If you search through yellowed newspaper clippings from the late 1930s and early 1940s, you will find little mention of what was soon thereafter to be recognized as one of the greatest atrocities of the 20th Century: The Nazi Holocaust. Nearly 70 years later, emerging evidence of concentration camps and mass genocide in China may indicate a repetition of history.
"In Russia there were gulags, in Germany they had concentration camps, and because of the silence of the international community a lot of people were killed there. We should realize that we have an obligation to stop such things from happening," said Harry Wu, founder of the Laogai (Labor Camp) Research Foundation, which was established to gather information and spread public awareness about the brutal Chinese labor camp system. Wu has testified before U.S. Congress on several occasions.
Wu, who himself spent 19 years in a Chinese labor camp, said he believes that it's quite possible Falun Gong adherents are victims of organ harvesting or medical experiments at Sujiatun—after all, according to Chinese policy, one will not be held responsible for killing a Falun Gong practitioner.
"From movies, everyone knows that at Auschwitz everyone walks in and gets the gas chamber. If I'm a doctor and want to do an experiment... I just ask the Nazi guards if I can take [some Jews] to do experiments. They say sure, they will die anyway."
"And it's not just Falun Gong," he said. "There's just such a system [of organ harvesting] in China. The CCP is most scared of Falun Gong because they have a different belief system, other than communism."
Freedom House, a U.S.-based policy organization that seeks to defend people's rights around the world, said in an official statement on their website that, "In light of Harry Wu's past reports on organ harvesting from executed prisoners in China, this story must be taken seriously and investigated."
Dr. Tom Diflo, Director of Kidney Transplantation at NYU Medical Center said in a recent interview, "It would not surprise me, knowing what I know about the Chinese government—it would not surprise me if they were suppressing that information, and if they're pulling organs out of people. I'm sure they don't want anyone to know about it."
"The non-consensual taking of organs out of people is perhaps the greatest violation of their human rights that I can think of," he said.
Many important international figures feel a sense of urgency to condemn the alleged atrocities. Lord Avebury, Vice Chairman and founder of the UK Parliamentary Human Rights Group, was outspoken in a recent statement: "It is shocking to hear the allegation that a secret concentration camp in Sujiatun, Shenyang, China, has detained over 6,000 Falun Gong practitioners, and it has been engaged in the harvesting of human organs from those imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners. This practice of murdering people who peacefully exercise their freedom of belief and expression, and selling their organs for profit, if true, is the most barbarous and inhuman behaviour totally unacceptable in today's world."
He called on the international community and the UK government to further investigate the allegations and to "speak up loudly to condemn such brutality rather than keep quiet for commercial or political gains."
Nonetheless, some major international human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Human Rights in China are still hesitant to issue statements about the Sujiatun concentration camp, which could be by far the most outrageous atrocity committed by the CCP against Falun Gong, and might well go down in history alongside Auschwitz.
Yet their hesitancy is not necessarily for lack of caring, for the aforementioned organizations have indeed documented many of the CCP's abuses against Falun Gong. But the organizations have all said that their reason for not pursuing further investigation is lack of sufficient evidence—which is ironically precisely what is to be gained by the investigations.
Although ample evidence of the Sujiatun concentration camp is now emerging, it is very difficult to independently verify each source, because the witnesses could face death (or worse) if their identities are revealed. The Epoch Times is fortunate to have special access to these sources, primarily because it is seen by many Chinese as a safe haven that will protect their identities. Thus, the lack of further verification may be one factor hindering international action for the time being.
Yet one U.S. citizen has no doubt that the concentration camp is for real. Dr. Charles Lee of Menlo Park, California is a Chinese American and U.S. citizen who was illegally detained in China in 2003 and tortured for three years because he practiced Falun Gong. He said of Sujiatun concentration camp, "It's horrifying and I believe it's true because... from my experience the Communist Party can do anything to Chinese people inside China."
Dr. Lee was once a medical doctor in China. He said that in 1990, long before Falun Gong had even been taught in public in China, he was required to perform organ removal operations on criminals on behalf of the CCP. He and a group of other doctors were taken to the place where criminals were executed (usually shot in the head) and told to remove organs, especially the heart, immediately after the executions. He said, "In China the organ trade is very popular and very profitable."
It is said that history repeats itself, for human beings' view of history tends to be myopic. We must remember that the Nazi concentration camps were pretty hard to believe until Allied troops liberated them in 1945.
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