A Found Strategy for Human Rights in China

Wise strategies do not always come from premeditated choices. Sometimes we just stumble upon them.

That was an experience David Kilgour and I lived. We concluded in a report in July 2006, with a second version in January 2007 and a third, in book form, released in November 2009 that practitioners of the spiritually based exercise regime Falun Gong were being killed in China for their organs in the tens of thousands. We investigated the abuse because it needed investigation. We then proceeded to campaign against the abuse we identified because we could not walk away from our own conclusions.

Superficially, if the goal is ending a broad range of human rights abuses in China, doing what we did is not the obvious strategic choice. For one the government of China/Communist Party wants no part of discussions about victimization of the Falun Gong. For another, establishing that Falun Gong are being killed for their organs requires a good deal more effort in assessing the evidence than establishing many other abuses.

Yet, it has turned out that opposing the killing of Falun Gong for their organs was a wise strategic choice. We say now from experience that, if you want to pull at one thread in the quilt of human rights violations in China to unravel the whole quilt, pull on this thread.

Why is that so? One reason is the insight opposing this abuse gives into the dynamics of Chinese repression. Opposing the killing of Falun Gong for their organs gives full frontal exposure to the brutality, the intensity, the dishonesty, the global repressive reach of the Chinese Communist regime.

Another reason is that the killing of Falun Gong for their organs overlaps with many other, broader violations. Opposing the killing of Falun Gong for their organs means, of course, opposing repression of Falun Gong, in terms of numbers and cruelty the most brutally repressed of all the victims of the Chinese Communist regime. It means, more generally, opposing religious intolerance in China and advocating for an end to the re-education through labour camps, which are huge organ donor banks.

It means also calling for an end to the sourcing of organs from prisoners sentenced to death, an abuse the Government of China admits and acknowledges is wrong. The dispute we have with the government of China is not whether they are sourcing organs from prisoners, but which prisoners are the sources of organs for transplants. That dispute gets us into a call for the release from the government of China of death penalty statistics and organ transplant statistics.

Operating in our own particular bailiwick has led David Kilgour and me to call for an end to transplant tourism into China and to oppose joint research efforts with Chinese transplant professionals. We have come out against pharmaceutical transplant anti-rejection drug trials in China and urged the cancellation of the touring plastinated body exhibits sourced from China. We have stood for the release of human rights defenders like Gao Zhisheng who have urged within China an end to the persecution of Falun Gong.

The key we have may seem small; but it has helped to move open a few inches a very large door. Since our work began, the government of China has banned the sale of organs, required that civilian hospitals engaged in transplants be registered with the Ministry of Health, given Chinese patients priority access to organ transplants over foreigners, committed to enacting a law to legalize organ harvesting from the brain dead, and set up an organ donation system as a pilot project in ten locations.

All this has happened at the same time as the government/Party has responded to our report in silly, meaningless ways. Indeed, there may be a connection between the two. Raise with Chinese government representatives many other human rights concerns and they temporize, generate talk but no action. They will say: we are trying to do better, give us time, we need your help. That is obviously something they cannot say about the killing of Falun Gong for their organs. Something had to be done.

The engagement of a wide spectrum of standards, mechanisms and players, the global advocacy that opposing the killing of Falun Gong for their organs requires as well as the movement on the ground since we started our work began leads us to conclude that opposing the killing of Falun Gong for their organs is not only the right choice in principle. It is also a sound strategic choice to contribute to ending a broad spectrum of human rights abuses in China.

David Matas is an international human rights lawyer based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Together with David Kilgour he is the author of “Bloody Harvest: Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China .” This piece is a shortened version of a talk he gave at New York University Law School on April 6, 2011.