This article also breaks the news that Chinese Christians are, in addition to Falun Gong practitioners, being targeted for organ harvesting.
This is the third article by Gutmann in The Weekly Standard discussing human rights and organ harvesting in China (see also, “Why Wang Wenyi Was Shouting,” May 8, 2006; and “Carrying a Torch for China,” April 21, 2008).
“China’s Gruesome Organ Harvest” begins:
The jeepney driver sizes us up the minute we climb in. My research assistant is a healthy, young Israeli dude, so I must be the one with the money.
He addresses his broken English to me: “Girl?” No. No girls. Take us to the …
“Ladyboy? Kickboxer?” No. No ladyboy, no kickboxer, thanks. I may be a paunchy, sweaty, middle-aged white guy, but I’m here to— well, actually, I am on my way to meet a Chinese woman in a back alley. She is going to tell me intimate stories of humiliation, torture, and abuse. And the truly shameful part is that after 50 or so interviews with refugees from Chinese labor camps, I won’t even be listening that closely.
I’m in Bangkok because practitioners of Falun Gong, the Buddhist revival movement outlawed by Beijing, tend to head south when they escape from China. Those without passports make their way through Burma on motorcycles and back roads. Some have been questioned by U.N. caseworkers, but few have been interviewed by the press, even though, emerging from Chinese labor camps, they are eager, even desperate, to tell their stories.
With the back-alley Chinese woman, I intend to direct my questions away from what she’ll want to talk about—persecution and spirituality—to something she will barely remember, a seemingly innocuous part of her experience: a needle jab, some poking around the abdomen, an X-ray, a urine sample—medical tests consistent with assessment of prisoners for organ harvesting.
My line of inquiry began in a Montreal community center over a year ago, listening to a heavy-set middle-aged Chinese man named Wang Xiaohua, a soft-spoken ordinary guy except for the purple discoloration that extends down his forehead.
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