Turning a blind eye to forced organ harvesting in China

“Several articles have drawn attention to the double meaning of the term ‘executed prisoner,’” according to Macquarie University clinical ethicist Wendy Rogers. “And independent investigators have identified that they include prisoners of conscience, who are executed for their organs without due process, as well as death-sentence prisoners whose organs are harvested after judicial execution.”

By some estimates, approximately 90 percent of kidney transplants in China are sourced from “death row.” China actually admitted to sourcing organs from death row inmates between 2005 and 2015. Today, they generally deny sourcing organs from death row, though at a 2017 Vatican conference discussed by Rogers further below, they at least once admitted to continuing the practice of sourcing organs from prisoners.

A global problem

But one would be remiss not to first observe that the problem goes well beyond death row inmates, prisoners of conscience or even China. Our critical attention to forced organ harvesting should arguably include countries like Pakistan, India, the Philippines, Bolivia, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Moldova, Turkey and Iraq. The poor from these countries more often than elsewhere feel compelled by their economic circumstances to accept loss of an organ in order to make ends meet. There is an element of force to economic compulsion.

Approximately 10 percent of the 100,000 organ transplants annually are via “transplant tourism” according to experts, where wealthy recipients are put at the head of the line in poorer countries where organs can be found cheaply, and in which local poor recipients suffer from lack of supply. In Pakistan in 2006, for example, foreigners received approximately two thirds of the 2,000 kidney transplants, most likely from poor donors who felt economically compelled to relinquish an organ.

According to the Australian Health Department, between 2001 and 2014, at least 53 Australians went to China for organ transplants. That number could be an understatement. A single doctor in Canada, according to Professor Maria Cheung at the University of Manitoba, reported at least 50 patients who went to China for transplants in 2014 alone. 

Organ transplant tourists from common importing countries like the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Oman could save more lives than their own, with the money they spend to extract an organ from someone who could be killed abroad just to source a kidney, liver, heart, lungs or cornea.

The culpable include the traffickers and brokers of organ commercialism, but also the billions of people who fail to proactively donate their organs should they no longer need them due to accident or death. 

China is hiding something

The China Tribunal report notes that China, and the world more generally, has taken a lax stance towards evidence of forced organ harvesting revealed over the last decade. 

According to the tribunal, “the People’s Republic of China has done little to challenge the accusations [of the tribunal] except to say that they were politically motivated lies.” 

Bald denials without demonstrations of greater transparency can themselves be indications of wrongdoing. But Chinese authorities went further. 

The tribunal, it said, “contended with a pervasive culture of secrecy, silence and obfuscation by the PRC relating to much material that could have helped in the determination of whether forced organ harvesting has occurred in China.”

And the world is turning a blind eye

China’s hiding of its forced organ harvesting is helping the world turn a blind eye to what amounts to crimes against humanity. The China Tribunal stated: “Governments around the world and international organisations, all required to protect the rights of man, have expressed doubt about the accusations, thereby justifying their doing nothing to save those who were in due course to be killed to order.”

And “doing nothing” was on full display in the British House of Lords on March 2.

In response to Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and several other lords one of whom brought up the China Tribunal report, the government’s Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Department for International Development, twisted and turned to avoid providing solid answers. 

The minister, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, claimed not to have read the report, even though a preliminary judgement had been available for approximately six months. He claimed to be time-limited at international fora and so unable to raise the issue of forced organ harvesting. And, he claimed to have taken up the issue with the World Health Organization (WHO), rather than with China itself. In answer to one question he made the nonsensical claim that allegations in the report should be raised in the context of the report. 

“The short answer to the noble lord is yes; we have taken up direct conversations and consultations with the World Health Organization,” said Lord Ahmad. “I put on record again that the allegations that have been raised in various reports, including the final report conducted by Sir Geoffrey Nice, raise questions that need to be answered in the context of that report. I know the noble Lord is aware that the view of the World Health Organisation remains that China is implementing an ethical, voluntary organ transplant system, in accordance with international standards, although it has now raised concerns about transparency. I assure the noble Lord that we will continue to prioritise this issue and that of human rights within the context of China.” 

The British government’s runaround given to the lords on March 2 was decidedly not the prioritization of human rights in China. It also shows how WHO negligence, bordering on complicity, can provide a shield for governments that do not seek to address the difficult issue.

The Vatican too has been widely criticized for ignoring China’s forced organ harvesting.

The 2017 Pontifical Academy of Science Summit on Organ Trafficking and Transplant Tourism invited Huang Jiefu, chair of the National Organ Donation and Transplantation Committee, member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), former vice minister of health, and deputy director of a secretive committee that provides healthcare to top CCP cadres. 

Huang’s practices came under ethical scrutiny when it became known that he ordered two spare livers in 2005 as backup for a challenging procedure. “It is hard to imagine how this order could have been met in a system that relied solely on organs from prisoners sentenced to death,” wrote Professor Rogers of the transplant operation. “But the order is consistent with a system in which prisoners’ organs are plentiful, immediately available and blood-matched in advance ... waiting for death at the surgeon’s convenience.”

Rogers wrote that it was thought Huang would not present an accurate and complete depiction of organ sourcing in China at the Vatican conference. “He has given contradictory accounts of organ sources in China for many years,” she wrote, noting that the resulting media coverage caused embarrassment to the Vatican and “apparently led to the cancellation of the Pope’s planned address to the summit.”

Huang admitted that organ transplants from prisoners continue to the present day. “After persistent questions, Huang admitted organ transplants from prisoners still occur,” Rogers wrote about the conference. “He cited the vast size of his country as an impediment to reform.”

Why is the world silent?

Governments, and even more so international organizations like the WHO, have done little to stop forced organ harvesting in China. Why in the case of the WHO would it actually cover China’s crimes by claiming they were “ethical”? And, why would the British government on March 2 draw attention to this obviously fallacious claim as if it were true?

There are numerous potential causes for the silence, the most important and obvious of which are money and trade. But first consider these additional causes.

First, note that the details of this particular form of human rights abuse may be too gruesome for many to contemplate. Killing someone of conscience for his or her organ does not make for pleasant conversation.  

Second, China has done such a thorough job at painting the Falun Gong as a “cult”* that some governments and organizations may prefer not to address the issue for risk the “cult” smear could taint them as well. They might prefer to address “easier” human rights issues that more readily gain public sympathy, like racial discrimination (e.g., against the Uyghurs) or political democracy (e.g., in Hong Kong). 
_{*The practice of Falun Gong does not meet the accepted definition of cult.}

Third, in an increasingly secular world, mainstream defense of religions that suffer persecution is relatively less interesting to a public that would, for example, sooner use an old church for a gym or night club than for the purpose it was built in centuries past.

All of this has to a greater or lesser extent led governments and international organizations to downplay forced organ harvesting. "The issue has been extremely difficult for governments around the world and international organizations, including the World Health Organization and The Transplantation Society, to face squarely,” Matthew Robertson told me by email. “It is a highly inconvenient and uncomfortable topic for their relationship with China.”

Robertson is an academic and Chinese speaker who provided expert testimony to the China Tribunal. The Society of Professional Journalists’ awarded him the Sigma Delta Chi award in 2013 for his reporting on China’s forced organ harvesting.

The Transplantation Society holds annual conferences at which it invites PRC speakers, including the controversial liver surgeon Zheng Shusen as recently as 2018. Zheng was formerly the chairman of the Zhejiang Anti-Cult Association, an organization instituted to campaign against Falun Gong.

According to Rogers, Zheng has made false claims that no organs from executed prisoners were used in his research. In 2017 the journal Liver International retracted an article by Zheng due to his failure to provide evidence that 563 liver transplantations had been done with consenting donors. He has been the lead surgeon in 1,957 liver transplants, including five on a single day. 

It beggars belief that Zheng sourced five organs from willing donors on the same day.

Robertson said that the lack of an authoritative voice on forced organ harvesting makes it difficult for the media and human rights organizations to gain purchase. “This avoidance [by governments and international organizations] has flowed through to coverage in major media and by the international human rights groups, and it has all been self-reinforcing,” wrote Robertson.

For money?

Robertson alludes to the “relationship with China” as a reason that governments and international organizations are avoiding the topic of forced organ harvesting. But what exactly is this relationship that obstructs an honest appraisal? I would argue that it is primarily trade, and sometimes the personal gain of western politicians who do business with China.

In 2016, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade First Assistant Secretary Graham Fletcher told an Australian Senate committee that he doubted the credibility of allegations of forced organ harvesting. “They are not given credence by serious human rights activists,” he said, and claimed that Falun Gong and Christians were not being executed because of their religious affiliations. 

It is telling that Fletcher, one of the world’s most prominent deniers of forced organ harvesting against the Falun Gong, is not a minister of health. Neither is he a minister of human rights (Australia has no such minister). Thus, one must wonder at why he would be so prominent on a health and human rights issue, rather than someone more qualified to comment.

His official competency was foreign affairs and trade, which must therefore be seen as the foundation of Australia’s position on the issue. Fletcher’s facility with China as first assistant secretary of foreign affairs and trade was apparently noticed, and in 2019 he was made ambassador to the country.

Between 2017 and 2018, China was Australia’s top trading partner, at $195 billion Australian dollars, or over 24 percent of its total trade. China’s trade with Australia approximately equaled Australia’s trade with its next three biggest trade partners: Japan, the United States, and South Korea. 

The WHO’s lack of response could also be explained by the significant revenues it acquires from China. From 2010-12, China contributed $285 million to international organizations, including $86 million to the WHO in 2019. Most of that sum is based on China’s assessed ability to pay, but $10.2 million is voluntary. Thus, China has considerable influence over the WHO as it could easily withdraw its voluntary contribution and might also withdraw the rest.

It should not be ignored that leaders in places like Australia, and in organizations like the WHO, could also be seeking private benefit from China. Australia’s former trade minister, Andrew Robb, got a consulting job worth Australian $880,000 per year with Ye Ching, a billionaire closely aligned with the CCP. Robb took the position right after he left his government job, in which he was described as the architect of the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement.

The appearance of selling out is not limited to Australia. Chinese companies sought to bribe African officials in Chad and Uganda. The once president of the U.N. General Assembly, John Ashe, was accused of taking $1.3 million in bribes from Chinese businessmen. Then he died, supposedly in a home gym accident. A barbell asphyxiated him in his own home, with charges still pending against the accused businessmen. 

Monetary incentives also apply to Britain. When David Cameron left his position as prime minister, he sought to lead a $1 billion China investment fund. It was endorsed by both the British and Chinese governments. 

Now under Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the British government is desperately trying to regain its economic feet after Brexit. It needs outside options to trading with Europe that will be especially important in case post-Brexit trade negotiations fail. Trade with China and the United States would then be critical. 

Britain has apparently bent over backwards to placate China, as demonstrated most recently in the House of Lords on March 2. Britain is also striving to please China by accepting tainted Huawei equipment in its 5G infrastructure, engaging in talks with China about building high-speed rail in Britain, and progressing a Chinese civil nuclear power design that will likely put a Chinese nuclear power plant on Britain’s own soil and out-compete Britain, Russia and the United States in global markets.

To maximize trade with China, most governments deemphasize Chinese human rights issues in public. Those that don’t, find themselves at the wrong end of threats and canceled trade deals. When Norway awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to democracy activist Liu Xiaobo in 2010, China stalled a trade deal with the country. 

China threatened Sweden with unspecified consequences in 2020 when the Swedish culture minister awarded a literary prize to Gui Minhai, an imprisoned Hong Kong bookseller and Swedish citizen. China had already cancelled trade talks with the country the year prior, when Sweden’s PEN organization gave the writer a human rights prize. 

Similar incentives apply to any country that seeks to increase trade with China. With $2.1 trillion in imports, and $2.5 trillion in exports (2018), China is one of the world’s top traders, along with the United States and Germany. But unlike these latter two, China is more aggressive in linking its trade to political concessions. Given its greater control over its domestic corporations, China can use trade for leverage much more easily than can governments that lack command economies. 

This makes corporations, universities and governments anywhere in the world loath to challenge the PRC on ethical grounds for fear of losing market access. Money talks, while those who really want to make money, stay silent.