CHINA—In the middle of January, 2007, the BBC Chinese website published an interview regarding organ harvesting in China. For the first time, China’s Ministry of Health spokesman Mao Qunan admitted to the practice of organ harvesting from executed prisoners in China, which he had publicly denied before. However, Mao evaded key evidences of organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners and denied that accusation.
This interview was conducted by BBC senior reporter Hua Ying. An Epoch Times journalist also did an interview with Dr. Wang Wenyi, who protested at the White House during communist regime leader Hu Jintao’s visit to the United States on April 20, 2006 regarding the BBC’s interview
The Chinese regime has had a long history of harvesting organs from executed prisoners, and an equally long history of denying this practice. In November of 2005, the regime’s Deputy Minister of Ministry of Public Health, Huang Jiefu, admitted to using organs taken from executed prisoners, at an international conference in Manila.
Later in April 2006, Mao stated that organs from executed prisoners constituted a very small portion of organs used in China’s organ transplant industry.
In November 2006, Minister Huang again admitted in a conference in Guangzhou that most of the organs used in transplants, except for a small portion from organ donors in traffic accidents, came from executed prisoners. His statement was quoted by newspapers in China.
When the reporter, Hua Ying, questioned Mao on the above statements, he reluctantly answered: “I don’t have anything to add to this question' you have explained it very clearly.”
In the whole interview, Mao kept denying the existence of organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China and denied the necessity for international organizations going into China for a thorough and independent investigation.
Regarding Mao’s statement, Dr. Wang Wenyi said: “Under pressure from international societies, the regime admitted to harvesting organs from executed prisoners in order to shift attention away from the harvesting of organs from Falun Gong practitioners. The regime continues to cover up the truth, because Mao’s admission to harvesting organs from executed prisoners does not explain the widespread and unusual expediency of organ matching for transplants in Mainland hospitals.”
Wang further explains that after the Mainland hospital receives payment, the transplant surgery could be performed in as soon as three days to a week. This means that a few days later, there would be a “prisoner” not only with the same blood type and matching tissue as the patient (who paid an enormous fee for the procedure,) but also this criminal would just happen to be scheduled for execution at that time, and would also be willing to donate his organs.
In the BBC program, Hua Ying also interviewed vice-chairman of the China Medical Organ Transplant Association Shi Bingyi. Shi denied that he had made the statement that “China had conducted over 90,000 organ transplants in total up to now (beginning of 2006;) there were nearly 10,000 kidney transplants and nearly 4,000 liver transplants performed in last year (2005) alone.” This statement was published in Chinese by Health Paper Net (2006-03-02)—the official media outlet of the Ministry of Public Health. The Web page of this report has been deleted from its original site but can still be traced back in Internet archives.
