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Human rights lawyer David Matas (The Epoch Times)
The following remarks were delivered at a United Nations Conference called “Advance Global Health” in Melbourne, Australia, on Aug. 31.
David Kilgour and I have concluded (first in a report released in July 2006 and updated in January 2007, and then in a book titled Bloody Harvest, released in November 2009) that Falun Gong practitioners have been killed in China in the tens of thousands so that their organs could be sold to transplant patients. I invite you to take a look at our report, which is online, or read our book to see how we came to that conclusion. Falun Gong is a simple set of exercises with a spiritual foundation that started in China in 1992 and was banned in 1999.
This abuse in China has to be of concern to the global community because it is a grave human rights violation which should concern all humanity, but also because the developed world has been complicit in the abuse. When China shifted from socialism to capitalism, the state withdrew funds from the health system.
Since 1980, government spending dropped from 36 percent of all health care expenditure to 17 percent, while patients' out of pocket spending rocketed up from 20 percent to 59 percent. A World Bank study reported that reductions in public health coverage were worsened by increases in costs by the private sector.
According to cardiovascular doctor Hu Weimin, the state funding for the hospital where he was working was not enough to even cover staff salaries for one month. He stated: "Under the current system, hospitals have to chase profit to survive." Human Rights in China reports: "Rural hospitals [have had] to invent ways to make money to generate sufficient revenue.”
Hospitals needed to find private funding to replace state funding. Foreign sales of organs became the primary money maker. The Organ Transplant Centre of the Armed Police General Hospital in Beijing for instance stated on its website: "Our Organ Transplant Centre is our main department for making money. Its gross income in 2003 was 16,070,000 yuan. From January to June of 2004 income was 13,570,000 yuan. This year (2004) there is a chance to break through 30,000,000 yuan."
The Chinese health system began the organ transplant business by selling organs of prisoners sentenced to death. However, eventually, despite the large number of death sentences and executions in China, this supply became insufficient. So hospitals and prisons turned to another source—Falun Gong practitioners.
For years, patients from developed countries came over in the thousands to buy organs in China. The Government of China, in June 2007, ordered the hospitals to give priority to local patients. What before was a foreign flow became a trickle. Transplant volumes today are at traditional levels. So, with minor variations, are the sources. However, the patient composition has changed dramatically.
