Hon. David Kilgour speaks at the opening reception of the art exhibition featuring the paintings of artists who are practitioners of Falun Gong, on Sept. 9, 2010. (Ross Gillis)

Remarks presented during the opening reception of the Truth, Compassion, and Tolerance Art Exhibition held at Studio Gallery, Faculty of Education, at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, on Sept. 9, 2010.

Since 2004, this exhibition has toured more than 200 cities in 40 countries. The pieces were done by artists who practise Falun Gong (or Falun Dafa), an ancient discipline which seeks to improve body, character, and ethics. It contains the essence of traditional spiritual systems, like Buddhism and Daoism (Taoism), combined with a set of gentle exercises. Its core principles are “truth, compassion and forbearance.” It today evidently has millions of practitioners of diverse backgrounds in more than 100 countries.

70-100 Million Practitioners

In China where it first became public in 1992, Falun Gong grew within seven years to 70-100 million by the government’s own estimate. Party leaders in mid-1999 panicked at seeing practitioners engaging publicly in a form of exercise which had an underlying belief system different from communism. The exercises can be done anywhere at any time, singly or in groups, indoors or outdoors. The amorphous nature of the discipline meant that it was impossible for the Party to control it.

The early vilification of Falun Gong by elements of the Party seeking to ban it led to protests by practitioners, mobilized through cell phone and Internet coordination. This enraged Party bosses in Beijing. For them, persecuting Falun Gong became a crime easier to get away with than doing the same to better known spiritual groups. Falun Gong practitioners in China often lack Western connections and Western languages. The decade-long incitement to hatred against them across China in party media has had many tragic consequences.

The Party has repressed Falun Gong with savage brutality continuously since July 1999. Torture, rapes, beatings to death, detentions in forced labour camps, brainwashing—all have become the daily lot of many Falun Gong practitioners across China. Practitioners have put up a non-violent, principled, and energetic defence of human rights in China and in the other countries where practitioners now live.

In an effort to end the barbaric persecution, Professor Kunlun Zhang and other artists decided to express their personal understanding of the universe in this exhibit. Realism oil painting, or New-Renaissance, was chosen as the genre for its narrative capabilities, accessibility, and purity.

Party-State Today

Let me suggest a few things to keep in mind about the party-state in China, based on an important book published this summer, The Party, by Richard McGregor, former China bureau chief of the respected Financial Times newspaper.

Many writers have looked at China’s economy, appalling human rights record, history, and relations with the world, but McGregor addresses the key issue: how the Party functions. The Party has a vise-like grip on every aspect of daily life across China, including its huge cities and tiny villages, media, culture, courts, religion, and the economy. On the economy, consider in the context of hundreds of millions of desperately poor citizens, just one of the book’s points: “In 2007, personal consumption was just 35 per cent of GDP. Meanwhile, China was investing 11 per cent of GDP in low-yielding foreign assets…consider that the net transfer of resources abroad was equal to a third of personal consumption.”

The Party controls similarly the continuous corruption accusations against its members, is deeply hostile to the rule of law and accountable only to its own internal tribunals. McGregor points out that despite the numerous anti-graft campaigns since 1982, about 80 per cent of the 130,000 to 190,000 officials disciplined annually for malfeasance by the Party received only a warning. Only 3 percent of the 6 percent criminally prosecuted went to jail.

China’s leaders probably know that the main threat to their authority is corruption, yet their practices in every sphere make it inevitable. McGregor notes that corruption has become a sort of “transaction tax that distributes ill-gotten gains among the ruling class…It becomes the glue that keeps the system together.”

Persecution

Falun Gong practitioners today comprise two-thirds of the torture victims and half of the people in detention in forced labour camps across China. The documented yearly arbitrary killings and disappearances of Falun Gong exceed by far the totals for any other victim group. According to research that David Matas and I have done, set out in our book, “Bloody Harvest,” practitioners have been killed in the thousands since 2001 so that their organs could be trafficked to both Chinese nationals and foreigners.

The main conclusion of our book is that there “continues today to be large-scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners. We have concluded that the government of China and its agencies in numerous parts of the country, in particular hospitals but also detention centres and ‘people’s courts,’ since 1999 have put to death a large but unknown number of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience. Their vital organs, including kidneys, livers, corneas and hearts, were seized involuntarily for sale at high prices, sometimes to foreigners, who normally face long waits for voluntary donations of such organs in their home countries.” Our revised report is accessible in 18 languages from www.david-kilgour.com.

Recent Developments

Have the efforts of many in China and around the world to stop this appalling crime against humanity made a difference? Our book points at various developments within and beyond China occurring since our first report in 2006. To save time, I’ll only mention two:

• The government of China now accepts that sourcing of organs from prisoners is improper. Deputy Health Minister Huang Jeifu in August 2009, stated that executed prisoners “are definitely not a proper source for organ transplants.”

• Belgian senator Patrik Vankrunkelsven and Canadian MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj have each introduced into their respective Parliaments extraterritorial legislation banning transplant tourism. Both would penalize any transplant patient who receives an organ without consent of the donor where the patient knew or ought to have known of the absence of consent.

Present Reality for Falun Gong

Unfortunately, these developments have not yet ended killings for profit. For Falun Gong, matters have in fact become worse.

Since we began our work, the number of prisoners sentenced to death and then executed across China has decreased quite dramatically, but the number of transplants, after a slight decline, then increased back to earlier levels. Since the only other substantial source of organs for transplants in China besides Falun Gong practitioners is prisoners sentenced to death, a decrease of sourcing from that population means an increase of sourcing from Falun Gong practitioners.

Organ pillaging from Falun Gong practitioners has worsened since our work began, but the substantial movement in policy and practice inside and outside China encourages us to a degree. The willingness to change is there. We all need to continue to press Beijing for changes until the trafficking ends.

Matas and I visited about a dozen countries to interview practitioners who had been sent to forced labour camps, but who had later managed to leave the camps and the country itself. They told us of working in appalling conditions for up to sixteen hours daily with no pay, little food, sleeping together on the floor in cramped conditions, and torture. Their labour involved making export products, ranging from clothing to chopsticks to Christmas decorations, no doubt as hidden subcontractors to unethical exporters and contrary to the laws of the World Trade Organization.

One estimate of the number of these camps across China as of 2005 was 340, with a capacity of about 300,000 workers. Other estimates of the numbers of inmates are much higher. In 2007, a US government report estimated that at least half of the inmates in the camps were Falun Gong. It is the combination of totalitarian governance and “anything is permitted” economics which allows this inhuman export production to continue.

Conclusion

For organs trafficked in China or any other jurisdiction, David Matas and I would encourage you to consider some or all of the twenty recommendations in our book Bloody Harvest, including:

Urging the party-state in China to:

• cease the repression of Falun Gong practitioners;

• cease organ-pillaging from all prisoners;

• remove its military from the organ transplant business;

• establish and regulate a legitimate organ donor system (Every organ transplant donor should consent to the donation in writing. These consents should be available for inspection by international human rights officials.);

• open all detention centres, including forced labour camps, for international investigation;

• free Gao Zhisheng, a human rights lawyer who has become “the conscience of China,” and permit him to reunite with his family.

Implement the following measures until the party-state in China ceases organ pillaging from prisoners:

• Canadian medical professionals should actively discourage their patients from going to China for transplant surgery;

• Canadian governments should not issue visas to Chinese MDs seeking training in organ or body tissue transplantation;

• Canadian MDs should not travel to China to give training in transplant surgery;

• Contributions submitted to Canadian medicals journals about the Chinese experience should be rejected;

• Canadian pharmaceutical companies should be barred from exporting to China any drugs used solely in transplant surgery;

• Canada’s Parliament should enact extra-territorial legislation, penalizing participation in organ transplants without consent; and

• The Canadian government should bar entry to any person known to be participating in organ trafficking without informed consent.

Thank you.

David Kilgour is a Fellow of the Queen’s University Centre for the Study of Democracy and a director of the Washington-based Council for a Community of Democracies (CCD).

He has published with David Matas, Bloody Harvest-The Killing of Falun Gong for their Organs. He and Mr. Matas were recently awarded the 2009 Human Rights Prize of the International Society for Human Rights In Switzerland for their work in raising awareness of state-sponsored organ pillaging in China. They have also been nominated for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. For further information, see <www.david-kilgour.com>.