NEW YORK — A sunny day suddenly faced rain and then snow on Wednesday afternoon in Lower Manhattan, as Falun Gong practitioners at City Hall held banners and talked to the press about illegal organ harvesting going on in China.
In particular, the practitioners, whose colorful umbrellas stood out against the grey buildings and falling snow, spoke about the Sujiatun concentration camp and others like it, where organs are cut out of living victims and then sold on the black market.
As Falun Gong spokesman Scott Chinn put it, "This is absurd, it's totally insane and it should not be accepted and we are calling on all international bodies to end this now."
According to a representative from the Falun Dafa Information Center, Mr. Levi Browde, word first got out about Sujiatun and the organ harvesting about four weeks ago, when a reporter doing research on the SARS epidemic accidentally uncovered the illegal network. Since then, Chinese doctors in eight provinces have admitted to performing transplant surgeries with organs that were removed from detained Falun Gong practitioners. Most recently, a military doctor who wished to remain anonymous for reasons of personal safety came forward to the Epoch Times with information regarding a network of thirty six camps just like the one at Sujiatun.
As more information surfaces the scope of this horrific operation becomes ever larger and the implications more dire.
"A phenomenon arose amidst the ongoing persecution of Falun Gong practitioners, that families from around China started reporting their loved ones missing. Some were taken by police never to be heard form again, and some just disappeared one day from work or from public outings," said Browde.
In the years since the crackdown against Falun Gong began in China, back in July of 1999, tens of thousands of practitioners have "disappeared" under the Chinese communist regime, and their families have been left agonizing over their fates.
Said Browde, "Four weeks ago, a Chinese reporter revealed what may be the horrible answer to their question."
"What they are doing to the Falun Gong practitioners in these concentration camps fits the CCP pattern of killing and horror."
Browde feels that these families can reasonably assume that their missing relatives, all Falun Gong practitioners, have either already been sacrificed for their organs, or are in one of the camps, awaiting that ignoble fate. Browde says that China has become the place to go for quick organ transplants—it has become a booming, government-sanctioned enterprise. And they're not making any secret of it.
"Chinese medical web sites boast to foreigners needing transplants that they can get them the necessary organ in between one and four weeks—in the west it would take three years," said Browde. He challenges the Chinese regime to explain where such a massive stockpile of fresh organs comes from. Especially in a culture where almost no one voluntarily becomes an organ donor, because tradition dictates that bodies must go whole into the afterlife.
Hai Ying He, a biomedical researcher and member of the Global Mission to Rescue Persecuted Falun Gong Practitioners, is demanding that the people and governments of the world wake up and take notice of the human rights tragedy that is unfolding in China. He says that inaction in the face of the gruesome facts is inexcusable.
"When you here somebody shout out 'help someone is killing me' or 'help I'm being raped,' what is the normal human reaction? You rush there and help. You don't say 'wait let's get some more evidence.' That's not the human thing to do."
So what can New Yorkers do?
"Contact the White House," said Hai, "urge the President to take action to censure the Chinese communist regime." He added that people can ask President Bush to bring the issue up with Chinese head of state Hu Jintao when he visits the U.S. this month, and urge the president to immediately release all Falun Gong practitioners.
To Hai it is very clear that the human rights situation in China represents "an issue of humanity being pushed before the people of the world. If you hear this, what will you do? What should you do?"
Feeds