Special Report on the Crimes of Chinese Communist Officials in Live Organ Harvesting from Religious Practitioners and Dissidents

According to the investigations by the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG), Dr. Huang Jiefu, former Vice-Minister of Ministry of Health, and Dr. Wang Haibo, Director of China Organ Transplant Response System (COTRS), are organizers of the large scale forced harvesting of organs from live Falun Gong practitioners, and other religious and ethnic dissidents.  Huang Jiefu himself has also allegedly carried out a large number of organ transplants by using the organs of Falun Gong practitioners.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s crime of harvesting organs from live Falun Gong practitioners continues from year 2000 to today.  Moreover, other religious believers and ethnic dissidents have also had their organs forcibly harvested by CCP.  Among the victims, some are Christians.
 

Section I:    Selected Evidences of Huang Jiefu’s Involvement in Organizing and Personally Carrying out Live Organ Harvesting, and Hiding the Truth by So Called Voluntary Donations

Dr. Huang Jiefu, Chairman of the China Organ Donation and Transplantation Committee, former Vice-Minister of Ministry of Health (in charge of organ transplantation), Honorary Chairman of the Organ Transplantation Division of the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University.

He formerly served as Deputy Dean, Dean of the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University of Medical Sciences (later merged with Sun Yat-sen University), Vice President and Communist Party Secretary of the Sun Yat-sen University of Medical Sciences, Chairman of the Liver Surgery Department of the Peking (Beijing) Union Medical College Hospital.

1.  Huang Jiefu is a key organizer and leader in CCP on forcibly harvesting organs from live Falun Gong practitioners

From October 2001 to early 2013, Huang was the person in charge of organ transplantation in the CCP’s Ministry of National Health and Family Planning Commission. These nearly 12 years correspond to the period, in which organ harvesting from live Falun Gong practitioners rapidly grew and reached its peak.

He promoted the establishment of Organ Transplantation Centers in many hospitals, including even those without qualified facility and doctors, such as municipal level traditional Chinese medicine hospitals, county and township level hospitals, low level military hospitals, which all carried out large numbers of organ transplants.  According to Ye Qifa, Chairman of China’s Organ Procurement Organization (OPO) Alliance, at its peak time, there are more than 1,000 organ transplantation hospitals[1] in China.  There are 891 such hospitals verified by WOIPFG to have carried out organ transplants after year 1999, when CCP launched the brutal persecution of Falun Gong practitioners.  Among them, the number of hospitals performing kidney transplants grew from 106 in year 2001, to 368 in year 2006.  The number of kidney transplant cases publicized by these hospitals alone was at least 30,000 during 2001 to 2006.  This equals to the sum of the previous 40 years of kidney transplant in China.  The actual number of transplants far exceeds this number and cannot possibly be explained/supplied by voluntary donations and prisoners of death sentence, according to investigation by many organizations, including WOIPFG.

2.   As an organ transplantation surgeon, Huang Jiefu is one of the biggest butchers who have directly participated in live organ harvesting

1) According to Huang Jiefu’s own statement to the “Guangzhou Daily” in March 2013, liver transplantations carried out by himself in 2012 alone exceeded 500 cases, among which only 1 case was voluntary donation[2].  So, in 12 years, he should have carried out several thousand cases of liver transplantation. In China, liver transplants are predominantly whole liver transplants, and the donors of these livers are mainly Falun Gong practitioners and prisoners of conscience, who are incarcerated by the CCP. According to investigations by WOIPFG, there are at least 9,519 organ transplantation surgeons in China. WOIPFG has a detailed list of these doctors and evidences of their involvement in organ transplantation on its website[3].

2) Huang Jiefu allegedly used live Falun Gong practitioners as backup liver donors: On September 28, 2005, Huang Jiefu carried out the first case of autologous liver transplantation at the First Affiliated Hospital of the Xinjiang Medical University.  To be prepared in case he needed a backup liver, within 24 hours, he had two matching livers dispatched over from Guangzhou (~4,000 km) and Chongqing (~3,000 km), and another backup liver was found in Xinjiang locally. Subsequently, Huang Jiefu completed the transplantation in 15 hours, and after 24 hours of observation, the backup livers were declared to be unusable. Because after being harvested, livers stored in preservation solution cannot exceed 15 hours, if the livers were transported from two different locations after being harvested, on their way to Urumqi of Xinjiang Autonomous Region, the livers would have become unusable. Therefore, the two livers dispatched over must have been living people. Additionally, because of the legal procedures, organs from executed prisoners cannot be called in on demand. Therefore, these two people could not be death-row inmates. They could only come from a cohort of people beyond the legal system, detained and ready to be slaughtered for their organs. The wide span of the geographical locations indicates that there is a large live human organ pool at the national level in China. People matching such characteristics can only be Falun Gong practitioners, who are detained in large numbers. Huang Jiefu is allegedly a major participant in this live human organ pool. For details, please see “Huang Jiefu Carried out One Operation, 4 Backup Liver Donors, among which 3 are Live Humans”[4].     

It must be pointed out that, this practice of Huang is not an isolated instance.  When he promoted organ transplantation in various locations, he often organized many organ transplants to be carried out simultaneously.  In order to arrange organ transplantation schedules well in advance, the organs could only come from a large pool of jailed/detained live organ donors.

3.  Three hospitals, affiliated to Huang Jiefu’s medical university, had doctors admitting to organ harvesting from live Falun Gong practitioners.

1)  The First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University[5]

(Audio Recording):  Doctor Han twice confirmed harvesting organs from live Falun Gong practitioners as well as the existence of a human organ pool of detained Falun Gong practitioners:

Doctor Han: Yes, that is correct.

WOIPFG Investigator: Is it so! We are considering this kind of request (to use organs from Falun Gong practitioners), is this OK?

Doctor Han: We cannot do international cases any more. Since January 1 of this year, we already announced, it is not permitted to use (Falun Gong practitioners’ organs) anymore.

2)  Department of Heart Transplantation, Affiliated Jiangmen City Central Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University[6]

Audio recording of telephone conversation with the physician on duty, regarding live organ harvesting:

“What can you do if we have done it (i.e. harvesting organs from live Falun Gong practitioners)? They are from Falun Gong practitioners, what can you do?”

“We did many cases. Perhaps your investigations are still not clear. There are too many of them.”

WOIPFG Investigator: Did you do it today? Are you still doing it?

Doctor: We do it every day.

This hospital started organ transplants in 1999, which is the same time when the persecution against Falun Gong started.

3)  The Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University

On May 22, 2006, when Lu Guoping from the Guangxi Ethnic Hospital answered one investigator from the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, he repeatedly stated that his classmate Doctor Miao of the Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, had a large number of organs from Falun Gong practitioners. He also stated that these people were arranged by Sun Yat-sen University[7].

(Audio Recording)

Lu Guoping: I can tell you, it is very easy for them to get organs.

Investigator: Oh, very easy? So now…

Lu Guoping: Because every week they carry out 7 or 8 liver transplant operations, and they can do more than 10 kidney transplants. So every month they do several dozens of organ transplants. So they don’t worry about organs.

Investigator: So did your classmate tell you that these were all organs from Falun Gong practitioners, is that so?

Lu Guoping: Some are Falun Gong practitioner, some are donated by relatives.

Lu Guoping also stated that Sun Yat-sen University arranged organs from Falun Gong practitioners:

Investigator: Oh, they are all together. How can they get the organs so easily? Why can’t you get them? Why is it so easy for them to get?

Lu Guoping: Because they are more famous. The whole university dealt with the legal system.

Investigator: So those are Falun Gong practitioner donor organs?

Lu Guoping: Yes, yes, yes.

4)   Regarding the authenticity of the investigative recording, the Chinese Communist Party helped to verify Lu Guoping’s voice.

After the audio recording of Doctor Lu Guoping from Guangxi Ethnic Hospital was released to the public, the biggest question people had was that, was the person answering the phone really Lu Guoping? The Chinese Communist Party’s Hong Kong Satellite Television Chinese Channel produced an interview with Lu Guoping. Lu Guoping admitted that it was himself that answered the investigator’s phone call on May 22, 2006, but refused to acknowledge the contents of the conversation. The Chinese Communist Party released this interview to the public, via its consulates abroad. Lu Guoping has a stutter when speaking. The conversation with the WOIPFG investigator lasted for over half an hour. The audio recording could not have been synthesized. So the Chinese Communist Party’s rebuttal served as verification of Lu’s identity in the recording.

4.   Since 2006, Huang has been covering up the live organ harvesting crimes in public.

The CCP’s Ministry of Health is the highest administrative authority of all organ transplant hospitals across China. Huang Jiefu has been called a representative of China’s organ transplantation industry. Since 2006, he has acted as a spokesman for the CCP’s organ transplant issues.

Huang Jiefu established a so-called organ donation system after year 2010, and he has also served as an honorary chairman of China Organ Procurement Organization Alliance.  However, according to the investigation by WOIPFG（For details, please see Appendix: The Truth of the China Organ Procurement Organization Alliance）, this alliance is actually an alliance of large-scale organ transplant hospitals, which harvest organs from living Falun Gong practitioners. And it also participates in trafficking other people’s organs. For instance:

1)   Zhu Yunsong, director of the Department of Urology at the General Hospital of Guangzhou Military Command of PLA, which is the first organ procurement organization (OPO) in mainland China, has acknowledged the use of Falun Gong practitioners’ organs in transplant surgeries.[8]

2)  A number of hospitals within this alliance have participated in trafficking human organs and even in live organ harvesting of the homeless. According to reports by China’s official media outlets, the General Hospital of Guangzhou Military Command of PLA has been involved in illegal organ trafficking. [9]The PLA No. 304 hospital participated in organ trafficking from 2010 to 2012. [10]Number Three Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University has even participated in the crime of murdering a homeless man for his organs. [11]

3)  Three chairmen of the alliance, including Huang Jiefu, have been accused by doctors for having participated in the live organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners. Among them, Zheng Shusen, the alliance’s executive chairman, was even disqualified to present his paper at the International Congress of The Transplantation Society (TTS) in Hong Kong in August 2016, because his paper revealed the use of organs of unknown origins.

4)  In this alliance, there are 20 hospitals, which have directly acknowledged their live organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners. [12]

5) Three major central-government directly controlled municipalities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin, have the largest numbers of organ transplant hospitals and the largest numbers of transplanted organs in China, but their numbers of donated organs are extremely limited. By December 2015, when the CCP announced that all the organs used in transplant surgeries came from donations, Beijing, which had as many as 20 large-scale organ transplant hospitals, hadn’t even established one organ donation office.

a. The staff of the Red Cross Society of Beijing said that the Red Cross Society was only making preparations, as organ donation had not yet begun (December 6, 2015, Phone Number: +8610-6355-8766, Download: MP3 & Script)

b. Tianjin Red Cross staff said that there have been only over 170 cases of organ donation since the organ donation bank was established in 2003 (December 11, 2015, Phone Number: +8622-2731-1180, Download: MP3 & Script)

c. The entire city of Shanghai only has 5 successful cases of organ donation (December 17, 2015, Phone Number: +8621-6336-5880) Red Cross organ donation office staff in Huangpu District, Shanghai said that they had only begun this work since the first half of last year. The higher level had issued a document, and (receiving) donated organs is very difficult. Up to now, there have only been five cases of organ donations in Shanghai. (Download: MP3 & Script)

Section II:   Direct evidence of Dr. Wang Haibo’s Participation in Live Organ Harvesting and Covering up the Truth

Wang Haibo, now in charge of the China Organ Transplant Response System (COTRS), used to serve as assistant director of the Chinese Liver Transplant Registry.

As an organ transplant surgeon, Dr. Wang Haibo graduated from the Faulty of Clinical Medicine of Sun Yat-sen University. As mentioned above, Sun Yat-sen University’s affiliated hospitals have participated in the live organ harvesting of death-row inmates before 1999, and after 1999, they have been participating in the live organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners. This fact has been confirmed by doctors from Number One Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Number Three Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University and Jiangmen Central Hospital (which is also affiliated with Sun Yat-sen University).

Wang Haibo has long been involved in the CCP’s supply chain of live organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners:

Since 2004, Wang Haibo had been working as the assistant director of the Chinese Liver Transplant Registry. [13]The Liver Transplant Registry was established in February 2005, but the pilot project of China’s national-level organ donation didn’t begin until 2010. So there is no doubt that all organ sources before 2010 were illegal. Moreover, according to various analyzes, it is impossible for most of the organs to come from executed prisoners, as claimed by the CCP.

1)  The CCP’s 21 largest liver transplant centers have participated in launching the Liver Transplant Registry. [14]According to WOIPFG’s investigation, these hospitals have directly acknowledged their live organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners. During their peak periods, all of these hospitals’ organ transplant numbers reached several thousands of cases each year. Please see THE FINAL HARVEST - Chapter 6: The Real Numbers: China’s Secret Transplant Volumes Revealed for details. [15]

2)  This organization’s 2006 annual report has recorded that the proportion of emergency liver transplants was as high as 26.6% of the total number of liver transplants [16], revealing the existence of a massive live organ pool composed of people other than death-row prisoners:

An emergency liver transplant is an urgent liver transplant operation performed on patients with acute, serious liver diseases and less than 72 hours to live. Due to the difficulty of urgent tissue typing and the extended wait time for a donor, emergency liver transplant operations are rarely performed outside of China. In China, however, emergency liver transplants have become commonplace. According to data from The 2006 Annual Report on China Liver Transplant Registry[17], out of the 8,486 cases of liver transplants performed in 29 transplant centers from April 6, 2005, through December 31, 2006, 4,331 cases had specified whether or not they were emergency transplants. Among them, as many as 1,150 emergency liver transplants were performed, accounting for 26.6% of the total number of cases! One patient received a liver transplant operation only four hours after being hospitalized. [18]This was the fastest transplantation recorded in the data set, and this registration system contains only data of some of the liver transplants. According to Huang Jiefu’s report, over the same period, as of year 2006, China had carried out 10,502 cases of liver transplantation. [19]The actual number of emergency liver transplants should be even larger. [20]

The executions of death-row prisoners need to go through judicial procedures, usually they cannot meet the needs of non-scheduled organ transplants. Therefore, the donor sources of these readily available organs cannot be from executed prisoners. This also demonstrates that the CCP’s organ transplantation has a massive live organ bank, which should be independent of the regular death-row inmate system and can be accessed at any time according to the needs of organ transplantation. In China, only Falun Gong practitioners are subjected to large-scale blood tests during their detention. Therefore, as the person in charge of the China Organ Transplant Response System, Wang Haibo is one of the major perpetrators of this heinous crime.

Section III:   The crime of live organ harvesting by the CCP has gone beyond Falun Gong Practitioners

A Christian has become the victim according to the testimony by his family members.

As mentioned above, the General Hospital of Guangzhou Military Command and the PLA’s No. 304 Hospital have participated in organ trafficking, and Number Three Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University has participated in a homeless man’s murder to steal his organs.

According to the Radio France International (RFI), on November 12, 2016, the American NGO CHINA Aid learned from the family members of a Christian man named Peng Ming that Peng Ming’s organs had recently been harvested secretly by the CCP. [21]

Appendix: The Truth of the China Organ Procurement Organization Alliance

In accordance with the standards of the World Health Organization and the practices of major organ transplantation countries, organ donation and transplantation system should include five major systems. They are organ donation system, organ matching system, clinical organ transplant system, scientific registration system, and monitoring and management system. Among them, the organ donation system is the key. The organ transparent operations of a donation system fundamentally guarantee the organ donations’ voluntariness, fairness and traceability. In China, the organ donation, procurement and transportation are carried out by the China Organ Procurement Organization Alliance. Obviously, the transparency of this organization fundamentally guarantees the transparency of the CCP’s organ donation system.

The investigation of WOIPFG shows that based on the initiator and founding organization of the China Organ Procurement Organization Alliance, three of its past and present chairmen and its major participating hospitals, we can only draw this conclusion: this organization is an important participant in the CCP’s live organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners.

I.  In China, the organ donation, procurement and transportation are carried out by the China Organ Procurement Organization Alliance

A Chinese Organ Procurement Organization (OPO) is an organ procurement organization led by the National Health and Family Planning Commission of China, and composed with organ transplant surgeons, neurosurgeons and nurses. Its major responsibilities are to persuade people to donate organs, maintain organs, input data, and assign, harvest, transport and transplant organs, as well as post-operative care. [22]

The summary of an OPO’s responsibilities, Chinese Organ Donor Registration Website, retrieved from http://savelife.org.cn/

II.  The First OPO - Guangzhou General Hospital of Guangzhou Command - a surgeon admitted to having harvested organs from Falun Gong practitioners  

On July 11, 2011, the first OPO opened for business in Guangzhou General Hospital of Guangzhou Command. [23]Huang Jiefu, the then Vice Minister of Health, Wang Haibo, the director of China Organ Transplant Response System (COTRS), and others attended the ceremony. According to the news reports, this hospital “has initiated or participated in more than 30 cases of organ donation over the years. And it has conducted the first case of cardiac-death organ assignment and sharing by using the COTRS.”

However, WOIPFG’s investigation shows that a surgeon at this hospital admitted to using some organs from Falun Gong practitioners.  

According to WOIPFG’s investigation, Zhu Yunsong, Director of the Urological Department at the General Hospital of Guangzhou Military Command of PLA acknowledged that they had been live organ harvesting Falun Gong practitioners. [24] (April 12, 2006; telephone numbers: 8613602703460，862036222653)

WOIPFG Investigator: Is this Director Zhu of Guangzhou General Hospital?
Zhu: Yes, this is.
Investigator: I am calling from the PLA’s No. 304 Hospital and I have two relatives here. Right now we do not have enough kidney supplies. We used to do lots of such surgeries in 2001, 2002, 2003 ...
Zhu Yunsong: Yes, I know.
Investigator: We found that kidneys from young donors are good. Another thing is that the kidneys from Falun Gong detainees are indeed better. Do you have this kind?
Zhu: We do not have many Falun Gong (practitioner) kidney sources, either.
Investigator: You still have some of this kind (of kidneys from Falun Gong practitioners)?
Zhu: It is not difficult to find Type B kidneys (from Falun Gong practitioner donors). If you want, you can come; we will do it pretty soon, definitely before May 1.
Investigator: Do you have one batch prior to May 1?
Zhu: We will have several batches.
Investigator: How about after May 1?
Zhu: If you wait until after May 1, it will be more likely to be around May 20.
Investigator: If you could obtain Falun Gong practitioners’ kidney sources in this period of time, could you let me know?
Zhu: No problem, you come over and we can talk then...

III.  Direct Evidence of Three Chairmen of the China Organ Procurement Organization Alliance having Participated in Live Organ Harvesting

The China Organ Procurement Organization Alliance (OPO Alliance) was established in Central South Hospital of Wuhan University, on November 25, 2014. [25]The alliance links together the individual OPO from each hospital. According to Professor Ye Qifa, the OPO Alliance’s executive chairman and an expert of organ transplantation at Central South Hospital, Huang Jiefu, chairman of the China Organ Donation and Transplantation Committee, was the honorary chairman of the Alliance, and Academician Zheng Shusen, chairman of the organ transplantation branch of the Chinese Medical Association, was the chairman of the Alliance.

According to the WOIPFG’s investigation, Honorary Chairman Huang Jiefu, Chairman Zheng Shusen and Executive Chairman Ye Qifa of the OPO Alliance are the main figures in the live organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners.

1.  The evidence that Huang Jiefu participated in the organ harvesting includes: Huang organized doctors and hospitals nationwide to develop organ transplantation; he personally performed as many as several thousand cases of whole liver transplantation; more than 20 hospitals under his management directly admitted to having committed organ harvesting, and among them, the doctors from three hospitals affiliated with Sun Yat-sen University have admitted to having harvested organs from Falun Gong practitioners. (For details, please see Part I of the Hong Kong Special Investigation Report  http://www.upholdjustice.org/node/371) [26]

2.  The evidence that Zheng Shusen has been participating in the organ harvesting includes: a nurse from Liver Transplantation Center at the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University, in which Zheng is in charge, admitted in 2016 that “our hospital do several thousand of cases each year” [27]This figure cannot be totally explained with organs from executed prisoners or donated organs. As of March 2016, Zheng Shusen himself had carried out 1,850 cases of liver transplantation[28]. In addition, Zheng Shusen is also the Vice Chairman of the “Anti-cult Association” of Zhejiang Province, and one of the main responsible persons in the province for persecuting Falun Gong practitioners. In August 2016, on the 26th International Congress of The Transplantation Society in Hong Kong, a paper by Zheng Shusen was not allowed to be presented, because it didn’t pass the review on organ sources. [29]

3.  The evidence that Ye Qifa has participated in the organ harvesting includes [30]:
1) The actual amount of organ transplants in the Third Xiangya Hospital is very large. In 2001, it started to have the capacity of transplanting more than 1,000 organs per year, and this cannot be explained with organs from executed prisoners; 2) the doctors from two hospitals, where Ye Qifa works, admitted to have harvested organs from Falun Gong practitioners; 3) The wait times for available organs at both hospitals are extremely short, which couldn’t be explained by donated organs with limited and unstable supplies;  4) the Third Xiangya Hospital is suspected to be the organ deployment center for the Chinese Communist Party; 5) According to published medical papers, that organ sources were living persons, not executed prisoners.

IV.  The Organ Sources Reported from Other Members of the OPO Alliance [31]cannot be Justified

The crime of organ harvesting by the Chinese Communist Party was exposed in 2006. After that, the hospitals with large numbers of organ transplants were retained and became OPO Alliance members, including Number One Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, where Huang Jiefu once worked; Number Three Xiangya Hospital and Central South Hospital of Wuhan University, where Ye Jiqi works, and so on. Among them, several dozens of hospitals have admitted to having harvested organs from living Falun Gong practitioners.

Ironically, the three largest cities, Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin, where there are the largest numbers of organ transplant hospitals with the largest numbers of transplants in China, have very limited numbers of organ donations. Beijing did not even set up an organ donation office, how could such an OPO alliance explain the legitimate sources of their organs?

1.  The staff of the Red Cross Society of Beijing said that the Red Cross Society was only making preparations, as organ donation had not yet begun (December 6, 2015, Phone Number: +8610-6355-8766, Download: MP3 & Script)

2.  Tianjin Red Cross staff said that there have been only over 170 cases of organ donation since the organ donation bank was established in 2003 (December 11, 2015, Phone Number: +8622-2731-1180, Download: MP3 & Script)

3.  The entire city of Shanghai only has 5 successful cases of organ donation (December 17, 2015, Phone Number: +8621-6336-5880) Red Cross organ donation office staff in Huangpu District, Shanghai said that they had only begun this work since the first half of last year. The higher level had issued a document, and (receiving) donated organs is very difficult. Up to now, there have only been five cases of organ donations in Shanghai. (Download: MP3 & Script)。

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