of Health admit that their own laws
are flouted. These Chinese organ recovery practices have wide
implications beyond China. China has become a hub for wealthy
foreigners seeking quick access to organs, and in doing so this
has undermined the development of organ recovery in other
countries. I include Americans who travel to China and other
countries to purchase organs in numbers that we do not know,
and I will come back to that in a moment why that is an
important job for this group.
The medical outcome for recipients of these organs is often
poor, both from executed prisoners and from vended donors. U.S.
citizens returning from China and from other countries that
have been involved in organ vending often do so with life-
threatening medical complications requiring prolonged hospital
care, high mortality rate and significant public health risk. I
have observed this personally in my own practice at the UCLA
Ronald Reagan Medical Center and have published in this matter.
On the positive side, attempts are being made by the
Chinese Ministry of Health to develop alternative organ
recovery practices that are consistent with international
standards. The Transplantation Society, and the Declaration of
Instanbul Custodian Group (DICS) is actively engaged in trying
to support the activities. With respect to the United States,
this country has recently improved its public transparency and
accountability regarding non-residents coming to the United
States for transplants. However, there is no transparency or
reliable information on U.S. citizens that travel to China and
elsewhere, despite the medical risk and public health
implication and tremendous cost involved in that. We just do
not know. There is no information on that.
Organ vending does not only occur in China. The WHO has
identified several hot spots in developing countries around the
world. Organ vending in this country remains illegal according
to NOTA, the National Organ Transplantation Act, yet it is not
illegal for United States citizens to engage in vending abroad.
The U.S. should take the lead in this regard in stopping its
citizens from going abroad to break the laws in other
countries. Other countries have passed such laws.
The Transplantation Society, and the DICG has made and will
continue to make efforts to deny academic recognition to those
whose practice is contrary to its ethical standards. We also
are attempting to influence the behavior of pharmaceutical
companies.
It is hard for us to control what goes on in China, but we
do have some control about what goes on in this country and how
we affect the behavior of Americans. It is not enough for us to
express abhorence to this practice, Congress can tell Americans
not to go to China or elsewhere to purchase organs from the
living or the dead. We can do that. The U.S. should prohibit
citizens from contravening organ transplant laws in other
countries and should work to achieve international consensus.
The National Organ Transplantation Act, NOTA, of which we are
rightly proud in this country, should be given extra
territorial jurisdiction.
All U.S. residents returning to this country after
receiving an organ transplant performed legally or illegally in
another country should be required to declare this fact on
their return. Such a policy would permit transparency and
protect public health. U.S. visa DS-160 now is a small step in
that direction. When you fill in your customs form when you
come into the United States you say whether or not you have
been on a farm or you are bringing in nuts, but you don't have
to say whether or not you purchased an organ in another
country.
U.S. companies should be prohibited from undertaking organ
transplant related clinical activities or benefiting from the
sale of equipment or pharmaceuticals if the source of organs is
executed prisoners or commercial organ donation. And we have
tried to make some progress with pharmaceutical companies in
that regard.
Human trafficking for organ removal, which occurs not only
in China but in other countries in the world, should be added
to the Trafficking Victim Protections Act, TVPA. The U.S. Organ
and Procurement and Transplantation Network, which is a branch
of the DHHS around the corner from here, has accepted the
definitions of the Declaration of Istanbul, and UNOS has
accepted, which is the organization which governs
transplantation in the United States, has accepted the
principles of this declaration. Several governments now include
the declaration in their transplant regulations. The U.S.
Government and the State Department should promote the
principles of the Declaration of Istanbul and the World Health
Assembly whose Guiding Principles now cover these principles.
Through its good offices in China and elsewhere, the U.S.
Government and State Department should make it clear that the
use of organs from executed prisoners and the buying and
selling of organs from the living and the dead around the world
is an unacceptable abrogation of human rights, and the U.S.
should be prepared to offer the Chinese authorities assistance
in the development of alternative, ethically acceptable organ
retrieval practices. The U.S. professional transplant community
is at the ready to help in that regard. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Danovitch follows:]
----------
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much.
Dr. Noto?
STATEMENT OF DAMON NOTO, M.D., SPOKESMAN, DOCTORS AGAINST
FORCED ORGAN HARVESTING
Dr. Noto. Thank you for allowing me to come to speak today
on such an important topic. I am a spokesperson for an
organization called, ``Doctors Against Forced Organ
Harvesting,'' and my purpose here today is to try and convey to
you the information we have learned over the past decade.
Since the 1990s evidence has continued to mount which
concern the medical community that Chinese transplant practices
were just completely unethical. And this goes back to what he
mentioned before, in 1998 when a prisoner guard testified here,
and then in 2001, a Chinese medical doctor named Wang Guoqi
fled to the United States, testified in front of Congress that
China was organs from executed prisoners. This is something the
Chinese Communist Party at the time completely denied.
Many doctors then started becoming very alarmed at the
rapid exponential increase in transplantations that were taking
place in China since 1999, and then the number of transplant
centers just took off. Chinese tranplant centers went from 150
in 1999 to over 600 by early 2000. And according to the Chinese
Vice Minister of Health, the number of transplants performed
each year went from several hundred in 1999 to well over 10,000
a year by 2008. And the China Daily Newspaper reported that the
actual number in 2006 was 20,000. And now it is widely
recognized that China performs the second most amount of
transplantations only second to the United States.
Even more troublesome was evidence that China seemed to
have an overabundance of organs and that their medical tourism
business was booming. They had hospitals advertising all over
the internet that they could guarantee patients organs within
the time frame of weeks, and they could even schedule them in
advance. To put that in perspective, the United States waiting
time for a kidney is over 3 years.
It became apparent that China's organ harvesting was an
extremely profitable business, with the Chinese medical centers
often saying that their number one source of revenue was their
transplant unit, and that on their Web sites they were saying
they were charging $30,000 for a cornea, $60,000 for a kidney,
$150,000 for a heart. Imagine what one person was worth, in the
hundreds of thousands.
Some people may think, ah, it makes sense. China is such a
large country, so many people. But you really need to take a
few factors into consideration. One, China does not have a
formal public organ donation program, and two, they have no
organized national distribution system. And even, even though
they tried many times, the Beijing Red Cross themselves stated
in 2011 that over the past 20 years only 37 people nationwide
had registered to become an organ donor. Take that in
comparison to the United Kingdom who has 18 million people as
registered donors. Many people believe this is because the
Chinese people believe, have a very strong spiritual belief
that they need to be buried with their organs intact.
So the question becomes, how does China become the number
two transplant country in the world, and where are these organs
coming from? Well, in 2005 the Vice Minister of Health of China
admitted that over 95 percent of the organs transplanted come
from executed prisoner. And then 2010, he stated again that
between 1997 and 2008 China had performed more than 100,000
transplantations, and over 90 percent of the organs came from
executed prisoners. This is China saying that themselves.
Although the Chinese Government admits the major source of
organs is from executed prisoners, they don't actually give
official numbers for either the amount of people they execute
every year or the amount of people they transplant every year.
If you look at many experts that try to estimate it, it is
anywhere from about 2,000 to 8,000 executions a year takes
place in China, which is more than all the world combined. But
that still falls short of the 10,000 organs that they are
saying they are transplanting every year. So the numbers that
they are saying they are transplanting every year. So the
numbers don't add up. Even if they executed 10,000 a year and
transplanted 10,000 a year, there would still be a very large
discrepancy. Why is that? It is simply impossible that those
10,000 people executed would match perfectly the 10,000 people
that needed the organs.
You really have so many factors that go into play when you
are transplanting somebody, and many times we will use the
ratio of 10:1. It takes ten people to find a suitable donor for
one person. So if we go by those numbers, they couldn't be just
executing 10,000 people. Doing it the way they say they are
doing, they would have to be executing around at least 100,000
people.
Then there is the factor of time, which needs to be really
understood. Once you harvest someone's organs it is not that
you can keep these organs around forever. There is a very short
window of time. Take for example, a heart, which only has about
8 hours once removed from the body. And you have the fact that
China's own state laws says that prisoners once sentenced to
execution have to be executed within 7 days. And this almost
happens automatically. So we don't have the situation in China
where we have all these people on death row. It is just not
like that.
So saying this, this means that the prisoners sentenced to
death cannot fully account for all the transplantations that
are taking place in China, especially when we talk about
medical tourism patients. So how are they able to have this
``on-demand'' transplant system that is capable of extremely
short times? The only way they can be doing this is if they
have another source of living donors that are available on
demand. And I say living donors. And this is where, in some
cases, the actual transplant operation itself becomes the
method of execution.
It has been through many different investigations that we
now come to believe that it is prisoners of conscience,
including Falun Gong practitioners, Tibetans, Uighurs, house
Christians, who are being killed for their organs. And many of
us now believe that the practioners of Falun Gong may be one of
the worst victims because they comprise by many, or are
believed by many to be the largest population of prisoners of
conscience in China today.
Also if you look at the timeline of the onset of China's
boom in transplantations and the onset of the persecution of
Falun Gong, it almost runs in complete parallel with both of
them starting in 1999. Plus you have the fact that Falun Gong
practitioners become particularly vulnerable because they often
don't give their true identities while in prison to protect
their family and loved ones. We also know that they are
subjected to tests, like blood and urine tests, physical exams,
ultrasound evaluations, multiple times while they are
incarcerated.
How can all this be possible? Well, China has a very unique
situation where the military controls the prison systems, the
forced labor camps and the majority of the hospitals performing
these transplantations. Therefore they are able to do all the
coordinating to make it possible and they have the ability to
do it secretively.
So where does this put us? Well, we have American doctors,
we have American hospitals, we have American universities
facing an extremely important dilemma, and we have a place
where American doctors need to know what is going on.
Currently, we have physicians, like Dr. Danovitch just said,
have their patients going to China for organs. We have our own
hospitals training these transplant surgeons from China. We
have our universities participating in funding research in
China on transplantation. We have our certain well-known
pharmaceutical companies selling the transplant medications
needed to do the transplants and even funding clinical trials
in China to develop new ones.
If we look at the numbers, every day there is a few dozen
people being killed for their organs, and if we wait another 5
years as the Chinese Medical Association has said it is going
to take to stop this, there is a possibility of another 50,000
innocent lives that will be taken.
I stand before you today hoping that the U.S. Government
will perform an official investigation into this matter and
release all evidence it has about China's transplant practices.
How can we expect our doctors and hospitals to make good
decisions without all the information? In fact, our medical
community have become accomplices to this horrible, terrific
tragedy. I recommend also, Congress pass a resolution
condemning China's forced organ harvesting from prisoners and
prisoners of conscience. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Noto follows:]
----------
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you, Doctor.
Dr. Lee?
STATEMENT OF CHARLES LEE, M.D., SPOKESMAN AND PUBLIC RELATIONS
DIRECTOR, GLOBAL SERVICE CENTER FOR QUITTING THE CHINESE
COMMUNIST PARTY
Dr. Lee. Thank you, Chairman and distinguished members of
the committees for giving me the opportunity to testify today,
and I also want to thank the gentlemen who were just speaking
about the organ harvesting.
I myself was in prison in China for 3 years, and I forcibly
had blood samples taken without being told the reasons. If it
were not for my U.S. citizenship and the international support
of people like those in this room, I could have been the victim
of the organ harvesting as well.
But I want to touch some points regarding the Chinese
Communist Party which may help us to understand better about
this organ harvesting. The first thing is that the history of
the killing by the CCP actually starting, the Communist
Movement actually has caused 150 million people worldwide died,
including 80 million people in China. There was one thing worth
mentioning is that there was a big famine, manmade famine,
during the year of 1959 to 1961, 40 million people starved to
death in China. And what is more bizarre is that those starved
people were not allowed to go out to beg. The armed forces
locked them inside their villages.
So most recently they started the persecuting of Falun Gong
practitioners in 1999. We have 3,599 deaths were documented
with names and addresses and how they were tortured. But as
these gentlemen said, as many as 65,000 people were killed for
the organs.
Now such inconceivable deeds go beyond the routine
suppression common to dictatorships, because the CCP is not a
just average authoritarian regime. If you look at the history
of the origin and their philosophy, and then we can find out
that is very evident that the CCP is particularly malicious,
inhumane and nefarious. In other words, it is evil. It has been
like this since its very origin. Even though very few people in
China right now believe in Communism, but their fundamental
attributes like atheism and struggle continue to underpin the
CCP's actions. And having destroyed traditional Chinese values
like compassion, integrity and the respect for the divine that
stabilized China for thousands of years, the CCP and its
officials lack a moral baseline. Because of this absence of
moral baseline, the Chinese officials, Communist officials,
judges, and even doctors, they can participate or condone the
heinous crimes like organ harvesting.
Then the second point I want to mention is that there is a
movement called, ``Quitting the Communist Party,'' also called
a ``Tuidang'' in Chinese. There was a book called, ``Nine
Commentaries on the Communist Party,`` was published at the end
of 2004. This books describes the true nature of the Communist
Party, and it has called the Chinese Communist Party, the evil
specter. And also Karl Marx, actually, he himself referred to
the communism as a specter in his Communist Manifesto. The book
actually spread wide in China like wildfire, and it started,
arguably, the world's largest grassroot human rights movement
of, they started.
The first Tuidang statement actually was received by the
Epoch Times in December 2004, and the months next the paper
published a Solemn Declaration urging whoever had joined the
CCP or its affiliated organizations to quit immediately and
erase the stains on the conscience left by the CCP specter, in
order to definitely break from the Party and avoid suffering
from future retributions upon the CCP's demise. And then there
was a Web site put out just for that.
With the help of Falun Gong practitioners inside China and
abroad, this Tuidang movement has grown stronger and faster.
Right now we have over 123 million people renounced the
association with the Communist Party and affiliated
organizations. Every day there are over 70,000 people doing
this.
The Falun Gong activists involved in Tuidang movement are
seeking to promote the movement not to catalyze the regime
change, but to offer Chinese citizens a chance to understand
the CCP's history of violence, and take a principled stand by
choosing to no longer associate with it. And in the actual
spiritual movement, meaning is fundamental. When we review
these freedom movement statements, it is very quickly evident
that people overwhelmingly frame their decision to withdraw
from the Party in moral and spiritual terms.
The Tuidang movement is actually helping China to prepare
for the post-CCP future. Right now, inside China they are like
180,000 mass incidents every year. This is like saying like 500
daily protests against the CCP's operation. And actually one
paper published by the Minxin Pei, your Foreign Policy, he
asked questions, are we obsessing about China's rise when we
should be worried about its fall? So the Tuidang movement, it
does not prescribe the specific institutional reforms for a
post-CCP China, but it does provide a way out of the moral
crisis. It offers hope for China as tens of millions of people
not only reject the Party's culture of violence, lies and the
struggles, but also embrace truth and integrity and free their
conscience.
So what should the U.S. Government do then? The simple
answer is to stand together with the people of China rather
than with the CCP regime.
So I would like to stop here and just take more questions.
Because there are a lot of things to cover if I had more time.
Thank you very much again for giving me this opportunity. Thank
you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Lee follows:]
----------
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you for that testimony, and thank
all of the witnesses. I understand Mr. Smith has another
commitment, so what we would like to do is, I am going to
permit--why don't you go first and then I will ask the
questions I had afterwards.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I really do appreciate
it. Just first of all, your testimonies are extraordinary,
incisive, filled with information that is actionable, and I
hope that the administration, as well as the Congress, does
more.
I think Dr. Danovitch, your suggestion that we amend the
National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 is a good one. We are
going to scope out doing a bill, I think. It is a great idea.
Just like sex tourism is criminalized and you can't go anywhere
in the world and think if you are in Brazil abusing a little
child you evade U.S. law, the same ought to hold true here. And
thank you for that very important recommendation.
I guess just two basic questions. Mention was made about
Manfred Nowak. I have read his report, the Special Rapporteur
on Torture, and it was striking that he didn't get to talk to
death row prisoners. I am wondering if he made any conclusions
or has spoken out--he is not the Special Rapporteur on Torture
anymore--about the organ issue? Did he understand, did any of
the U.N. bodies, frankly, not just this specialist on torture,
but the U.N. Human Rights Council, the Committee against
Torture's, which has a panel of experts, has anybody weighed in
and said, ``What you are doing to individuals through
execution, especially the Falun Gong?'' It is barbaric and must
stop.
Yes, please, Dr. Noto?
Dr. Noto. Yes, Manfred Nowak himself actually stood up in
front of the United Nations and said he believed that Falun
Gong practitioners were being executed for their organs, and he
had said at that time he was hoping this practice would stop
immediately. So he was actually a very big believer.
Mr. Smith. Did the U.N. do anything in follow-up, and did
the U.S. Government do anything in follow-up?
Dr. Noto. As far as I know, no.
Mr. Smith. You mentioned, Mr. Gutmann, that our Government
has done little. What do you think the Obama administration
should be doing?
Mr. Gutmann. I think you need a dual track approach in
this, in the sense that on one side you need to pressure
corporations. We don't really have any laws forbidding
companies from doing say what Roche is doing, the
pharmaceutical company in Switzerland. They are doing a testing
of transplant patients on the mainland, currently, clinical
testing. And similarly, Isotechnika Pharma of Canada is also
doing that, for profit, on the Chinese mainland. These are
transplant patients who obviously could well be carrying Falun
Gong organs, Uighur organs, and so forth. There is a problem
there. TFP Ryder Healthcare of the U.K. is trying to build a
medical center, including a transplant center, inside Dalian,
which was the epicenter of Falun Gong organ harvesting
according to every witness I spoke to.
So I am not sure exactly what the mechanism that you would
use for that to inhibit this kind of thing, but I think the
Chinese listen to this kind of stuff very closely. The Chinese
leadership cares about money. They care about investment very,
very much.
By doing this you would strengthen the reformers inside
China. If Wen Jiabao indeed does have some sort of plan to come
clean, about this you would at least, let us find out. Let us
find out by putting him on the spot.
But the second prong to that, the second part of the attack
is to bring these witnesses forward. Because you, by putting
these witnesses on this kind of stand and putting them through
the kind of cross-examination that only Congress can do, we
would also strengthen those reformers in China. We would
prevent what exactly is happening now, which is this attempt to
bury the whole issue, to say, okay, within 3 to 5 years this
whole issue is going to be gone and we will never have to look
at it again.
Mr. Smith. But again I would note for the record that we
did have a series of hearings in the '90s and beyond, and we
never seem to get anywhere with the Chinese Government even
acknowledging it. So some of the acknowledgements of recent
vintage certainly shows that they are aware. And maybe they are
so brazen and arrogant now, they feel they can say it and who
cares.
Let me ask you. Years ago I read a book about the Japanese
Unit 731 operating in China which did horrific experimentation
on a number of people, especially upon Chinese. I find it
appalling that the Chinese Government could countenance this
kind of torture when it sings out as it does and complains to
this day about the abuses committed by the Japanese by way of
torture, especially Unit 731.
And if I could, finally, because I am running out of time,
Dr. Danovitch, you mentioned that, I believe it was you, it has
been well documented that medical outcomes for such transplants
are poor. I wonder if you might tell us why. Because if you can
dry up demand or, just by talking about how they don't do it
state-of-the-art-wise they might come at it at a different
level.
Okay, Dr. Danovitch?
Dr. Danovitch. Can I answer you?
Mr. Smith. Yes, please.
Dr. Danovitch. Yes, unethical medicine tends to be bad
medicine. If you care only about the money and not about the
outcome, medicine tends to be bad. So there are several reasons
why. The most common reason are infectious complications, and
in fact, the Chinese Ministry of Health has itself admitted
that there are high incidences of infectious complications in
people who undergo vended transplantation, around the world by
the way, not just in China--that has been reported elsewhere--
and in transplants from executed prisoners. And I, in my own
practice at UCLA, have seen people arrive at LAX with vicious
infections and be admitted to the hospital sometimes for weeks
and months.
Also when livers are recovered from executed prisoners, for
technical reasons I won't go into now, often complications
occur 3 or 4 weeks later. That is when Americans go to China,
get a liver from an executed prisoner and return, there are
specific complications in the biliary tract that occur late
because of the mechanism of recovery that then those patients
end up spending months sometimes in U.S. hospitals suffering
those complications. It is very dangerous.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much. And I guess I will
proceed. We have been joined by Congressman Turner from New
York, and if after my questions you have any questions to ask
or an opening statement we will be happy to accommodate you at
that time.
Mr. Turner. Absolutely.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. Let me just ask some specific things
just so I will get this on the record. We have a Radio Free
Asia and Voice of America and other organizations that are
supposed to be representing the values of the American people.
Have they been playing a positive or negative role in this
whole issue of forced organ harvesting? Have there been
interviews of the Voice of America? Have any of you been
interviewed with the Voice of America or Radio Free Asia, and
what kind of role are they playing?
No? Nobody has been interviewed?
Mr. Gutmann. Can I take a shot at that?
Mr. Rohrabacher. Please do.
Mr. Gutmann. There is a long-standing taboo in the
journalism community about Falun Gong, about this issue. To
touch this issue is the Third Rail of journalism. If you touch
it--if you are in Beijing, if you are based in China--you will
not be given access to top leaders anymore. I can give you an
example of this.
I had a friend who wrote for the South China Morning Post.
He wrote a very powerful article about Falun Gong back in the
early days. The South China Morning Post was blocked, the web
version was blocked in China for 6 months. That was at a time
when the South China Morning Post was desperately trying to get
penetration of that market. This is common. And so there are
many dangers for doing this for journalists, and I believe
those extend across the board.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Not just journalists in general, I am
talking about now, Radio Free Asia and Voice of America, is
that included in, have any of you been interviewed on this
issue on either one of these?
Dr. Noto. I have never personally. I believe there was one
Radio Free Asia interview, but I don't remember who was on.
That was positive.
Mr. Rohrabacher. So I know this never happens, but we have
our journalists here. Is there a Radio Free Asia or Voice of
America journalist with us today? Have you conducted any
interviews on this issue before? All right. Well, we are going
to put you under oath and get you right now.
I think this is very significant. I mean this is tantamount
to one of the most hienous and ghoulish crimes that has been
going on on this planet for the last 20 years, and yet the
outlets that are supposed to be representing American values
haven't bothered to do a story on it. I think that this is very
significant. And I think it maybe sends an unfortunate message
to other journalists throughout the world, and perhaps it sends
the message that maybe Americans don't care. Maybe this is just
a small group of troublemakers who are trying to cause a
problem on this issue. So no, none of you have been--I think I
will send a letter to Voice of America and Radio Free Asia to
find out why this hasn't been covered as it should.
Now have the Governments of South Korea, Japan, Taiwan,
these governments acknowledged China's forced organ harvesting
program? What are the policies of those governments, or are
they just looking the other way?
Dr. Danovitch. I can't answer for those countries. I can
say that Malaysia now, where 75 percent of Malaysians go to
China to get organs, have now introduced rules to hopefully
diminish that. The Israelis now have laws that don't permit
their insurance companies to pay for transplantation if those
transplants are illegal elsewhere. That is a rule that could
well be adopted by other countries. I can't answer for Taiwan
and the other Asian countries that you mentioned.
Mr. Rohrabacher. In Japan, Korea?
Dr. Danovitch. As far as I know, Japanese and Koreans still
go to China for organs. I can't give you specific numbers.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Dr. Noto?
Dr. Noto. I can't speak for those countries, but I can
speak for Australia who passed a law that stops the training of
Chinese transplant surgeons in Australia. If they come to
Australia they need to sign a contract that says they won't
participate in forced organ harvesting. And from what I have
heard from physicians there it has basically stopped Chinese
doctors from coming to be trained in Australia.
Mr. Rohrabacher. All of this reflects a dehumanization of
values. I know there is some sort of an art exhibit,
plasticization or something like that. Do we have any evidence
that those, I mean they are apparently made out of real bodies.
Is there any indication that these are the bodies of religious
prisoners or political prisoners?
Dr. Noto. I can speak to there is one association where the
companies that were doing these plasticizations was in Liaoning
province. I don't know if I am pronouncing that correct, but
that is where Wang Lijun, the police officer who came to the
U.S. Embassy for asylum, he had stated that he had done
thousands of transplants, surgeries and experiments in that
same province around the same time that this company you are
mentioning with the plasticization took off. So we think that
there is a possibility some of these bodies did wind up there.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Again that is a reflection that such a
monstrous thing can be looked at as art, and this just reflects
a degeneration of values.
The Chinese Vice Minister of Health said earlier this year
that within 5 years that the PRC would stop organ harvesting of
prisoners. I think it has been commented on a little bit here.
Maybe we can come down just officially one by one. Do you take
that seriously, and do you think that this will indeed be
phased out? Just right down the line.
Mr. Gutmann. The sequence of events here is very
interesting. I mean Wang Lijun made his break for the Chengdu
consulate. Shortly after that the words, ``live organ harvest''
were available on Baidu, the search engine. Okay, this is after
some back and forth. This is in the middle of the crisis. They
have never been allowed before. It was a brief period where you
could search those terms in China. It was a kind of
brinkmanship as we could see it. This is followed a few days
later by the announcement, out of the blue, in a kind of case
of ``mentionitis'' that they are going stop the organ
harvesting of all criminals within 3 to 5 years. Not criminals
of conscience, that is not mentioned of course. Nobody
mentioned it. The Wall Street Journal didn't mention it. The
Washington Post didn't mention it. Nobody brought up that
issue. Again, the taboo held.
But the point is, clearly if you look at that sequence of
events coming in the middle of one of the worst leadership
crises China has had in years, this is playing a major issue.
Now for once, I don't always agree with Falun Gong analysts,
but I have to here. This is clearly organ harvesting, and the
organ harvesting of Falun Gong in particular is playing a major
role as a political football in this Chinese leadership
transition.
Mr. Rohrabacher. So you are optimistic that this could be a
signal that something real is going to happen?
Mr. Gutmann. I am optimistic in that sense, but as much as
I think a terribly heinous crime has been committed and may
well still being committed, I don't think the leadership has
shown any sign of reform whatsoever. I think they are preparing
to bury this most recent mass murder just the same way that
Tiananmen was buried, the same way the Cultural Revolution was
buried and the same way the Great Leap Forward was buried.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I see.
Dr. Lee, are you optimistic that this Chinese Vice Minister
of Health is speaking policy that will be actually implemented
in the elimination of this heinous activity?
Dr. Lee. Yes, I think in looking at the true nature of the
CCP, I do not count on them at all. Because when this organ
harvesting issue came out in 2006, and several months later
China's health officials says that they took the organs from
the executed prisoners, the reason is to cover up the actions
on Falun Gong practitioners. So when things happen and then
they took measures trying to cover up, but they have like
signed agreements or make promise all these years, but a lot of
times they just broke it.
So if you look in the future, the only thing you can count
is that the change within China that the regime has less and
less control over the society. Things will change for the
better, and hopefully that Chinese people were leaving the
Communist Party. By that time we can be more optimistic of that
the government promise something, we can count on that. Thank
you.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I didn't quite understand your answer.
Dr. Lee. I am sorry. What I am saying is that we cannot
count on them. They make promises but they don't keep it at
all.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Mr. Gutmann has some optimism. You have no
optimism?
Dr. Lee. No optimism on them, but on the future----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Oh yes. Well, we can all be positive about
the future. But I was thinking mainly the future based on the
statement by the Chinese Vice Minister of Health.
What about you?
Dr. Danovitch. I will try and be a realist. I have actually
personally heard the Chinese Vice Minister of Health, Jiefu
Huang, in an international forum, admit that their behavior of
the Chinese, the ongoing use of executed prisoners is an
embarrassment to them. He admitted that in an international
forum. That is quite something.
I do believe that there are forces in China that generally
want to see improvement. But I do also agree that they may not
have full control, and there are also forces that enjoy the
money chain and corruption that comes along with the ongoing
abuse of executed prisoners and of vending. I think it is our
job, since we can't control what goes on in China, what is our
job in the United States is to do our best to make our absolute
abhorence----
Mr. Rohrabacher. You are giving me one of these ``on the
other hand'' answers where they say, well, on the other hand
this. If you had to come down are you an optimist of this?
Dr. Danovitch. I am more optimistic now than I was several
years ago.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Good.
Dr. Noto?
Dr. Noto. I am not very optimistic. If history teaches us
anything it told us twice before the Chinese Medical
Association said they would stop. Both in 2001 and 2007 they
said they would stop. Again this year they keep saying it is
still happening. So if we go by their word I have very little
faith, plus the Chinese Medical Association themselves has no
power over the military, which we believe is playing a major
role here. So they can say whatever they want, but if they
can't get the military to take action it is not going to stop
them.
Mr. Rohrabacher. All right. And how many Falun Gong
practitioners have had their organs harvested, and how many
political prisoners, et cetera, and Tibetans? How many are we
talking about? I heard the number 65,000 victims over a few
year period. What are we talking about here?
Mr. Gutmann. A number I come up with, and it is an estimate
with a huge range possibility in there, it is based on a survey
method at 65,000 over an 8-year period essentially.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay.
Dr. Lee, do you have another estimate?
Dr. Danovitch?
Dr. Danovitch. No, but I can just give you the Chinese
Liver Transplant Registry. The Ministry of Health own registry
gave a number of 21,000 liver transplants from executed
prisoners up until August of this year. That is likely to be a
minimal number but that is the thought.
Mr. Rohrabacher. And we also heard that to get that number
of organs transplanted you have to have 100,000, perhaps,
operations to----
Dr. Danovitch. I am not sure that is correct.
Mr. Rohrabacher [continuing]. Achieve that. Well, yes.
Dr. Noto, what do you estimate?
Dr. Noto. After looking at everybody's different
investigations I would put the number at least at 50,000.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. This is obviously what we are
talking about is a monstrous crime. To tear open the body of
someone who has been incarcerated for any reason is very
questionable. I mean even if the person is a murderer, if
someone has ripped open the body of someone else and killed
them.
But to rip open the body of someone who is simply involved
in a religious or personal or political idea that is contrary
to the wishes of the ruling elite, to rip a body open of
someone like that especially if that person's religious or
political beliefs are pacifistic and not a physical threat to
the regime, this is about the most monstrous crime that I can
conceive of. And yet the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia
haven't done any stories about it, yet we have major
journalists in this country and countries throughout the West
who have not done stories about this. Shame on our journalist
community. I am a former journalist. That is how I earned by
living before I went into politics. Shame.
There were many people who were being slaughtered during
the second World War, not just the Jews by the Nazis but many
different peoples, and that slaughter was quite often just
ignored. And this is, the fact that we are having a hearing
today is an attempt to try to encourage a look at this issue,
and for the American people and other peoples to hear about
this, so that perhaps with a loud voice we can say together
that decent people do not put up with this type of activity in
their country, nor should they allow their fellow countrymen to
purchase the organs of people who are being subjected to this
ghoulish, horrible, criminal behavior against them.
I appreciated the exact, the specific suggestions that have
been made here. We will study those suggestions.
Mr. Turner, do you have a statement or a question you would
like to ask?
Mr. Turner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just one question. Do
we know the number of foreign nationals on an annual basis that
travel to China as patients? Do we have an estimate perhaps?
Dr. Danovitch. No, we don't. And that is an extraordinary
fact. We do know about people coming into this country to get
organs, but we don't know how many people go outside. I don't
think the numbers are very large, but we don't know those
numbers and we certainly should. Not just from the ethical
point of view, from the medical, public health and cost point
of view. No, we don't. There is no documentation. You can get
the data in a kind of background way by looking about people
who are in Medicare and whether they get medications
afterwards, but it is very, very indirect. We have no precise
numbers.
Mr. Turner. And do we know if any of this is done on
demand? That is, someone on the internet contacts the Chinese,
I need a liver, 2 weeks, and say well, it might take us three
but we will find one.
Dr. Danovitch. Well, I had a specific patient of mine who
went to China, despite my request that she not do so, and
basically got a kidney more or less on demand. I have a
colleague in Israel who had a patient had a heart transplant at
a given date, which someone must have been executed for that
very purpose, and it is well known that that happens. There are
proliferation of internet sites that are looking for foreigners
to come to China to get organs from executed prisoners contrary
to Chinese law. The Chinese do have laws, but those laws are
often flouted and ignored.
Mr. Turner. And are these operations all run by military
units?
Dr. Danovitch. Not necessarily. Some are by military units
and some are in----
Mr. Turner. Political?
Dr. Danovitch [continuing]. So-called academic centers.
Mr. Turner. Yes, sir?
Mr. Gutmann. Can I just mention something? There is a
doctor, a surgeon in Taiwan who I spoke to in a reasonably
confidential manner who initially was very standoffish, but
then he revealed to me that he had been taking his patients
over to the mainland for a long time to receive organs, to get
new kidneys and livers and so on, aging patients. And he had
negotiated for the Chinese price, not to pay the foreigner
price, pay the Chinese price. And so he had gotten to know
these doctors very well in the karaoke bars and all the stuff
that you do when you negotiate in China. At the end of this
negotiation period they said, hey, you know what. We are not
only going to give you the Chinese price but you are getting
the best of the best. You are getting all Falun Gong organs.
Now this is a top surgeon in Taiwan. He is an incredibly
credible witness. If your committee were to call him it is
possible that he would testify to this, and I think he could
explain a lot about this business. He was basically doing it
right up until the Olympics, so we would have some fairly,
reasonably current information on this. And I think he is quite
credible.
Mr. Turner. Thank you.
Mr. Rohrabacher. All right, we are going to adjourn in a
moment. And let me just note that organ transplanting in and of
itself is not evil. Organ transplanting in and of itself, I
certainly think that we should encourage people in this country
to participate in organ donating if they are in a car accident
or something like that, that is something that is laudatory and
speaks well of people who are involved in organ transplanting
in that way.
But what we have focused on today is an evil manifestation
of something that is good that has been perverted into being
something that is probably one of the most evil activities on
this planet today. And that is taking people who are being
incarcerated for their political beliefs or their religious
beliefs, people who are in no way engaged in a violent activity
against any other human being, and murdering them in the
process of stealing their body organs. This is a crime against
humanity. We should do our best to identify those specific
individuals who are engaged in this and put them on the list of
people to observe to be brought to justice. And specifically,
that does not exclude Americans who are willing accomplices to
this crime against humanity.
We will have further discussions on this as time goes on,
and hopefully next year we will be able, in the next session,
be able to have a hearing, and call to task some of the
Americans who are engaged in this activity at least as
accomplices to this crime.
I want to thank each of our witnesses for coming today.
Thank you, Mr. Turner. This hearing is now adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:38 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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Material Submitted for the Hearing RecordNotice deg.
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[Note: The survey-based estimate of Falun Gong Murdered from
2000 to 2008, ``How Many Harvested?'' by Mr. Ethan Gutmann,
submitted for the record by the Honorable Christopher H. Smith,
is not repinted here due to length limitations but is available
in committee records.]