Response of David Kilgour and David Matas to the Chinese government statement

The Government of China released a statement in response to our report titled
Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China
dated July 6, 2006. The statement can be found at http://www.chinaembassycanada.org . We have these reactions to this statement:

1. The statement
of the Government of China was released the same day
as our Report. The statement
of the Government of China dismisses our
Report out of hand. We view this reaction
is unconsidered. It means
that the Government of China has engaged in no investigations
to
determine whether or not what the report contains is true.

2. The
statement of the Government of China begins with the phrase

“In
order to extricate itself from an awkward position
after its lie about “Sujiatun
Concentration Camp” has been laid bare,
Falun Gong has shifted…”


This phrase is incorrect in a number of different ways. First, it
suggests
that our Report is a Falun Gong report. Yet, it is not. We
are not Falun Gong
practitioners. We did this report as volunteers
and were not paid for this
report by Falun Gong or anyone. Our report
represents our own judgment. We
have not acted on the instructions of
Falun Gong or anyone else in coming to
the conclusions we did.

3. The assertions about Sujiatun Concentration
Camp to which the
Chinese statement refers originated from the ex-wife of a
surgeon at
Sujiatun Hospital. This person is not a Falun Gong practitioner.
This
person has not changed or shifted her story at any time. David
Kilgour interviewed
her. An excerpt of the interview can be found at
Appendix 13 of our report.


4. It is our own opinion, expressed in our report, that this woman was
not
lying. We concluded that she was credible.

5. In our report we did not
rely on this witness alone to come to our
conclusions. In our report, this
is what we said about the testimony
of this witness:

“The testimony
of the wife of the surgeon allegedly
complicit in Falun Gong organ harvesting
seemed credible to us, partly
because of its extreme detail. However, that
detail also posed a
problem for us, because it provided a good deal of information
which
it was impossible to corroborate independently. We were reluctant to
base
our findings on sole source information. So, in the end, we
relied on the testimony
of this witness only where it was
corroborative and consistent with other evidence,
rather than as sole
source information.”

Our report is not a shift
from what this witness says, but rather an
expansion, with a larger focus than
just Sujiatun Hospital.

6. The Chinese statement then says:

“It
is obvious that their purpose is to smear China’s image.” We
reply that
we have no wish to smear China’s image. Our sole concerns
are respect for the
truth and human rights.

7. The Chinese statement then says:

“China
has consistently abided by the relevant guiding
principles of the World Health
Organization endorsed in 1991,
prohibiting the sale of human organs and stipulating
that donors’
written consent must be obtained beforehand and donors are entitled
to
refuse the donation at last minute.”

This statement that China
is denied by the facts. The China
International Transplantation Network Assistance
Centre Website until
April of this year set out a price list for transplants.
The price
list was removed from the website in April, but is still archived.
To
see the web site now, go to . To see the
archived
site, go to

http://archive.edoors.com/render.php?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fen.zoukiishoku.com%2Flist%2Fcost.htm+&x=16&y=11


As well, many individuals can attest to paying for organ transplants in China.


8. The statement that China has consistently abided by the principle
stipulating
that donors’ written consent must be obtained beforehand
is also belied by
the facts. Human Rights Watch has reported that
consent is obtained from executed
prisoners in only a minority of
cases. The organization writes that even in
this minority of cases

“the abusive circumstances of detention and
incarceration in
China, from the time a person is first accused of a capital
offense
until the moment of his or her execution, are such as to render absurd
any
notion of “free and voluntary consent.”

Organ Procurement and
Judicial Execution in China, August 1994

9. The China statement goes on
to say:

“China has issued a regulation on human organ transplants,
explicitly
banning the sale of organs and introducing a set of medical
standards for organ
transplants in an effort to guarantee medical
safety and the health of patients.
The regulation requires medical
institution which is qualified for practising
human organ transplant
to register at provincial level health department. Unregistered
medical
institutions are forbidden to practice human organ transplant.
If the government
finds any registered institution violating the
regulation, it will cancel the
registration and punish the people
responsible.”We acknowledge that this
is so, and wrote about it in our
Report. We also noted that this legislation
came into force only a
few days ago on July 1st. It is not an answer to our
findings about
what happened before that date. Moreover, in China, there is
a huge
gap between enacting legislation and enforcing it.

10. The Government
of China then writes:

“It is very clear that Falun Gong’s rumour
has ulterior political motives.”

None of our findings are based on
rumour. Every finding we make is
sourced and independently verifiable.


11. The China statement then says:

“Therefore, the so-called
“independent investigation report”
made by a few Canadians based
on rumours and false allegations is
groundless and biased. We do believe that
lies are always lame, and
will never become the truth even if being repeated
1000 times. We hope
that the Canadian people will not be deceived by the disguise
of the
Falun Gong, and more people will be aware of the nature of “Falun
Gong”
as an evil cult.”

This conclusion is an attack both on us and Falun
Gong. The Report
has to be judged on its merits. Attacking its authors is not
an
appropriate response.

Second calling the Falun Gong an evil cult
exemplifies the
vilification heaped on the Falun Gong. It is this sort of slander
which,
in China, depersonalizes and dehumanizes the Falun Gong and
makes possible
the violation of their basic human rights.

Calling a group of innocent
civilians an “evil cult” is a form of
incitement to hatred, unacceptable
in Canada. It is an abuse of their
diplomatic presence in China for China to
engage in this form of
incitement.

For more information,
please contact: David Kilgour: (613) 747-7854
David Matas: (204) 944-1831

________________________________

A full copy of the report can be obtained
at:
http://investigation.redirectme.net/

 

Posting
date: 8/July/2006
Original article date: 7/July/2006
Category: Media Report