A friend who traveled widely in China back in the '80s described a busy cornea transplant trade around the prisons in outlying areas. Wait times were typically one day. One day.
The report this is referencing is available here[0]<p>The tribunal was setup, for what it is worth, by a campaign group called: "International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China"[1]<p>[0]: <a href="https://chinatribunal.com/final-judgement-report/" rel="nofollow">https://chinatribunal.com/final-judgement-report/</a><p>[1]: <a href="https://endtransplantabuse.org/" rel="nofollow">https://endtransplantabuse.org/</a>
Truly jarring if this is true. The systematic persecution of and violence against political opposition is one thing, the oppressive surveillance another, but I think forced organ harvest (especially on living people!) crosses a line.<p>What can we do?
There is something brilliant about using a group of people who intentionally keep their organs in the best possible condition (Falun Gong does exercise, avoids alcohol, smoking, and some foods, etc.) as your oppressed-minority-live-organ-banks.<p>OTOH, I think the only reason they were hated was due to being popular and somehow offending or scaring someone in power. They were tolerated or even supported for a long time and then suddenly The Enemy.<p>The Falun Gong repression is probably one of the greatest examples of evil in the world today.
A hard line stance on China’s human rights abuses, currency and trade manipulation, and intellectual property theft will be a top requirement for my support of 2020 US presidential candidates.
Shortcut link to officers of the organization: <a href="https://chinatribunal.com/who-we-are/" rel="nofollow">https://chinatribunal.com/who-we-are/</a>
> While extracting the liver and kidneys from an executed victim who had been shot in the head and dumped by the side of a road, Tohti made a horrifying discovery.<p>> "I started cutting down the middle and then he started struggling and I knew then that he was still alive, but he was too weak to resist me, " Tohti told The Telegraph.<p>What the actual fuck.
I was on an operation table, as surgeons cut deep and worked fast, and I cannot imagine what it's like to be one one such surgeon's table when they goal isn't wellbeing. Nightmarish
The page itself and both of the "short form"/"summary" reports downloadable are vacant claims and introduction of the organization and of Falun Gong.<p>After years of propaganda, I don't believe there still are so many Falun Gong followers in Mainland, let alone to have their organs harvested. Yes, most of us Chinese Mainlanders are fucking Atheists. And even if most of us more or less believe in karma and reincarnation and other forms of buddaism, Falun Gong is vastly different, especially as I know it, it's not compatible with going to buddist temples.
It's important to realize that this isn't what the Chinese government is capable of, it's what governments are capable of. It can't happen here overnight, but it can happen here. Just look at the otherization and dehumanization increasingly embraced by people across the political spectrum, and dial it up to eleven.<p>This should give people at least sympathy, if not agreement, with gun rights advocates. While private guns can't stop a powerful government from having their way with us, they can at least make it more expensive. Would China be able to do this as quietly and without civil war if the Chinese people had the same number of private guns per capita as the US?<p>Many of us quite reasonably believe that gun rights aren't worth the huge number of gun crimes in this country. Others of us fear state actors even more than individual criminals and feel that the high cost of gun crimes is worth the price. Even if you disagree, stories like this should give you empathy for their argument.<p>If you think it can't happen here, did you think that this country would move in the political direction that it has in the last few years? I didn't. Uncertainty about the social future should translate into humility about the quality of our prognostications ... and fear about how bad it could get, and how fast.
"I owe you my life."<p>Since time out of mind, the ultimate, unpayable, debt.<p>"I owe you my life."<p>Hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people who have received life-saving organs owe their lives, their very lives, to their donors.<p>"I owe you my life."
<p><pre><code> While stopping short of concluding that the killing and
forced organ removal of these peoples constitutes genocide in
its legal definition (due to a lack of proof of actual intent
to commit genocide), the panel nonetheless condemned the forced
organ removals as a crime against humanity and an act of
"unmatched wickedness".
</code></pre>
This article made me shiver.<p>How did China get away with this for so long?
This is an interesting interview with a well known CCP critic that discusses the history of this program and a bunch of other minimally discussed things.<p>I would encourage people to take the time to watch this.<p><a href="https://youtu.be/nxyVZh_fVVw" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/nxyVZh_fVVw</a>
1984 is being played out inside this country if this is true. The horror is beyond imagination since this seems state directed/aided.<p>My only hope is this news spreads like wildfire within its boundaries and citizens of China wake up.
> In its "unavoidable" final conclusion, the China Tribunal found forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale, primarily sourcing body parts from detained Falun Gong practitioners, and possibly also an ethnic minority called the Uyghurs (although other groups are also targeted).<p>Oddly enough Falun Gong enjoyed approval from the Chinese Government in the early 90s:<p>> According to David Ownby, Professor of History and Director of the Center for East Asian Studies at the Université de Montréal, Li became an "instant star of the qigong movement",[119] and Falun Gong was embraced by the government as an effective means of lowering health care costs, promoting Chinese culture, and improving public morality. In December 1992, for instance, Li and several Falun Gong students participated in the Asian Health Expo in Beijing, where he reportedly "received the most praise [of any qigong school] at the fair, and achieved very good therapeutic results", according to the fair's organizer.[15] The event helped cement Li's popularity, and journalistic reports of Falun Gong's healing powers spread.[15][20] In 1993, a publication of the Ministry of Public Security praised Li for "promoting the traditional crime-fighting virtues of the Chinese people, in safeguarding social order and security, and in promoting rectitude in society."<p>That changed when the organization refused to become more closely aligned with the regime:<p>> In 1995, Chinese authorities began looking to Falun Gong to solidify its organizational structure and ties to the party-state.[53] Li was approached by the Chinese National Sports Committee, Ministry of Public Health, and China Qigong Science Research Association (CQRS) to jointly establish a Falun Gong association. Li declined the offer. The same year, the CQRS issued a new regulation mandating that all qigong denominations establish a Communist Party branch. Li again refused.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong</a>
It's simply the absence of an opt-out system that leads to either organ shortages or forced donations. An opt-out system fixes all of this immediately.
This is a textbook thought experiment in utilitarianism, carried to its logical conclusion. Kill one person, save eight. We might not like it, we might consider it abhorrent, it might contravene international human rights law, but we can't argue that it's senseless.
Shamefully, my HN account was shadowbanned for posting ethical objections to chinese nationalism on the basis of these atrocities committed by the government merely several months ago.
Setting aside the persecutions, torture and possible genocide, which are undoubtedly heinous, something perplexes me:<p>Why do we consider it ethical for a state to execute prisoners, but consider harvesting their (now useless) organs to save more lives is ethically abhorrent?<p>I am much more outraged by the fact that they're killing people for political reasons, the fact that they're harvesting their organs afterwards seems comparatively tame to me.<p>I realize that harvesting organs from not-quite-dead prisoners, or killing prisoners just to harvest the organs is extremely unethical, but if someone was executed for a different reason, is it so bad to use their organs? They didn't consent to getting killed either, why are we drawing the line at organ harvesting?
I have read about the possibility of large-scale harvesting of organs from prisoners for a few months now. First thing to note about this particular article is that "The China Tribunal" has no formal or legal standing, it is basically a volunteer organization trying to collect evidence.<p>When they say "Worst Fears [...] Were Just confirmed" they are at best misleading.<p>There has been a notable dearth of reporting by traditional journalistic media about this topic, and so I am still somewhat skeptical. The evidence presented so far is not as conclusive as with the Uyghur suppression.<p>The practice described in the article would undoubtedly be a crime against Humanity, and among the biggest in history. But I can't tell right now if the process of its discovery is just slow-moving or if there is just nothing that big to discover. I'd appreciate any pointers to more information either way.
I have no way of knowing if this particularly is true. I am Chinese myself and lived overseas for most of my life, a year or so ago I backpacked around Xinjiang so I can certainly attest to the police state over there.<p>When I returned from Xinjiang, I thought about it a lot and the only conclusion I could come to in the end is that human beings in aggregate are for the most part scum and cowards. It's conclusion that gives me no hope in the future but I cannot avoid it.<p>Taking into account the scale but not the novelty (genocide/ethnic cleansing as a form of statecraft, in fact I am reminded of Japanese experiments on Chinese in WW2, the irony of the oppressed eventually becoming the oppressor). I have to conclude that given the right circumstances, anyone can do just about anything. It takes constant vigilance and self-courage to be a consistently good person, most of us in the developed west have just never been put into a situation where we are compelled to do something real shitty.