Archive for the ‘Harvesting’ Category
My Testimony on Chinese Organ Harvesting to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs
2172 Rayburn HOB, 2:30 PM, September 12, 2012:
Thank you for inviting me to participate in this profoundly important hearing. Beginning in 2006, I began conducting comprehensive interviews with medical professionals, Chinese law enforcement personnel, and over 50 refugees from the Laogai System, in order to piece together the story of how mass harvesting from prisoners of conscience evolved in China. Based on my research, the practice began in Xinjiang in the late 1990s. By 2001 the practice expanded nationwide, with Falun Gong providing a much larger, and frequently anonymous, pool of potential ‘donors.’
Yet my time today is short. I too was skeptical when I began my investigation, as some of you may be today. So instead of offering my conclusions, I invite you to draw your own conclusions from my evidence—twelve witnesses, each of whom fills in a critical piece of the organ harvesting puzzle—before I speculate, briefly, on the implications and the full human cost.
Murder on the Chinese Communist Party Express
If what flashed through your mind when you read that title was a British expat and a Chinese high official’s wife…I hope to persuade you by the end of my article to think quite differently.
The genesis of genocide…
Photo by Simon Gross/3 Lotus Media
- Winner of The Browser’s 2011 Leaderboard Competition (i.e. best long-form essay of the year according to the readers)
- Winner of The New York Times Sidney Award (i.e. David Brooks liked it)
“How many harvested?” revisited
Back in 2009, I gave a talk at the Foreign Press Association in London. I’ve lost 35 pounds since then (made you look!) and I have also revised the numbers slightly based on new information (and some mulling as well). That’s what this post is about. Since 2009, I have been quoted in several places, most recently here) on my estimates of how many Falun Gong were harvested during the last decade or so.
[UPDATE: I was also quoted recently (and fairly extensively) in CQ Global Researcher v.5-14 on the subject of Falun Gong organ harvesting and trafficking. Here's a teaser: "At least 62,000 were victims of organ harvesting operations from 2000-2008, according to Matas and Kilgour and Ethan Gutmann, an investigative journalist." Anyway, you can buy the entire report here]
The truth is that outside of a few, select individuals in the Chinese military hospitals and the 6-10 office, we don’t know the answer to that question. But I believe estimates are possible, and even useful, as long as we do not engage in false precision and stay reasonably conservative. My estimates are based on a sample of approximately 50 Falun Gong refugees from the Laogai system. Not what I would like, but good enough for a wartime sample. Yet I also flag that inherent imprecision by coming up with a low estimate and a high estimate. I don’t truly believe in either extreme. The truth is probably found somewhere in the middle and that’s why I provide a best estimate, or a median.
Shrewd observers will note that I originally gave a best estimate of approximately 85,000, and now I’m saying about 65,000. I’ll give you the rationale for those new numbers in a minute, but here’s the main reason they changed: I sat down with the Laogai Foundation researchers in DC and they informed me that they had revised their total estimate of the Laogai System (defined as labor camps, prisons, black jails, psychiatric hospitals, long-term detention centers, the lot) down from 4-6 million to 3-5 million. I have reasonable confidence in their logic surrounding this point, so I have revised my estimates accordingly.
Gutmann’s seven-minute guide to the Falun Gong conflict…
Pour a cup, light a smoke, put your feet up, relax-ay-voo, and read my recent remarks given at a recent Congressional-Executive Commission on China roundtable.
Easy-peasy.
(Cool drawing of Annie Yang’s son by Illustrator: Lam)
How many harvested?
Remarks on the 10-year anniversary of the Falun Gong persecution, chaired by Edward McMillan-Scott, Foreign Press Association, London. UPDATE: See new post for somewhat revised figures.
Once upon a time in China…
What really happened ten years ago, adapted from my recent talk at the European Parliament, Brussels.
Harvesting Eastern Lightning: A letter to a Mormon friend
The most disturbing aspect in the response to my Weekly Standard article (China’s Gruesome Organ Harvest, November 2008) has been the complete silence of the House Christian community to the finding that Eastern Lightning (EL) are also being targeted.
When I wrote the piece I was aware that the House Church Christians do not want to be affiliated with EL, but I also thought that might change “at the edge of the operating table” so to speak.
