It was the sort of story that appears constantly online in China, most of the time impossible to verify or say anything more about than, “Oh wow, now that’s bad.”
But this particular Internet post—a 5,000 word exposé about the extraction of prisoner organs, made by a former prison guard, which first appeared in February—slowly gained the attention of an increasing number of Internet users. In troubling detail, it sketched out the interlinked chain of profit, corruption, and violence that drives the organ harvesting industry in Chinese prisons.
And it named names: the individual who posted it identified himself as Liu Shuo, a former prison director at Sihui Prison in Zhaoqing City, Guangdong Province, southern China; and the individual most of the accusations were leveled against was also fingered: a deputy prisoner director named Luo Zubiao.
The details in the story, and the online reaction it garnered, got to the point that the Guangdong Prison Administrative Bureau was forced to come out on its own website and “dismiss” the shocking allegations (which, for many mistrusting Chinese citizens, was all the confirmation they needed).
