Media Reports
The Canadians supervised calls to several hospitals by Mandarin speakers purporting to be acting for patients seeking urgent transplants, getting some doctors and officials to admit taking organs from young and healthy Falun Gong prisoners.
Members of the spiritual movement Falun Gong will hold a candlelight vigil outside
the Chinese embassy in Canberra to coincide with the visit of China’s president
Hu Jintao.
Falun Gong and other groups have a regular presence outside the Chinese embassy in Canberra, where they protest against Beijing’s alleged human rights abuses.
“We’re not protesting against APEC, we’re not protesting against the Howard Government, we just want people to realise thousands of Falun Gong people are held in camps in China and they’re killed for organ transplants,” said Falun Gong spokeswoman Kay Rubacek.
The awarding of the 2008 Olympic Games to China was an acknowledgment of the country’s dynamic economic progress and its emergence as a world power to be reckoned with. Implicit in this decision was the understanding that China would prove itself worthy of the International Olympic Committee’s vote of confidence by joining the community of nations that promote and protect human rights.
Director Elefteria Kalogritsa has produced a documentary on the journey of Jane Dai and her daughter Fadu and how Ms. Dai’s husband was brutally killed for his belief in Falun Gong.
A Global Human Rights Torch Relay (HRTR), inspired by the Olympic torch, is to be lit in Greece on Thursday August 9 and will travel around the world to put human rights on the agenda in the lead-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Four men accused of pocketing millions of dollars that patients had paid for organ transplants in Asia were arrested in Israel this week.
When Jane Dai’s husband Chengyong Chen lost his life fighting for his beliefs the couple’s daughter was just a baby. Fa Du Chen will never remember the short time she spent with her father and must now learn about the strong-willed man through stories and photographs.
From the Matas-Kilgour report: “The Organ Transplant Center of the Armed Police General Hospital in Beijing boldly states: ‘Our Organ Transplant Center is our main department for making money. This year (2004) there is a chance to break through 30,000,000 yuan (about $3.8 million U.S.).’ ”
