[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
ORGAN HARVESTING: AN EXAMINATION OF A BRUTAL PRACTICE
=======================================================================
JOINT HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH,
GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS, AND
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
AND THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON EUROPE, EURASIA, AND EMERGING THREATS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JUNE 23, 2016
__________
Serial No. 114-170
__________
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida BRAD SHERMAN, California
DANA ROHRABACHER, California GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
JOE WILSON, South Carolina GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
TED POE, Texas BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
MATT SALMON, Arizona KAREN BASS, California
DARRELL E. ISSA, California WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
MO BROOKS, Alabama AMI BERA, California
PAUL COOK, California ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California
RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas GRACE MENG, New York
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
RON DeSANTIS, Florida TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
TED S. YOHO, Florida ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois
CURT CLAWSON, Florida BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania
SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee
REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin
DAVID A. TROTT, Michigan
LEE M. ZELDIN, New York
DANIEL DONOVAN, New York
Amy Porter, Chief of Staff Thomas Sheehy, Staff Director
Jason Steinbaum, Democratic Staff Director
Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and
International Organizations
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina KAREN BASS, California
CURT CLAWSON, Florida DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee AMI BERA, California
DANIEL DONOVAN, New York
------
Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats
DANA ROHRABACHER, California, Chairman
TED POE, Texas GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
MO BROOKS, Alabama THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
PAUL COOK, California WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
DAVID A. TROTT, Michigan
C O N T E N T S
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Page
WITNESSES
Mr. David Matas, senior legal counsel, B'nai Brith Canada........ 4
Mr. Ethan Gutmann, journalist.................................... 12
Francis L. Delmonico, M.D, professor of surgery, Harvard Medical
School......................................................... 18
Charles Lee, M.D., director of public awareness, World
Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong...... 22
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
Mr. David Matas: Prepared statement.............................. 7
Mr. Ethan Gutmann: Prepared statement............................ 15
Francis L. Delmonico, M.D: Prepared statement.................... 20
Charles Lee, M.D.: Prepared statement............................ 26
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 54
Hearing minutes.................................................. 55
Francis L. Delmonico, M.D: Statement for the record.............. 56
Charles Lee, M.D.: Internet link to material submitted for the
record......................................................... 58
ORGAN HARVESTING: AN EXAMINATION OF A BRUTAL PRACTICE
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THURSDAY, JUNE 23, 2016
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health,
Global Human Rights, and International Organizations and
Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2 o'clock
p.m., in room 2200 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Dana T.
Rohrabacher (chairman of the Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia,
and Emerging Threats) presiding.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I call this joint hearing of the Europe,
Eurasia, and Emerging Threats Subcommittee and the Subcommittee
on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and
International Organizations to order.
Thank you, Chairman Smith, for agreeing to hold this
hearing. The Chinese Communist Party has one of the largest
forces for evil in the world today. The systematic government-
sponsored harvesting of organs is a monstrous crime.
The Chinese regime not only deprives its people of their
basic rights on a daily basis but literally steals their body
parts for a profit.
Due to the tireless work of human rights defenders,
journalists and investigators, the truth about what the Chinese
have been doing for years is now becoming known to the world.
Just last week, the House passed a resolution specifically
on this target. Today, we have some of those very researchers
and investigators here with us and they will bring up to date
about what is going on inside China.
Their updated report, ``Bloody Harvest: The Slaughter,''
just released yesterday tips the scale at nearly 600 pages in
length and it is truly an impressive work.
I am pleased to hear that European parliaments will be
holding similar events to what we are doing today to discuss
organ harvesting and this report.
It is significant to highlight that while the Falun Gong
practitioners, a peaceful and holy Chinese movement, continue
to suffer greatly at the hands of the CCP, they are not the
only victims of forced organ harvesting.
Organ harvesting is just one of many techniques the Chinese
state security uses. But there are other groups who use this
and other groups that have been victimized other than just the
Falun Gong.
Lastly, the problem of organ theft and organ trafficking is
a global one. The state-sponsored nature of what happens in
China is especially unsavory but the practice takes place
worldwide.
The black market for organs is estimated to be worth over
$1 billion a year and it is vital that we hold the Chinese
Government accountable. If we don't, the wrong message will be
sent all over the world, undermining efforts to prevent organ
trafficking where it is done.
In a moment, I will introduce our witnesses. But I also
want to take this moment to recognize some of the distinguished
guests in our audience and especially David Kilgour, who is a
member of the Canadian Parliament.
We have been working on this together for many years. He is
a true leader in this issue and a truly moral giant in this
era. He has played a key role in producing the updated report
and David, we all thank you for the hard work that you put into
this.
And without objection, all members will have 5 legislative
days to submit additional questions or extraneous material. We
will then--I will have--Mr. Smith will make his opening remarks
and then we will introduce the witnesses and go on from there.
Mr. Smith.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much. I would like to say to my
dear friend and colleague, Dana Rohrabacher, for organizing
this important hearing.
There are far too few people willing to speak out about
human rights abuses with such clarity and consistency. As a
former speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, Dana
Rohrabacher knows how to cut right to the heart of the matter.
He has done so with excellence since I have been here in
Congress. I have been now serving 36 years as a Member. So I
want to thank him for his extraordinary leadership on human
rights issues around the world and including and especially in
China.
As Chairman Rohrabacher mentioned, we co-chaired a similar
hearing in September 2012. It is disheartening in the extreme
that we are here again, 4 years later, with the issue and this
terrible horrific human rights abuse getting worse.
The scope of organ trafficking is much larger now, a
worldwide problem. The conflict in Syria has created a black
market for human organs. ISIS has sanctioned the harvesting and
sale of organs from a ``apostate's body into a Muslim's body''
even if the donor is still alive during harvesting.
We have also seen horrific evidence of Eritrean victims in
Sinai whose organs are brutally removed and sold if their
families are unable to pay the traffickers' ransom.
However, the biggest problem is, by far, China, where
government-sanctioned harvesting of organs from executed
prisoners, including prisoners of conscience, has gone on for
decades.
Twenty years ago, working with the great and now late Harry
Wu, I chaired a human rights hearing in my subcommittee with a
Chinese security official who testified that he and other
security agents were executing prisoners with doctors and
ambulances there in order to steal their organs for transplant.
Since then, this horrific practice has skyrocketed. Organ
trafficking is a global problem where trafficking gangs,
terrorist organizations, and government entities sell organs
for profit. A global problem requires a global response.
The U.S. Congress is taking steps to address the problem.
The House passed H.R. 3694, two weeks ago, the Strategy To
Oppose Predatory Organ Trafficking Act, amending the
Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 and requiring more
diplomatic action in reporting on the issue. The bill also
denies visas to doctors and officials complicit in organ
trafficking.
This is a start, and it is only a start, and hopefully the
Senate will pass the bill soon.
Four years ago, we asked for more evidence of organ
harvesting in China and we are now getting some very serious
evidence. The Chinese Government said it is moving toward
adherence to ethical standards and accepted procedural
guidelines.
But in the absence of accurate information and any
semblance of transparency and with a history of repression and
censorship to cover past abuses can their assurances be in any
way believed?
It is important to remember that the Chinese Government has
been trafficking in organs for profit for decades. Let me just
say many things have changed in China over the past 20 years,
but as witness testimony today shows, maybe not so much as
changed in the area of organ harvesting.
The Falun Gong repression is especially brutal, ugly, and
vicious. I strongly believe that the 17-year campaign to
eradicate Falun Gong will be seen as one of the great shames of
recent Chinese history.
That more people are not crying out for change,
accountability and justice on the issue of organ harvesting or
the repression of the Falun Gong is sad. But that has to
change, too. This hearing helps to bring these issues into
sharp light and to bring scrutiny to them.
What adjectives do we use to describe what Chinese doctors
and hospitals have been doing these past decades? How can we
describe doctors who engage in forced abortions and
sterilizations and gendercide, the extermination of the girl
child, as we have seen in China?
How can we understand doctors who experiment on prisoners
of conscience detained in psychiatric hospitals? It is all
reminiscent of what happened during World War II in some of the
camps including Camp 731 when people were horrifically abused,
in that case by Chinese conquerors in China. And now the
Chinese Government and the doctors are doing it themselves.
Ordinary words like concerned, disturbed, or shocking just
don't seem to be adequate. We tend to reserve words like
barbaric for truly horrible crimes and this is barbaric.
The Department of State and the international medical
community must do a detailed analysis and studies on the claims
made by respected researchers here today and by Falun Gong
practitioners. Our State Department has done far too little.
That, too, has to change.
I yield back and I thank my friend for calling this
hearing.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much, Chris, and I would
like to now introduce our witnesses.
David Matas is an international human rights lawyer based
in Canada. He has written extensively on organ harvesting in
China including co-authoring ``Bloody Harvest'' with David
Kilgour, who I just mentioned. He is one of the co-authors of
the updated report and we will be hearing more about that in
just a moment.
Also, Ethan Gutmann, who is--is it Gutmann or Gutmann?
Whichever. You know, like Rohrabacher--they say how do you
pronounce Rohrabacher.
As a China analyst and a human rights investigatory, he has
written widely on China including the book ``Losing the New
China: The Story of American Commerce, Desire and Betrayal.''
He is a former policy analyst at the Brookings Institute and is
a frequent television news commentator.
We have with us Dr. Francis Delmonico, who is a professor
of surgery at Harvard Medical School and chief medical officer
for the New England Organ Bank and an advisor to the World
Health Organization.
He is also immediate past president of the Transplantation
Society, the leading international association for
professionals who are involved with the transplantation of
human organs and tissues.
Finally, we have Dr. Charles Lee. He is the director of
public awareness for the World Organization to Investigate the
Persecution of the Falun Gong.
He received his medical education in China and later came
to the United States where he passed the U.S. Medical Board
exams and during a visit to China in 2003 he was arrested and
sentenced to 3 years in prison.
Since his return to the United States in 2006, he has
continued his work to expose the crimes of the CCP, especially
those crimes against the Falun Gong.
I would ask each of you if possible to limit your verbal
remarks to 5 minutes and then to have whatever extraneous
material or supporting material to be put into the record and
they will be automatically done--will be automatically put into
the record.
So Dr. Matas, you may proceed.
STATEMENT OF MR. DAVID MATAS, SENIOR LEGAL COUNSEL, B'NAI BRITH
CANADA
Mr. Matas. Yes. Well, first of all, I want to thank the two
committees for convening this hearing and I want to commend the
co-chairs, Representatives Smith and Rohrabacher, for their--
your leadership in this issue.
David Kilgour, who is behind me, and I have been
researching, writing and speaking on the killing of Falun Gong
for their organs now for over 10 years.
Ethan Gutmann is the journalist who interviewed us on our
work and then did his own. Since David Kilgour and I published
``Blood Harvest,'' the third version of our report in book form
and Ethan Gutmann published his book, ``The Slaughter,'' we
three have remained active in writing, researching,
investigating and speaking on organ transplant abuse in China.
Yesterday at the National Press Club, we released a 600-
page update with over 2,300 footnotes to update this work and
it is now available online at endorganpillaging.org.
With the update, we make our own assessment of transplant
abuses and our own assessment of transplant volumes. In looking
at the sources for organ transplants from China in the past we
have taken Chinese Government official statements of overall
transplant volume to 10,000 a year at face value and focused on
attempting to identify the sources for these asserted volumes.
However, the Chinese Government statistics for transplant
volumes are not necessarily reliable. One effort which needed
to be made and which we find we have made is to determine on
our own what Chinese transplant volumes are.
We did that by looking at and accumulating the data from
individual hospitals where transplants occur, almost 900 in
all. Some hospitals state their transplant volumes. For those
who do not, we can from their bed counts, personnel strength,
the rate of growth, technological development, academic
publications, newsletters, media reports and so on come to a
conclusion on their transplant volumes.
We had in the past concluded that the Chinese Communist
Party was engaged in the mass killing of innocents, primarily
practitioners of the spiritually-based set of exercises Falun
Gong but also Uyghurs, Tibetans and select House Christians in
order to obtain organs for transplants.
The fact that the evidence we have now examined shows a
much larger volume of transplants than the Government of China
has assured us points us to a larger discrepancy between
transplant volumes and the Government of China identified
sources than we had previously thought existed.
The increased discrepancy leads us to conclude there has
been a far larger slaughter of practitioners of Falun Gong for
their organs than we had originally estimated.
What is the volume of organ transplantation in China now
when we add up all the data from the transplant centers and
hospitals? Instead of 10,000 a year, we would say that the
range is between 60,000 to 100,000 transplants a year with an
emphasis on the higher number. The update at great length
indicates how we calculate that range.
Well, what is to be done? We have to commend the House of
Representatives for what they have already done, which you have
referred to, Mr. Chairs--the stop organ trafficking act
proposal as well as the resolution condemning a week ago the
practice of state-sanctioned organ harvesting in the People's
Republic of China.
We welcome the provision in the U.S. code which bars
provision of visas to Chinese--other nationals engaged in
coerced organ or bodily tissue transplantation.
Yet, there is more that could be done. Organ transplant
abuse in China is primarily a donor source problem, not a
supply problem, not a patient demand problem. We could end
transplant tourism into China entirely and organ transplant
abuse in China would still continue. Yet, we must do what we
can to avoid complicity in that abuse.
House Resolution 343 calls on the United States Department
of State to conduct a detailed analysis on state-sanctioned
organ harvesting from nonconsenting prisoners of conscience in
the annual human rights report.
I would suggest that this analysis must be more than just a
presentation of the work that we and other researchers have
done coupled with empty Chinese Government denials.
The Department of State Bureau of Human Rights to fulfil
the mandate given by the House should come to its own
conclusions.
There also needs to be a more direct confrontation of
transplant tourism. U.S. legislation should make organ
transplant abuse and brokerage extraterritorial crimes.
The legislation should require compulsory medical and
hospital reporting of all out of country transplantation. That
sort of reporting is necessary to make a law against complicity
and foreign transplant abuse workable. Insurers should be
prevented from covering and paying for abusive transplantation
abroad.
Pharmaceutical companies should not be allowed to
participate in drug trials with patients using organs from
improper sources.
In conclusion, let me say when it comes to abusive
transplantation, we have to think not only of the patient in
need of an organ but also the source of the organ. It is
unconscionable to kill a healthy innocent person so that a sick
person can live. The U.S. must do everything in its power to
stop that from happening.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Matas follows:]
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Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Gutmann.
STATEMENT OF MR. ETHAN GUTMANN, JOURNALIST
Mr. Gutmann. Thank you.
Fourteen years ago, the chairman of AmCham China gave
testimony on Chinese intellectual property rights violations to
the CECC. He testified the Chinese leadership was finally
saying exactly what we wanted them to.
Yet, for U.S. companies selling to the Chinese market, 15
to 20 percent of revenue is lost due to counterfeiting. In
other words, the problem was worse than ever.
That was Chris Murck. He is my former boss. He taught me
that reform in China can take time. Eight years later, Murck
came back to the CECC and testified that counterfeiting was
present but it was receding and perhaps that is why when I was
writing my book 7 years after the Kilgour-Matas report I
assumed I was writing about history.
How naive. After decades of Western legal exchanges with
China, Chinese lawyers now face mass arrests. How strangely
idealistic the words free the Chinese Internet sound today in
part because we know some American companies have dirty hands.
So yes, if money is the main issue, you might scratch out a
stalemate with the Chinese Communist Party. But if the party
feels threatened, take all the time you like. You will probably
lose.
Our update is essentially a balance sheet of organ
harvesting. Are we winning or losing? The Chinese medical
establishment commonly claims that China performs 10,000
transplants per year.
Yet imagine a typical state-licensed transplant center in
China. Three or four transplant teams, 30 or 40 beds for
transplant patients, a 20- to 30-day recovery period. Patient
demand--300 Chinese waitlisted for organs, not counting foreign
organ tourists.
Would it be plausible to suggest that such a facility might
do one transplant a day? One hundred and forty-six transplant
facilities ministry-approved meet that general description.
That yields a back of the envelope answer. You can do it right
here. Not 10,000 but over 50,000 transplants per year.
Suppose we actually hold those same hospitals and
transplant centers to the actual state minimum requirement of
transplant activity, beds, surgical staff and so on--80,000 to
90,000 transplants per year.
Yet, how should we account for the emergency of Tianjin
First Central Hospital, easily capable of 5,000 transplants per
year? PLA 309 Military Hospital in Beijing, similar. Zhongshan
Hospital--the list is extraordinary. A detailed examination
yields an average of up to two transplants per day--over
100,000 transplants per year.
Now, the figures I have given you are based on Chinese
numbers. Not from official statements but sources like Nurses
Weekly.
To understand why organs are readily available we need to
briefly examine how harvesting evolved over time. In the 1980s,
it was an opportunistic afterthought to a convict's execution.
In the mid-1990s, medical vans on execution grounds became
routine. Experimental live organ harvests were carried out on
the execution grounds of Xinjiang.
In 1997, following the Ghulja massacre, a handful of
political prisoners, Uyghur activists were harvested for a
handful of aging Chinese Communist Party cadres.
Now, perhaps those organs were simply prizes seized in the
fog of war. Perhaps the harvesting of prisoners of conscience
could have ended there.
But in 1999, state security launched the campaign to
eliminate Falun Gong. By 2001, over 1 million Falun Gong
incarcerated within the Laogai system were subject to retail
organ testing and Chinese military and civilian hospitals were
ramping up their transplant facilities. By 2002, it was select
House Christians. By 2003, it was the Tibetans.
By 2005, economic opportunism had been replaced by two
hidden hands--5-year plan capitalism and the party's desire to
kill off its internal enemies. The result was that a foreign
organ tourist of means could purchase a tissue-matched organ
within 2 weeks. Hardened criminals were harvested for organs;
transplant centers stood to make $60,000, $100,000 or more but
the rise of the Chinese transplant industry was built on the
foundation of Falun Gong incarceration.
In early 2006, the Kilgour-Matas report was published and
then we get into the business with Wang Lijun and the fatal
exposure of the Chinese medical establishment.
In 2012, they promised to move to voluntary sourcing within
3 to 5 years. Yet, they wrapped it in a semantic trick. The
phrase ``end organ harvesting of prisoners'' was acceptable.
The phrase ``end organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience''
was unacceptable.
Thus, the Chinese could avoid speaking about a vast caught
captive population that doesn't officially exist while the
acceptable phrase allowed Westerners to hope that prisoners of
conscience was just a subset of prisoners.
By avoiding the taboo phrase, both sides could maintain
their illusions. Yet, throughout all the gyrations of the
Chinese medical establishment's supposed reform, the
inconsistent numbers, the dithering over whether a prisoner
could volunteer their organs, the claim that a voluntary organ
donation system was magically in place, our update finds only
continuity. Transplant wings under construction, business as
usual.
Now, in conclusion, as I turn to policy, let me begin with
what can't be done. We cannot solve this problem by pretending
that prisoners of conscience have not been harvested.
A Chinese doctor testified to Congress on the harvesting of
death row prisoners in 2001 from Harry Wu. It caused a ripple,
not a wave. We are here today, side by side, because the people
in this room are concerned about prisoners of conscience.
We cannot verify self-proclaimed medical reform by arranged
visits to a few Chinese transplant hospitals. In the words of
Dr. Jacob Levee from the TTS ethics committee and Doctors
Against Forced Organ Harvesting: ``As the son of a Holocaust
survivor I feel obliged to not repeat the dreadful mistake made
by the International Red Cross visit to the Theresienstadt Nazi
concentration camp in 1944 in which it was reported to be a
pleasant recreation camp.''
In short, the medical community cannot solve this problem
alone. They need House Resolution 343. They need our research.
And they need new investigations. They need to have oversight
over Americans going to China for organs and they need the
support of the American people.
According to Levee, not a single Israeli has gone to China
for a transplant since Israel took a stand against organ
tourism in 2008. Cutting off HMO funding wasn't enough.
The Israeli surgeons needed to make the point publically
that no matter how much Chinese money was invested in Israeli
software, doctors have a special interest in the phrase ``never
again.''
Now, for Taiwan rejecting organ tourism to China was even
more courageous, given the Chinese military threat. But if the
Taiwanese medical establishment and the political sector can
join hands, we can too.
I have been told that this is a Falun Gong issue. No. This
is the familiar spectre of human genocide. It is cloaked in
modern scrubs. And even with the united effort we may lose the
patient. Yet, let us at least enter the operating room with
clean hands.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Gutmann follows:]
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STATEMENT OF FRANCIS L. DELMONICO, M.D, PROFESSOR OF SURGERY,
HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL
Dr. Delmonico. Thank, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to
make these comments.
I would like you both to know that I agree with the other
individuals that are making testimony today. The use of organs
from the executed prisoners is condemnable. It is a
reprehensible practice.
It is a disgraceful practice because of the corruption. It
is a corruption intended to acquire money and not provide care.
I want to share with you an anecdote that is illustrative
and I would like to say to both of you that I have been to 70
countries around this world in the last decade to combat organ
trafficking.
In a visit to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the physician who is
sitting next to me at dinner tells me of this incident--the
mother of a 14-year-old--14-year-old--who undergoes a kidney
transplant in Tianjin, China and returns home to Saudi Arabia
and ill within days of the transplant.
This patient undergoes a biopsy of the kidney because the
kidney is not working, to discover that the kidney is scarred.
It is obsolescent. It is not going to function. It never can
function, and it has been at that time removed from an
individual that is an executed prisoner.
This patient, Mr. Chairman, then develops a viral
infection, this 14-year-old, and that infection should have
been prevented by medicines that should have been administered
at the time of the transplant. And the end of the story is that
she dies. It cost the mother $200,000 in cash for her child to
die.
That is why I am in the midst of this issue of organ
trafficking as a professional not to enable that to happen not
only in China but anyplace else in this world.
So it becomes a very corrupt practice by the chain from the
prison to the patient ward. But I think you both have to know
that it is not just from within China.
Patients from the United States and Israel and Canada and
yes, I know Mr. Gutmann is talking about J. Levee, who is a
good friend of mine, and I know what the Israelis have done to
prevent Israelis from going to other locations in this world.
But it has been there and it has been from Saudi Arabia and
Canada and Japan that patients go into China.
That practice is now stopping. Over the course of this last
decade I have gotten to know someone within China that you know
in the media--Jiefu Huang--and I want to say to you that from
my perspective he's a courageous leader because change is
occurring in China.
And I know of this by Mr. Gutmann's comment. I have been to
many cities now within China and been with the younger people
who are doing the transplants and their future is not to use
organs from the executed because the transplantation community
of the world will not let them make presentations about those
data and they, in their interest to propel their careers, are
coming away from that practice.
They are no longer using that organ source, and the
alternative of having deceased donors within the intensive care
units is becoming the source of organ donors.
I know of this as well because of the risk that has been
personal risk to Jiefu Huang to stay within China and make for
that change to occur. I know of that personal risk as well for
his mentee, his young leader that he has mentored who was under
house arrest for months, that we weren't able to reach him.
He's a member of the same committee that Mr. Gutmann is
talking about. Jay Levee is in that committee of the
Transplantation Society. Jiefu Huang is a member of that
committee. We couldn't have at him for months.
But the practice is now changing and he was released. It
was also through an effort that we wrote to President Xi
Jinping an open letter that was published in the medical
literature to call upon China to stop the corrupt practice.
So I am with the presenters to say to you we agree
completely on this being a condemnable practice. But it is my
responsibility and the leadership of the international
transplant community to go there and try and make change, and
we are trying to do that.
And so in my visits and having patient contact, being in
the wards to see what's going on, I can say to you that that
experience is not with the use of executed prisoners any longer
and I have some then hope and optimism that the practice will
come about to stop and change.
Can I assure you that it is completely eradicated? No, I
can't. But that is not my job here to make that assurance to
you. My job is to say to you that the international community
does not accept that practice.
The international community must work with its Chinese
colleagues to change that practice and that is what has been
our objective.
And to make this system of organ donation and
transplantation in China consistent with the guiding principles
of the World Health Organization that yours truly helped to
write and develop, and with the Declaration of Istanbul.
Again, as you've mentioned, Mr. Chairman, the practice of
organ trafficking is not isolated to China. You can read last
week of the revelation in India and I can tell you about it in
Egypt and in the Philippines and in other locations of the
world.
So I would agree with Dr. Matas about his request for China
to consider extraterritorial jurisdiction about the crime of
organ trafficking that has now been made plain, clear as a
money transaction by the Council of Europe.
We need to help the State Department to organize its TIP
report--its annual report on the trafficking of human persons.
We need to make certain that the organ trafficking component is
made in that edition as well.
And lastly, I wish to say that if Congress wants to stop--
combat organ trafficking, it can sustain a resolve not to
permit organ sales in the United States.
So thank you for the opportunity to make these comments. I
look forward to your questions and to elaborate further upon
what has been a decade of experience in this issue.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Delmonico follows:]
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Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you, sir.
And Dr. Lee.
STATEMENT OF CHARLES LEE, M.D., DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC AWARENESS,
WORLD ORGANIZATION TO INVESTIGATE THE PERSECUTION OF FALUN GONG
Dr. Lee. Thank you, Chairman Smith and Rohrabacher, members
of the committees and the staff members. My testimony has four
sections.
Section one is WOIPFG and its investigations into organ
harvesting. World Organization to Investigate and Persecution
of Falun Gong was established on January 20th, 2003.
Up to May 2016 we have published 331 investigative reports
and have compiled a list of more than 76,000 individual
perpetrators. We have systematically investigated on the crimes
on the forced organ harvesting over the last 10 years and we
have published 43 reports.
In June 2015, we published a comprehensive report over here
in which we laid out 1,628 pieces of evidence proving that more
than 865 hospitals and more than 9,500 surgeons in China who
have been involved in these huge number of transplant
operations.
We have conducted more than 10,000 telephone interviews
with Chinese Government officials and the surgeons, procured 60
recording testimonies from high-ranking government officials
including five CCP Politburo standing committee members.
These testimonies reveal that the majority of the extracted
organs were from leading Falun Gong practitioners and that the
order came from the CCP's highest level.
Since then, we have published another nine additional
reports confirming that the organ harvesting on Falun Gong
practitioners is still happening and in some places might be
accelerating.
We have another report over here. We would like to submit
these two reports to the Congress for the record. So far we
have--actually, my focus today will be the academic papers
published by the doctors inside of China, mostly from year 2000
through 2012.
So far, we have collected more than 3,000 academic papers.
Three hundred of them have descriptions on donors. We have
found evidence proving the existence of the large organ living
donor pool, strengthening the previous conclusion of harvesting
organs from living persons by the CCP.
They are the written testimonies in the public domain
provided by those doctors who have been involved in this
heinous crime.
Section two--medical papers and publications indicate that
a huge living donor pool exists. Number one, very short waiting
time; number two, in April 2006, one hospital in Hunan offered
20 livers and kidneys for free to lure more business. They have
access to a very large donor pool.
Number three, the abundance of the donors have even made
the Chinese medicine hospitals--forensic hospitals, psychiatric
hospitals, to conduct organ transplant operations.
Number four--a large number of emergency transplant
operations. China's Liver Transplant Registration Project was
started in early 2005. More than 8,000 cases have been
collected up to December 2006. Among 4,300 cases with available
data for a timing manner, 1,150 cases were of emergency
operations which was as high as 27 percent.
The shortest time to start the operation was 4 hours after
the patient was admitted. The same database provides that only
2 percent of the donors were living donors. All the others were
dead.
By contrast, only 6\1/2\ percent of liver transplants
performed at a leading transplant center in Canada from 1994 to
2008 was for acute liver failure, which needs emergency
transplant in 48 to 72 hours.
Canada has a matching system supposed to be much more
efficient than anything legitimate for matching up in China. A
more plausible explanation is that it is the donors wait for
the recipients in China.
Number five, abundance of donors provide to multiple stand-
by donors for transplantation surgeons. One typical case was
Huang Jiefu--Huang Jiefu's liver transplant operation in
Xinjiang on September 28th, 2005. The first donor's liver was
discarded after Huang opened the abdominal cavity of a cancer
patient and he discovered that it happened to meet to the
criteria for a autologous liver transplant.
He then closed it and contacted Guangzhou City and
Chongqing City requesting a spare liver in case the autologous
transplant failed.
Matching livers were found in both cities in several hours
and arrived in Xinjiang almost at the same time at 6:30 p.m. on
September 29th. Another--also another spare liver was found in
Xinjiang. The operation lasted from 7 o'clock p.m. on September
29th to 10 o'clock a.m. next day.
After 24 hours of observation, Huang announced the spare
livers were no longer needed. The acceptable cold ischemic time
for liver was less than 15 hours even in China. Therefore, one
can safely say that the two spare livers brought from Chongqing
and Guangzhou City could only be two intact living persons.
Otherwise, the extraction, the flight, the operation and
the observation time would be at least 50 hours. The spare
livers would have no value.
Section three--medical papers indicate that large scale
kill on demand organ transplant system. Number one, abnormal
descriptions on the donors.
One hundred three papers have information about the donors.
The total number mentioned was 8,710. Eighty papers had the
ages, from 20 to 40 years old with average in the 20s, while in
the U.S. average age of deceased donors in 2006 was a little
over 40.
The vast majority of the descriptions regarding the health
condition of the donors are perfectly healthy. There is no
history of contagious disease, cardiovascular disease, cancer
or drug abuse, et cetera.
One might wonder why these young and perfectly healthy
people would donate their organs and die. Number two, brain
death in China--a simplified definition of brain death is the
death of all central neurological tissue, resulting in the loss
of cerebral functions.
Strict procedures and long-term observing should be
implemented before announcing the brain death. In the U.S.,
there were about 6,700 living donors and 8,000 deceased donors
in 2006. The three major causes of deaths were cerebral
vascular stroke, head trauma and anoxia, anoxia brain deaths.
B, in China there is no legal definition or procedure to
follow to announce a person is brain dead. One article on
Tengxun net in 2014 cited Huang Jiefu, stating that 90 percent
of the doctors in China don't know the criteria for brain
deaths.
It was still not a good time for China to enact a brain
death law. One hundred thirty-seven papers described the causes
of the deaths in over 5,000 donors. Fifty-nine percent were
brain deaths. Further analysis and review that the vast
majority of these brain deaths were actually living people.
C, China's leading expert on brain death, Chen Zhonghua
from Tongji Medical College, has been exploring using
internationally accepted brain death criteria in organ
transplantations.
An article by his group in Journal of Organ Transplant in
July 2010 stating that 60 cases of organ extractions were
conducted from brain death donors in China since 2001. That's
10 years period of time.
In July 2006, they conducted the first ever heart
transplantation using a brain death donor in the country. Chen
Zhonghua's numbers clearly indicated that to the vast majority
of these cases of extractions are not from truly brain death
donors.
Because it is not a legal practice at all in China to
announce a patient is brain dead and that there is no formal
training or certifications for the doctors, they should be
still alive when the organs were taken.
D, we found five papers with 22 cases describing the
procedure of tracheal intubination after the brain deaths. This
makes no medical sense. The diagnosis of brain death needs
hours of observation and the testings.
Tracheal intubation should be--and the tracheal intubation
should be done in the process or before that in order to save
the life of the patient.
These doctors have confirmed that they didn't--they did not
understand the criteria for brain deaths nor did they care if
the donors were brain dead. The donors were actually living
people.
E, the other three major causes of death in the papers--
cadaver, sudden death and no heart beating--did not give any
information on how these donors died either.
Number three, extremely short ischemic time. Warm ischemic
time here refers to the amount of time that an organ remains
warm after its blood supply has been stopped or reduced.
Eighty-nine papers had close to 7,000 cases on the warm
ischemic time from donors with brain death, cadaver or sudden
death. Most of them is under 10 minutes. Some mentioned the
cause of the deaths.
Six hundred eighty-eight cases were brain dead--brain
death. One had 117 cases of fresh cadavers with heart beats
just stopped. With brain death not practicable and almost no
explainable legitimate cause of death, then why almost all
organ documents have such short one ischemic time? The most
plausible explanation is that these donors have been arranged
to die when the organ procurements need to happen. This is mass
murder.
Section four--in six papers 42 doctors admittedly have
killed at least 677 living people for their organs. Number one,
general transplants, May 2011, Yang Shou-guo, et cetera, from a
transplantation center in Shanghai described 298 cases of heart
transplantation in 11 years from May 2000.
On donor descriptions it reads 291 hearts were from
cadavers. Seven hearts were from brain dead donors 18 to 45
years old, average 27. All donors had no obvious history of
cardiovascular disease or other major organ diseases.
Among these 298 cases, after year 2007, 60 hearts were
extracted when the donors had ventricle fibrillation, or after
the heart stopped beating and that the rest were extracted
while the hearts were still beating.
The authors admitted here that at least 231 healthy young
people while not brain dead and that their hearts were still
beating were killed for their hearts.
Number two--Chinese general practice December 2007, Li Yao-
feng, et cetera, talked about 103 liver transplantations
beginning in 2004 in the center. It reads, the donors of both
groups of recipients were healthy young people.
One of them was brain dead. All others were same blood
type, cadaveric livers. All ischemic times were between 0 and 5
minutes.
The conclusion should be easy to draw. At least 102 young
people had been killed for their organs.
Number three--Chinese Journal Hepatobiliary----
Mr. Smith. Dr. Lee----
(Off mic comments)
Dr. Lee. Okay. That's fine. I have, you know, three more
but these are the published academic papers in which those
doctors actually, you know, admit they have killed people while
they are alive.
The accounts show that the practice of forced organ harvest
is real and is done on a very large scale. I am going to submit
these six papers to the Congress for the record and we are
going to take some time to translate all of them. But these are
real published papers.
Thank you very much. Actually, we have----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Without objection, they will be put into
the record.
Dr. Lee. All right. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Lee follows:]
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Mr. Rohrabacher. You know, some of us we had a rather
tumultuous night last night and there was--so we didn't get
much sleep so I apologize for being a little groggy here.
Let's go into some questions and answers. Now, I am going
to get an understanding of what we are talking about here, the
basis, and Dr. Delmonico, you might tell me how long does it--
you have when someone dies, whether they are killed or whether
they just died, how long do you--do you have before that organ
is no longer transmittable to another person?
Dr. Delmonico. Depends on the organ. Depends on the organ,
Mr. Chairman. So the heart is very sensitive. Once it arrests,
it becomes complicated for you to be able to transplant it.
The kidneys can last an hour without circulation and still
be recovered and transplanted.
Mr. Rohrabacher. So it is 1 hour for a kidney?
Dr. Delmonico. For kidneys. But that is why I am saying to
you it depends on the organ. So the heart is very sensitive.
Once it arrests and has no circulation it becomes complicated
to make a successful transplant. But there is research that is
being done now to do them.
But in terms of China and what has been practiced, once the
heart arrests it becomes very difficult to transplant it--
unpredictable. The lungs can last for a couple of hours because
there is oxygen retained within the lung even after circulation
subsides. The liver can be no more than about 30 minutes
without sufficient circulation and it has to be transplanted,
otherwise it won't function.
So there is a sensitivity of each organ to ischemia, or an
absence of circulation, that makes it different from one organ
to another.
Mr. Rohrabacher. How about the----
Dr. Delmonico. Yes, sir.
Mr. Rohrabacher [continuing]. The cornea in your eyes?
Dr. Delmonico. The corneas can be--that is a tissue and
that is a different matter. It doesn't require circulation. It
can be recovered many hours after the individual has died.
Mr. Rohrabacher. And how long will it last before it has to
be transplanted?
Dr. Delmonico. They can be preserved and transplanted days
or months later--the cornea.
Mr. Rohrabacher. And but the other organs you were talking
about have to be transplanted in a matter of hours.
Dr. Delmonico. They have to be transplanted in some
proximity. Now, we are--we are in a research way these days of
preserving organs that could last for a couple of days and done
by placing these organs on a machine that can give the organs
blood and oxygen or cold perfusate and it enables them to last
for hours and then a couple of days.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Does Dr. Delmonico's analysis--do you have
any comment on it from the rest of the panel? Is that accurate?
Mr. Matas. In terms of the times, I mean, that is
scientific evidence.
Dr. Delmonico. This has been a practice for 40 years.
Mr. Matas. Yes. But my comment on it is that it shows that,
well, except for corneas there has to be a pretty quick
turnaround between the death of a source and the
transplantation. We can't even have several hours. We're
looking at minutes--60 minutes, maybe 2 hours in the case of
one type of organ.
So and what we see in China is sometimes transplantation is
scheduled on demand of the patient, short waiting times, so
that--we do not have patients waiting for organs very often but
rather organs waiting for patients, which means, especially in
the case of vital organs, that people are being killed for
their organs.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. So the--what we should be looking at
then is not necessarily organs that are put into the icebox and
flown somewhere but instead should be looking to people who are
being recruited throughout the Western world and other
countries but places where people have money who are recruited
to go to China and perhaps elsewhere with other----
Dr. Delmonico. Without question.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. So that should be a major focus as
to people who are in a state of need because their own organs
are being--you know, going to hell and they're giving out, and
we need to be able to make sure that when they are offered
here, this is your--here, how we can save you is that we are
not saving them by condemning a prisoner who might be in jail
for saying something bad about the Communist Party of China.
Mr. Matas. Yes. I think all of us would agree with that
statement completely.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Let me just note, I am happy to hear this.
I have been worried about this because there are transplant
centers in Orange County, California and I have been very
concerned that there might be some kind of organs being brought
in from China. Now, is that a possibility that we----
Dr. Delmonico. No, that is not--I should say to you, if I
may----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Sure.
Dr. Delmonico. I had the opportunity to oversee the
practice of organ donation and transplantation in this country
as the president of UNOS, the United Network for Organ Sharing,
that runs the practice of transplantation in the country.
Every transplant that is performed in the United States
must be reported to the network--to the government, to the
Department of Human Health--of Health Human Services.
So I can make some assurance to you from the system that is
in the United States every transplant must be reported and
there would be no opportunity of bringing organs in from China
to California for a successful transplantation. Were that to be
known, the centers in Orange County would be closed down that
night.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Let me--again, I am not an expert on this
and what about the organ of the skin? Can skin be sent and
transported?
Dr. Delmonico. That is a tissue. So, you know, an organ is
a vital structure that has blood supply, et cetera, right. But
there are vital organs that require circulation for their
maintenance and viability.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Right.
Dr. Delmonico. There are tissues such as skin and bone and
cornea, valves, that do not need continuous circulation for
their viability. So they can be preserved for an extended
period of time or they can be processed.
Mr. Rohrabacher. So skin is not considered an organ. For
some reason back in high----
Mr. Matas. It is a tissue, yes.
Mr. Rohrabacher [continuing]. Back in my days when I got a
D----
Dr. Delmonico. It is under the--it is under the----
Mr. Rohrabacher [continuing]. In health in high school, I
think.
Dr. Delmonico. Mr. Chairman, that is fine. We don't know
about legislation. I will just say to you it is categorized as
a tissue.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. And so whether you're saying whether
it is a tissue or an organ, is there--are there cases--do we
have cases where skin is being removed and being sold on a
market by the Chinese Government?
Mr. Matas. Yes. Well, that is what the plastination is. We
see these body exhibits and there is some skin involved in them
as well as vital organs. But, I mean, whole bodies are
plastinated coming from China.
And in our update we talk about this plastination as
similar fact evidence. Many of these plastinated bodies, from
our conclusions, come from Falun Gong practitioners. But it
is--the plastination occurs within China and the skin grafts
and whatever, they occur within China.
The exportation of particular organs we don't--I mean, we
have heard rumours about it. We haven't seen any evidence of
it.
I wanted to pick up on what the----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Before we go on, okay. So we haven't seen
any evidence of particular organs because they--it does require
time and care and it is quick. But have we seen evidence of
skin transplants coming from China, the skin being transplanted
and the corneas and other----
Mr. Gutmann. I don't know. I mean, the BBC----
Mr. Rohrabacher [continuing]. And other--these other tissue
type things?
Mr. Gutmann. The BBC comes out with a story of a collagen-
based product--you know, various makeup products that use
tissue from executed prisoners. They come out with that story
every 3 years. It is kind of regular.
Mr. Matas. Yes, what I wanted to say though is Dr.
Delmonico had mentioned that there is compulsory reporting of
all transplants within China--within the U.S.--within the U.S.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Yes, that is--the fact is is that people
go to China----
Mr. Matas. And that is right.
Mr. Rohrabacher [continuing]. Specifically and they are--
and we have all the evidence in the world of people going
there, actually perhaps as part of an organized business
venture by someone who said, hey, we can get you organs and
come on our--on this tour and end up at this hospital and then
you have got your organ and even--and they do not know--even
they have no idea----
Mr. Matas. That is right.
Mr. Rohrabacher [continuing]. That their--that this is
coming from an involuntary donor.
Mr. Matas. And that is not--there is no compulsory
reporting for that. Once you leave and come back there is no
compulsory reporting.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, maybe one thing that could be done
that could have an impact is that people are coming back,
Chris, from China who have had some kind of organ transplant
operations have to in some way show that they were in some way
confident that this was not--be coming to them from an
involuntary contributor.
Mr. Matas. Well, even just at the very start at least they
should be required to report--doctors and the hospitals should
be required to report that this travel occurred and then there
could be some investigation afterwards.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Yes. Is there any reason why we shouldn't
do that?
Dr. Delmonico. No, no. This is fine. I am very in agreement
on this one. If a patient goes to a foreign destination for a
transplant and they are coming back into the United States,
that is going to require sophisticated care.
Immunosuppression--the gamut of medications that have to be
applied to make that organ transplant successful is
sophisticated. So they are going to come home to a physician at
one of our transplant centers that knows how to take care of
those patients.
So our people in the United States will know if they have
gone to China or to India or to Pakistan or to any location
that now is doing foreign patients for money. Okay. Could even
be Mexico.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. Well, this is--I will yield to Mr.
Smith now and we will have a second round of questions.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you all for
your testimonies. Very, very helpful to the subcommittees.
Just a couple of opening questions. First, to Dr.
Delmonico. You mentioned Huang Jiefu and we know that he's the
former Deputy Health Minister and chairman of the Human Organ
Donation and Transplant Committee, among other things, and my
question is--and before I get to it, I have worked human rights
issues in China for 36 years, from my very first election in
1980 during the Ronald Reagan years.
Obviously Tiananmen Square was a game-changer and then,
sadly, it was a major reversal for democracy and universally
recognized human rights. The students were repressed.
But throughout it all, beginning of 1982, 1983 I began
raising the issue of forced abortion and forced sterilization
in China only to be met with aggressive denials by the Chinese
Government, by the UNFPA, by many pro-abortion activists in the
United States and in Europe. And in 1985, in this room, we had
a hearing.
I wasn't the chairman at the time. The Democrats ran the
House. And we had Foreign Service Officers telling us that it
is over--it is finished, gone, and I put exclamation points on
that because it was largely a 1983 high-tide experience, as
they called it, and then Michael Weisskopf of the Washington
Post did a three-part expose, Page 1--he was the bureau chief
for the Washington Post--who absolutely blew the lid off the
apologists who were out there saying there is nothing to worry
about here, there is no forced abortion and no forced
sterilization.
I travelled to China many times. I met with Peng Peiyun,
the woman who ran the program--a face to face meeting with
State Department personnel sitting there and she said these are
all lies. There is no coercion whatsoever in the People's
Republic of China, despite the evidence that is absolutely
overwhelming and verified by all the major human rights
organizations.
After Tiananmen Square I went to a gulag--a Laogai called
Beijing Prison Number 1 and the Chinese Government told me that
there were no political prisoners, as they have said throughout
every meeting I have ever had with them.
I saw them. There were 40 of them there and the warden said
40 of these people were on the Square and they wouldn't let us
talk to them.
So when Chi Haotian, the operational commander, came to the
United States got a 19-gun salute by President Bill Clinton,
which I thought was an abomination--here is a man who sent in
the killers that crushed the dissent at Tiananmen Square
He went to the Army War College and said no one died at
Tiananmen Square. In 2 days, I put together a hearing in room
2172 of the Rayburn building as chairman of the Human Rights
committee. We invited several people who gave compelling
testimony that students and others were killed at Tiananmen
Square--that he was a liar.
So we invited the Embassy to send somebody. We invited Chi
Haotian to come. Obviously, we had an empty chair. We had that
very prominently displayed.
But we had people from Time magazine, the People's Daily--a
journalist who actually went to prison for trying to expose
what was happening because he sided with the students--all tell
their stories and some of the students themselves.
So Chi Haotian, in the light of all the glare here in
Washington, DC, said nobody died at Tiananmen Square. A couple
weeks ago I had another hearing on torture in China. There have
been two horrific reports--horrific in terms of what they
found--by the special rapporteur for torture in China.
This is the U.N. special rapporteur, and we had people at
this hearing including one Tibetan Buddhist who told us how he
sat in the tiger torture chair for 1 month and 22 days. Had a
large picture of what it looked like and we've had Christians,
Pentecostals, Falun Gong, and others all tell us how they had
been subjected to this horrific torture chair.
It is only one of many tools--horrible tools used by the
Chinese Government. Previously, 20 years before that, I had a
hearing of six survivors of the Laogai including a Tibetan
Buddhist monk, Palden Gyatso, who brought in the cattle prods
that were used under his arms, on his genitals, in his mouth,
and when he tried to get in through security here in the
Rayburn building they stopped him.
I had to come down and escort him and he said this is what
they do to us every single day. I have raised that issue with
the Chinese Government in Beijing, in Shanghai, and here in the
United States through hearings, through meetings, over and over
again and they categorically deny that there is any torture,
and that the torture chair--the tiger chair--does not exist.
On human trafficking I have written four major laws--the
major law on human trafficking known as the Trafficking Victims
Protection Act. China is a basketcase when it comes to labor
trafficking and sex trafficking, a magnet in large part because
of the missing girls, tens of millions of girls who don't exist
because of gendercide--the direct killing through sex-selection
abortion of the girl child--and that has led to a magnet effect
of trafficking. Plus, they announced that they were getting rid
of the Laogai system and it was another subterfuge because they
didn't. They just transferred that whole process.
I chair the Congressional-Executive Commission on China as
well. We were hopeful that this was real and durable. It was
actually not real and durable. It was just a transfer of how
they deal with this idea of reform through labor and it is just
as egregious as it was before.
I could go on in every category of human rights. There is
censorship. I held the hearings with Google, Microsoft, and
Cisco sitting here under oath saying that they are not part of
the censorship.
So if you put ``Tiananmen Square'' in what was then
google.cn, you got wonderful pictures of happy tourists. If you
put it into Google here in the United States you got pictures
of tanks. So censorship is very real and I tried it a Beijing
Internet cafe and I couldn't get my name. When I put in
anything about torture I got Guantanamo and I got what the
Japanese did, and it was horrible, to the Chinese during World
War II.
But nothing about Manfred Nowak's report as the Special
Rapporteur on torture, which was a scathing indictment of the
Chinese's systematic use of torture against Falun Gong, against
Christians, against Tibetan Buddhists, Uyghurs, and others.
So my question is about credibility. You mentioned in your
testimony that Dr. Huang Jiefu spent time under house arrest.
Dr. Lee. That was Wang Haibo.
Mr. Smith. Okay. So he was not under house--but he works
for the government. He does work for the government. He's right
hand to Xi Jinping. He was Deputy Health Minister. Was he not
Deputy Health Minister? No, let me ask you. Was he Deputy
Health Minister?
Mr. Matas. That's the question--was he Deputy Health
Minister.
Mr. Smith. That is the first question. Is he aligned or
part of the Government of China?
Dr. Delmonico. Jiefu Huang has been part of the government,
obviously.
Mr. Smith. Has been. Okay.
Mr. Gutmann. If I may just respond----
Mr. Smith. No, let me finish it. Then I'll ask you.
Mr. Gutmann. After you then, please.
Mr. Smith. Please. Thank you.
He has been part of the government and he may be a very
sincere upright very focused man and wants to get this right.
But he works for a government that systematically says things
don't happen.
Now, my question would be how do you independently verify?
In a country that is closed as it is, I don't know if you have
access to the military hospitals where this practice appears to
have happened.
They won't allow teams to go into their prisons from the
International Red Cross to look at prison conditions. They
won't allow it. How do you independently verify that even
though he may be very sincere that anything he says, zero
foreign customers for organ trafficking in 2016, how do you
independently verify that when there has been such a backdrop
of terrible duplicity, lies, and deception on the part of the
government? Trust and verify. How do you do it?
Dr. Delmonico. I am not an apologist. I am not here to tell
you not to worry. I am not here to verify. That is not my job.
My job is to say to you that the international community is
trying to make change within China and work with those
professionals that want to develop a system that conforms with
the guiding principles of the World Health Organization and the
Declaration of Istanbul.
That is my job. So let me say to you candidly I respect you
greatly, Congressman Smith. I know of all the things that you
recited for us this afternoon in your efforts. I have been in
the midst of those for the last decade hearing the same things
that you have heard.
The people of China said the very same things--we are not
using the organs from the executed. They denied it. However, in
this past decade, what has happened?
The state council no longer officially sanctions that
practice. Whether it is going on or not, I can say to you that
is a change.
I have met with the Minister of Health and said to her that
if she wants China to ascend in the leadership of organ
donation and transplantation in this world, they must stop the
use of organs from the executed because there will be no
presentations of such an experience in international fora or in
the medical literature such as the New England Journal of
Medicine or the transplantation literature. It won't happen,
Madam Minister. It is not going to happen.
So I have been just as candid in my relationship with the
Chinese as you have been, sir, and I am not here to verify or
make credible.
I am here to say to you that there is a move within the
country to change and the transplantation community recognizes
what has been an abhorrent practice and was told that it wasn't
happening.
Did not believe it and continued to work with the Chinese
to make something different. In that regard, Jiefu Huang has
indeed most recently been courageous, been at peril and the
fight is going on even on this day as to who is going to
succeed, whether the old system and the old guard will return
to power or not.
Mr. Smith. Could I ask you, are there zero cases of----
Dr. Delmonico. I don't know that. Well, let me say this to
you. I know about a month ago--and I get all of these anecdotes
through the Declaration of Istanbul--a woman from Vancouver,
Canada went to Tianjin and got herself a transplant.
So we do know that it is occurring still within China. But
it is not my--it is not my job to say to you that it is
eradicated or completely stopped.
Mr. Smith. Could I ask you--and this is strongly for the
record to know this--are there any--I wrote a letter to Dr.----
Dr. Delmonico. You wrote a letter to Philip O'Connell. We
responded to you. I responded to you.
Mr. Smith. Did we get a response?
Dr. Delmonico. Yes, you did. No, there is a letter there.
Mr. Smith. This is 10 questions.
Dr. Delmonico. Mr. Smith, there is a letter from the
Transplantation Society and I wrote to you as well personally,
which we got no response--which we got no response.
Mr. Smith. Well, we will respond to you.
Dr. Delmonico. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Before we move on to the second round, with
regard to the military hospitals--People's Liberation Army
Hospital--do you have any access to that, those hospitals?
Dr. Delmonico. No. I don't have access.
Mr. Smith. So we have no idea. I mean, that is where many
of these--I mean----
Dr. Delmonico. Sure, it could be going on there.
Mr. Smith. Okay.
Dr. Delmonico. I cannot assure you of that. What I can
assure is that the young people that are going to be the future
transplant people of the country they are not in tune with that
practice any longer. I have met them. I have been with them.
Now, I recognize Mr. Gutmann is going to say this is
anecdotal and et cetera.
Mr. Gutmann. I love anecdotes.
Dr. Delmonico. No, no. But I can only present to you--Mr.
Smith, I can only present to you my experience, right, and say
to you that we are trying to change it.
Mr. Smith. I don't question your motives. In fact, you want
to change it and you're part of the agent of reform. The
concern is no one does duplicity better than the Chinese
Communist Party and I gave you just a few examples and, again,
when I had my hearing 20 years ago it was the military that was
part of this process and security guards and we vetted the
guard that came and gave this testimony, we protected his
identity big time. He ended up getting asylum here, and Harry
Wu helped to facilitate all of that, the great human rights
leader.
But, frankly, when I read the documentation it was
overwhelming and the military was up to its gills in making
money through this.
Mr. Rohrabacher. If the other witnesses have a comment?
Dr. Lee. Yes, can I have one.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Then go for a second round? Everybody can
have--everybody can have a comment. So we will start with Mr.
Lee.
Dr. Lee. Yes. Okay. Thank you, Chairman.
We have heard that Dr. Delmonico talked about the organ
trafficking and it is not limited in China. It is also
happening in India, Egypt, within other countries as well. And
also the Congress has introduced the H.R. 3694 regarding the
organ trafficking.
What I wanted to say is that in China the problem is much
bigger than the organ trafficking and the numbers of these
transplantation operations much bigger than the executed
prisoners can be explained because if you look at the history
between 1995 and 1990, executed prisoners is about 1,600 or
1,700 a year. Then after the persecution of Falun Gongs, these
numbers stays the same or even a little less.
However, the transplantation numbers exploded. So we have
tons of evidence showing that the majority of these donors were
Falun Gong practitioners. And also, this is not just organ
trafficking for, like, organ----
Mr. Rohrabacher. It is very, very clear what you're saying.
There is evidence----
Dr. Lee. Yes, yes. But----
Mr. Rohrabacher [continuing]. That the Falun Gong prisoners
are a--there is a large--there is evidence to suggest they are
way more representative than they are in the population in the
number of donors supposedly that they are.
Dr. Lee. I think the point is that we cannot, like, shift
the focus because what we are talking about is a state-
sponsored crimes. It is organized by the Communist Party. It is
not like the Mafia or some underground organized crime. This is
like the entire country is organized--summoned to do these
crimes, and you cannot compare this crime to any organ
trafficking in other countries, even those also, you know,
should be condemned and prevented.
So I think also for the communist regime to admit that they
have been using executed prisoners it is not because they have
found their conscience.
It is because the evidence about this harvesting of Falun
Gong practitioners is too big and they cannot deny it so they
can--they use the excuse of, you know, executed prisoners as
kind of a lie, you know, to that they are not harvesting organs
from a Falun Gong practitioner.
So this is--this must be made clear that we cannot just
condemn organ trafficking instead of, you know, losing the big
picture.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Mr. Gutmann.
Mr. Gutmann. What is the question exactly?
Mr. Rohrabacher. Do you have a comment? And then we are
going to go to a second round and then----
Mr. Gutmann. Well, nothing really. I would just point out
sort of, I guess, supporting Congressman Smith's point, I am
holding this document. Actually, it was just given to me today
but these kinds of things keep turning up. This is the China
Red Cross and this is--it is on the eve of New Year's so 12/30/
2015. This is the year that supposedly China went kosher and
stopped harvesting any prisoners at all.
The voluntary donors go up in one single day from the 30th
of December to the night of the 31st of December of 25,000
exactly--25,000 voluntary donors in a single day. That's the
kind of thing that--you know, it is all very well to talk
about--and I take your point about anecdotes because I write a
lot of anecdotes too.
But, you know, when you start to sift through this kind of
data this is the kind of thing you keep turning up. These
numbers are fictional. They are flat out lies. This is a
government that lies as it breathes.
So I think, you know, the point is I don't really agree
with Dr. Delmonico that it is not at all their responsibility
to do verification.
I do believe that, you know, Jeremy Chapman, he's--wait a
second--Jeremy Chapman has a right to say anything he likes
about us but he basically said we were completely--had no
credibility whatsoever.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. You made your point and----
Mr. Gutmann. We have a right to--you know, I think, you
know, the point is we are supposed to be working together on
trying to verify these issues.
Mr. Rohrabacher. And Mr. Matas, do you have a comment? Your
microphone is not on.
Mr. Matas. Yes. I had a couple comments.
First of all, Representative Smith, I appreciate your--the
context in which you put everything because I think this issue
has to be approached contextually about what's generally
happening in China now and in Chinese immediate history.
Dr. Delmonico and I were on a panel a month ago in Rome
together and I'll repeat here what I said then, that it is
impossible to have an island of respect for the rule of law and
human rights in the transplant field in a raging sea of tyranny
and dishonesty everywhere else in the system--that in order to
get the transplant system to work you have to have respect for
the rule of law and human rights generally.
That doesn't mean that the transplant profession is
powerless and I think peer pressure is useful as leverage and
it has worked in the past.
Two years ago, the Transplantation Society had their
international conference here in the United States, San
Francisco. They rejected 35 papers from China and they didn't
go to an international conference in China to which they were
invited 2 years ago and that had an impact in China.
This year, the Transplantation Society is meeting in Hong
Kong. They haven't rejected the papers coming from China. Well,
there certainly has been a lot more of them accepted and,
again, than what happened 2 years ago. It hasn't been as
systematic and I have looked and others have looked at the
papers that are accepted and there is problems with those
papers.
And the point is not to argue about which papers should be
accepted or not but to point out that the transplantation can
be--transplantation profession can be useful but in order to be
useful in exercising peer pressure they have to develop the
kind of contextual approach that you, Representative Smith, has
presented--to know that there is lack of access, that there is
bamboozlement, that there is denial, that there is dishonesty
and be able--not to be too easily beguiled.
Mr. Rohrabacher. To be fair, we are going to give you 30
seconds to answer the comments and then we'll go to the second
round of questions.
Dr. Delmonico. Transplantation is a noble act.
Mr. Rohrabacher. What is that now?
Dr. Delmonico. Transplant--organ donation and
transplantation is a noble act. It has been my whole life and
in all of our community it is a noble act. It is a giving of
one person to another.
So when David says it is a human rights issue, it is a
human rights issue. And why is that? Because it must be for the
community to safeguard the well-being of the living donor and
for us to make certain that organs that are recovering from the
deceased are fairly justly distributed throughout the society.
So I completely agree with David's objectives of making
this a human rights issue. It has been for the Transplantation
Society and the World Health Organization of which I have
representation and in this country to assure that. So please
know of that.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. All right.
Dr. Delmonico. Please know of it.
Mr. Rohrabacher. All right. Thank you very much.
This is for a second round which we will try to make a
little bit quicker. Let me just note when you have an operation
on someone and you're cutting them open to cut out a piece of
cancer, that is a noble act.
When you stick a bayonet in somebody and cut them open in
order to suppress them or to create a feeling among a
population that they are going to be--that you are now able to
do a horrible thing like cutting somebody's head off like we
see with ISIL, that is--okay, they are both cutting--they are
both cutting somebody open.
And in this particular case what we are talking about is
cutting somebody open, okay, and from what I have heard--just
from what I have heard, the verification is coming from--and to
be very fair to you, sir, you are basing your policies which
you wanted policies on what will happen in the future after the
era of reform that is going to take place in China.
And, frankly, I have been hearing about that for the last
25 years, longer than that--that there is going to be this
nirvana in China if we keep treating them much more openly and
we open up the communications with us, as long as we can talk
to some of the young people there and give them some of the
skills they need, which sometimes when they turn around are
able to use to build weapons or to build things that actually
repress their own people.
I have been hearing this for 25--we are going to have by
just more interaction with them officially and telling them our
expectations that they will be reformed.
I don't see the reform in China. I see them making a lot
more money. I see them building better systems of repression.
You were talking about the old gang returning. I am sorry.
I don't see the current gang to be so laudatory. We just--
what have we talked about here, infanticide--you know, where
we--babies have been killed and now they say that is only going
to be--people can have two babies before they mass slaughter
all the rest of them. There has been, of course, forced
abortion and as we mentioned--or infanticide against people
with--even if babies are born, if they are born with defects--
am I wrong here--that in China today babies born with defects
end up not getting home.
How about the fact that there are no labor unions. There
are no opposition newspapers. There are no opposition parties.
There are none of these things, and what there is is torture.
What there is is all these evil things that we have noted and
the nirvana that I have been promised all of these years and
we, Congress, has been promised will happen because if we just
engage with them and get them into our economy they are going
to become more noble people and accept the values of what, I
guess, the establishment that you're talking about is going to
be very happy with them and being happy with the establishment
is what will get them to change their behavior.
Dr. Delmonico. Chairman, I am not--I am not here to promise
you anything and I am not here to have a conclusion. All of the
comments that you made about reprehensible activity is
something that I condone.
Please, I want to make that clear in the record.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Yes, sir.
Dr. Delmonico. I don't condone any of that and I am not
here to promise you anything and I am not here to assure you
nirvana. I am only here to say that the international community
has recognized this terrible practice in China and it wishes to
change it and it has been asked to help to change it and
instead of sitting on the sideline we are going there to
develop an infrastructure of organ donation and transplantation
that would be consistent with World Health Organization
principles. That is my job. That is my job.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Yes, and you----
Dr. Delmonico. And I receive no funds for that, right. This
isn't something which I am selling for.
Mr. Rohrabacher. All I can tell you is setting up systems--
setting up systems----
Dr. Delmonico. They are trying to set up systems that you,
sir, would----
Mr. Rohrabacher [continuing]. In which--setting up systems
in which a--in which you are one of the participants of the
system is a Nazi.
You could expect that there would be some things coming out
of that system that you don't like or the whole system will
actually be perverted and used in a way that no one intended it
to be used.
For example, today people can be lulled to sleep in the
United States as we have been for 20 years, lulled to sleep in
to thinking there is a fundamental change in China. It is
coming, there is an era coming, we can work with them now.
Their new generation is so much different.
I am sorry. I don't think the new generation is that much
different in China today except maybe they are different from
Mao and--but anyway, with that said I think that this is--thank
you for--by the way, just thank the whole panel but thank you
especially, Dr. Delmonico. You have been a real trooper to
express your points of view here and I take it all in good
faith and trust----
Dr. Delmonico. Yes, let us all just sleep and we are
working hard.
Mr. Rohrabacher. All right. By the way, I get the same
criticism when I am talking about trying to work with Russia to
defeat radical Islam.
But you know what? There has been reform in Russia. There
has been no opposition parties, no opposition papers--all of
that stuff I just mentioned. A lot of that stuff has happened
at least part way in Russia. In China, there is no--they
haven't had any of that.
And also, you go to China and you notice that people, you
know, there is an underground church movement there. But in
Russia, they actually allow them now. They don't have to be an
underground church in Russia.
(Off mic comments)
Well, I think that there has been some change in Russia and
there hasn't been in China, and I think that is what it comes
down to. And I think that the--it is the old thing. I say this
all the time, for people who haven't heard it, is that the
theory that if we treat them well and we let them into our
markets and we increase their standard of living by allowing
technology transfer and our marketplace is open that the people
who run China and have been responsible for this infanticide
and the forced abortions and all of these things that we are
talking about here--organ transplants and then the rest--that
those people will change their ways.
They will become decent people and you will now have--
hugging them like they are liberals will change their heart. It
won't, and I just--I call it the hug a Nazi, make a liberal
theory and it just hasn't worked.
And that is why today I believe in we need to be tough,
really tough on these issues instead of going about it just to
be really cooperative with them and I think that is the essence
of it.
Chris, would you like to take over?
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I am glad Chairman Rohrabacher mentioned labor unions.
Again, another example of the country of China with its state-
run labor union, which is a farce, and no way comports with ILO
standards. I have chaired hearings on that as well.
Our annual report looks at that, at the Congressional-
Executive Commission on China, in great depth and there is no
sense that--and I say that because there is right now an all-
out effort by Xi Jinping and others who would love to be part
of the TPP to somehow suggest that they will conform or are
conforming now even to those standards.
I went and read the TPP. It leaves the enforcement
mechanism to the country itself. So we would have to count on
Chinese courts to say they do or do not have labor rights.
There is no collective bargaining.
Arrearages is a problem. OSHA-type protections are
nonexistent and, again, we get this big tsunami of
disinformation out of China about they have a state labor
union, but it is not protected.
So it is another example in a long series of examples of
the context that Mr. Matas mentioned earlier, which I think is
so important.
So maybe another question would be Dr. Wong Jiefu, how many
others do you have--remember, he is a former--I don't know who
pays his salary now because usually it is the government for
something like this but maybe not----
Dr. Delmonico. He's the head of a--can I mention----
Mr. Smith. Yes.
Dr. Delmonico. He's the head of a foundation that has
received funding from a benefactor independent of China to now
make--for the support for this change. So----
Mr. Smith. Now, do you work with others too and could you
name any of those individuals, any other docs?
Dr. Delmonico. Oh, yes.
Mr. Smith. Who you would believe can tell us, for example,
what is going on in the military hospitals?
Dr. Delmonico. I can't tell you about the military
hospitals.
Mr. Smith. Okay. But that is a big point that needs to be
emphasized here because that is where we believe a lot of this
is happening.
Dr. Delmonico. Let us emphasize it together. I can't tell
you about the military hospitals. That is fine.
Mr. Smith. Okay. And maybe our other witnesses would want
to elaborate on that.
You know, Xi Jinping, you know, this group that is
supporting him and the foundation you mentioned has a draft NGO
law that severs ties with----
Dr. Delmonico. This is a foundation in organ donation and
transplantation. It----
Mr. Smith. But you are outside the country, right?
Dr. Delmonico. No, no. It was a benefactor hotel magnate
who supported this foundation.
Mr. Smith. Is it a Chinese foundation or----
Dr. Delmonico. It is a Chinese foundation, yes.
Mr. Smith. Oh, it is in-country.
Dr. Delmonico. It exists in Beijing but it is not a matter
of the government and now Jiefu Huang is the head of that
foundation and that is what supporting the infrastructure of
developing organ procurement organizations similar to what we
have in the United States.
I can't, again, guarantee this is going to happen. We have
to try, however. We have to try.
Mr. Smith. Let me just ask you, I did ask--and maybe
through Mr. Gutmann and Mr. Matas--Dr. Jeremy Chapman, as we
know the former president of the Transplantation Society,
called the estimates in your report ``pure imagination piled
upon political interest.''
I know because I work on human rights across the board
around the world then when the B'nai Brith or the American
Jewish Committee or some other organization dealing with
Catholics or other, when we get information on Tibetan
Buddhists we, obviously, try to do our due diligence and
Congressmen and Senators to ensure that the information is
accurate.
But to single out the Falun Gong and the others who are
victims of this in the way--in such a dismissive way, I mean,
it is beyond insulting. I wonder what you think of that
dismissal of your work.
Mr. Matas. Well, I am a litigation lawyer so I am used to
people disagreeing with me. In fact, that is my daily fare. So
and but, certainly, this is not a work of my imagination.
We, as I said, had in this report 2,400 footnotes.
Everything we have done anybody can see. Every piece of
evidence that we have looked at anybody else can look at.
Anybody else who wants to look at it and has done the
independent research has come to the same conclusion we had. In
terms of political interest, I have none.
I am not--I did want to comment about what Representative
Rohrabacher said earlier, which--I mean, obviously, I agree
with everything you said but I did want to point out that this
isn't a China problem. It is a communism problem.
This is the way communist--because I have been involved in
human rights a lot of places around the world and I see this
pattern behavior with the Soviet Union, with North Korea and so
on. And, of course, the victims here are almost entirely if not
entirely Chinese.
I mean, we, who are standing for the victims, are doing
more--we are more pro-China, more standing up for China than
the Communist Party of China is and----
Mr. Rohrabacher. I am really happy that you brought that up
because I, obviously, have taken some very tough stands against
the Chinese Government and I just--our greatest ally in the
fight to create a better world is--are the people of China.
And this is all--in fact, the motive here between Chris and
myself, we are motivated by--we want to help the people of
China. So thank you for making that distinction. We don't want
anybody to think otherwise.
By the way, but about communism--you know, I have studied
communism from the time I was a kid. I mean, I actually read
Marx and Lenin and all these things. This is certainly not a
Marxist government there. I mean, when you have--this is more
like a fascist--a Leninist fascism.
But it is not--it is no longer the idea that they are going
to create this new man, as Marx was suggesting, by ridding us
of this profit motive and property rights to own things. But it
is fascism of some kind.
Mr. Matas. Well, and----
Mr. Rohrabacher. But your point stands true. We are not--we
are against these Chinese dictatorships and the Chinese people
they are our greatest ally in making a more peaceful world.
Mr. Matas. And my primary focus as a human rights advocate
has been the victims, not the perpetrators. Those have to be
our primary concern.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Right. Right.
Mr. Matas. You know, if Jeremy Chapman wants to insult me,
I am not going to insult him back. I would just say look at our
work. You don't have to--I don't care what people think of me.
Just look at the stuff we have done.
Mr. Smith. Let me ask you if I could, Dr. Delmonico, then
Mr. Gutmann, if you wanted to comment as well.
You were chairman of the TTS, what, between 2012 to 2014?
Dr. Delmonico. To the present.
Mr. Smith. To the present? Okay. Has TTS ever requested
evidence that sourcing organs for transplant from prisoners
came from military hospitals and whether or not it has ceased?
Has that inquiry been made? Was it made under your watch?
Has it been made since?
Dr. Delmonico. I have gone to China and asked for a
transparency of practice that is consistent with the World
Health Organization principles.
That means that every transplant, every donor should be
recorded. That's what our--that is what our policy is. So I
have looked at the Minister of Health----
Mr. Smith. I know, but did you ask the military----
Dr. Delmonico. I have looked at the Minister of Health just
like we are looking at each other right now, sir, and I have
said to the Minister, we must have a transparency of practice
that says recording of every single transplant with every donor
to know----
Mr. Smith. Did you get it?
Dr. Delmonico. What we got was--what we got was in response
that was unacceptable and upon that unacceptability of knowing
that the practice was still continuing I wrote an open letter
with Jeremy Chapman and other members of the international
community, which I can submit to you, and it has been, it
should be before you--an open letter to President Xi Jinping to
stop the corrupt practice because just as you we were not at
all satisfied with the response that we got and we said in that
letter that until there was some move of transparency which now
is under the COTR system--there is a China Organ Transplant
Registry system that is now in place--there will be no
presentation of papers or in the medical literature of the
China experience, and that was our position statement.
Mr. Smith. But there was no delineation or anything by way
of response that was going on in the military. Here's another
reason why I am stressing the military.
Xi Jinping and his crackdown on religion and this crackdown
on NGOs--on religion NGOs now have to report to public security
and not to what was a Communist Party apparatchik group before
that.
So he has militarized it even further, and since that is an
area where we have an absolute dearth of information--you don't
know it, I don't know it, we don't know what's going on there--
I think--does he even suggest that there might be zero or----
Dr. Delmonico. That doesn't mean that I condone it.
Mr. Smith. I know, but I think we have to insist on getting
that and wonder why we are not getting the data. What are they
hiding in the military hospitals?
Dr. Delmonico. Agreed.
Mr. Smith. Okay. Let me ask one final question, if I could,
and this is, again, to just make sure this is absolutely on the
record, are there any financial incentives or business dealings
between individuals in the TTS leadership and mainland China's
medical companies or any other mainland entities that could
possibly create the appearance of a conflict of interest?
Dr. Delmonico. I can only answer--my travel to China was
supported--my travel to support--to go to China was paid for by
the China Foundation.
Mr. Smith. Is that a government foundation or not?
Dr. Delmonico. It comes from--I am telling you that the
foundation paid for my travel. That's who paid for the travel.
Mr. Smith. But is that an entity of the Chinese Government?
Dr. Delmonico. I am not aware that that is an entity of the
Chinese Government. As I told you earlier, Mr. Smith, my
understanding is that this foundation has been established by a
benefactor who is a hotel magnate and that is how the
foundation has been established.
And the objective is to develop infrastructure for organ
procurement organizations within the country that would comply
with WHO principles. That's what we are up to and that is the
truth of it.
Mr. Smith. Would anybody else like to go? And thank you,
Dr. Delmonico.
Mr. Matas. Well, I don't want to comment on his--he is
answering for himself. But I want to comment on the fact that
he is only answering for himself because----
Dr. Delmonico. Well, it is not for me to answer for
everybody else.
Mr. Matas. Fair enough.
Mr. Smith. When you were present.
Dr. Delmonico. Well, during my--no, there was none. So if
that--thank you for that question of clarification. There was
none.
Mr. Smith. We have asked that question in a letter that was
dated on April 7th to Dr. O'Connell and we are awaiting that
answer. Thank you.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, I think this has been a good hearing
and, again, let me first of all congratulate--you knew, Dr.
Delmonico, you knew there would be--this would be--you would be
in the hot seat and----
Dr. Delmonico. I don't mind that. We are working hard to
make some change.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I know. I know you don't and that is why I
am thanking you for coming today.
Dr. Delmonico. Came here on my own--at my own cost.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Yes. I have--again, I have had to
withstand--I honestly believe that----
Dr. Delmonico. China is not paying for me to be here today.
Thank you.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Yes. I actually believe that we need to
have better relations with Russia and I was--I have always been
a big enemy of the Soviet Union from the time I was a kid and I
at times stand alone like you do and the secret is, however, we
have to be scrupulously honest with each other and we have to
trust each other's points of view.
But we need to express things and specifics and make sure
that they make sense and that we as decision makers are getting
a truthful view and an accurate view.
I don't think that we have had the reform in China that we
were promised.
Dr. Delmonico. I am not alone, though, Mr. Chairman. I am
here with the World Health Organization as well.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Sure. Well, all I can----
Dr. Delmonico. That is not alone.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, you know, all I can tell you is that
when you talk about certain people in the establishment who
want this and that I would just have to say that, for example,
the people would like to say there is a difference between
corrupt practices and official corrupt practices.
And in fact in places like China they are just meshed
together because you have got an establishment. And again, it
is not communism because these are millionaires.
These guys who are--the supposed communist bosses are
millionaires and own hotels and things and they get involved in
that way. They have their own little--they have their
establishment.
Well, with that said, this is--what is important is that we
have sent a message out that this issue, first of all, we have
sent a lot of messages about China but in particular we have
sent a message out that the issue of taking organs from a
person who does not want to be a donor of an organ, especially
if that person is a prisoner, especially if that person is a
prisoner of conscience like the Falun Gong, that we are aware
that that is happening in China today and that we are--we will
not tolerate it and it is on our radar scope. That is what our
message is today. Hopefully, that message will get in Beijing
but also to other countries----
Dr. Delmonico. India.
Mr. Rohrabacher [continuing]. Where these things are
happening.
Dr. Delmonico. Mr. Smith, I hope you can include that in
the TIP report. I hope that category can be--that is something
I would ask you directly.
Mr. Smith. If that legislation passes the Senate, it will.
Dr. Delmonico. That is a reassuring comment. Thank you.
Mr. Rohrabacher. All right. So with that, thank you, and
Chris, I am going to give you the last----
Mr. Smith. Oh, I think you have said it.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. There it is. Thank you all very
much. This hearing is adjourned.
(Applause)
[Whereupon, at 3:46 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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Note: Material submitted for the hearing record by the witness Charles
Lee, M.D., director of public awareness, World Organization to
Investigate the Persecution
of Falun Gong, is not reprinted here but is available on the Internet
at:
http://docs.house.gov/Committee/Calendar/ByEvent.aspx?EventID=105116