The researchers observed that, since 2000, the Chinese regime has prioritized organ transplantation in its national strategy and invested heavily in research, development, industrialization, and personnel training in transplantation technology.¹

China’s national plans, programs, and foundations have incorporated a large number of projects related to organ transplantation. The vast majority of medical universities and their affiliated transplant centers, both military and civilian, received significant funding from all levels of government.

On June 10, 1999, the central Communist Party leadership created the “610 Office,” an ad hoc agency directly under the Central Committee and dedicated to carrying out the systematic eradication of Falun Gong. With a structure extending from top to bottom throughout the Party, government, and military, it is endowed with extraordinary and extralegal power.²

The “610 Office” and the Political and Legal Affairs Committee have the power to control personnel and resources under the Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of State Security, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, propaganda departments, and the fields of finance, culture, education, science and technology, and health throughout the country. The regime mobilized the entire state apparatus in its campaign against Falun Gong practitioners.³

The Ministry of Health (MOH) and its successor, the National Health and Family Planning Commission (NPFPC), led the health care system in organ transplantation. In organizing, driving, and directly carrying out such activities, these agencies are fully responsible for the overall planning, policy making, regulation and management of China’s human organ transplant industry and the organ donation and allocation system.⁴

The General Logistics Department of the People’s Liberation Army was authorized as the core unit to lead every level of the military to eradicate the practice of Falun Gong. The military was given power to manage the secret detention facilities and the entire process of live organ harvesting.⁵

Over 100 military hospitals have become involved in organ transplantation. These include general hospitals that belong to the Central Military Commission, all military branches, the seven regional military commands, military medical universities, armed police, and numbered military hospitals.⁶ They resolve many core technical issues in organ transplantation and support civilian hospitals with living organ supplies and technical assistance.

“The Communist Party’s demonization and brutalization of Falun Gong and the health system’s insatiable demand for organs have formed a symbiosis. Each feeding on the other, the combination became an unprecedented, and barely imaginable, human catastrophe.”

—David Kilgour, David Matas, and Ethan Gutmann⁷

References