The Green Party of Canada is urging the Canadian government to act on reports of a secret death camp in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang, where detained Falun Gong practitioners have reportedly been killed for their organs.
"There is enough evidence, I believe, that deeper investigation is required," the party's foreign affairs critic, Eric Walton, told The Epoch Times in a telephone interview on Wednesday.
The Sujiatun concentration camp is a secret underground facility where the Chinese communist regime has reportedly held thousands of Falun Gong practitioners, whose organs are harvested—while the victims are still alive—and sold in China's lucrative organ trade.
Since an investigative journalist on the run from the Chinese regime first revealed the camp's existence this month, a second witness and a subsequent investigation have provided corroborating details. No one, witnesses say, has ever come out alive.
"My feeling is that this [the Sujiatun case] is so serious that it would require all levels of Canadian response," Walton said. "By that I mean diplomatic, but also commercial and even—and I know this would upset some people—but I think we would even call into question Canada's participation in the Olympic Games [to be held in Beijing in 2008].
"If these allegations are true, this is a level of atrocity which reminds me of some of the incidents in the Second World War."
'Something Special'
It is not known where the hearts, kidneys, corneas, and other organs that are reportedly harvested from Falun Gong adherents are sold. However, a transplant assistance centre in the First Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University, also in Shenyang city, boasts on its website that its patients are from "all around the world" and that its organ operations are "more safe and reliable here than in other countries, where the organ is not from a living donor."
Organs are available in as little as one week, the centre says, whereas wait times in countries like Canada are usually on the order of several years. The centre was established in 2003, when organ harvesting at Sujiatun is said to have been at its peak.
The Epoch Times called hospitals in Shenyang to inquire about transplants. When asked why living people would donate their organs, a Chinese doctor replied, "Something special is involved—I can't tell." Another added that hospitals throughout China extract organs from living people.
Meanwhile, multiple independent accounts point to the existence of at least one other—and much larger—concentration camp for Falun Gong, located in remote north-western China.
Suspicious Denial
After weeks of mounting pressure and a flurry of media reports, the Chinese communist regime came out Monday to deny the existence of the Sujiatun concentration camp. It also announced new measures it said would restrict the booming organ trade in China. It did not address any of the specific claims about Sujiatun made by multiple witnesses.
"Why did the regime wait for over two weeks to deny Sujiatun?," asked a press statement from the Falun Dafa Information Center (FDI), which monitors the persecution of Falun Gong. "And why did the [Chinese Communist Party], after years of known illicit organ trafficking but just weeks after Sujiatun was revealed, also today suddenly announce a new law against organ trafficking?"
An FDI representative said the 'new law' announcement was just an effort to distract from the reports of state-sanctioned horrors at the Sujiatun camp.
Walton's comments are the latest in a series of calls by human rights groups and political representatives for further investigation into Sujiatun.
U.S.-based Freedom House, America's oldest human rights body, pressed the American government earlier in testimony before a committee in the U.S. House of Representatives.
"This story must be taken seriously and investigated," said Freedom House's Nina Shea.
Additional reporting by Masha Loftus.
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