Key note: on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the release of Investigation Report on Organ Harvesting, the two Davids and Ethan Gutmann, member of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, released the 2016 Updated Report, claiming that China harvested the organs of Falun Gong practitioners and killed 1.5 million people. Renowned anti-cult expert and member of the National Union of Journalists published a series of reports to refute the Updated Report and this is the second one. It refutes the so-called evidence offered by the so-called independent civil rights activists and revealed their despicable practices of fabricating evidence and distorting the truth.
I studied the Updated Report on Organ Harvesting published in 2007, and wrote a book entitled Falun Gong under the Squashberry Tree (????????? ??? ????? ??????????? ??????) (published in Kyiv in 2011). Thus, I am interested in what new charges or evidence the activists have found over the past decade. Perhaps they make some revisions of the book, which previously lacked evidence and credibility?
I am not the only one interested in it. In August 2016, one month after the release of the 2016 Updated Report, the 26th International Conference on Organ Grafting was held in Hong Kong. High attention was paid to the accusation by the activists. Francis Delmonico, former President and professor at the Massachusetts General Hospital of Harvard Medical School, exchanged ideas through video connection with the Chinese and foreign experts at the conference. He said, “We should ask those who spread the rumor, where the evidence is and what their ulterior motives are.”
The answer from the author of the Updated Report was disappointing, “If you are not convinced by the report that many innocent people were killed for organ harvesting in China, then we do not have other evidence. We supplemented the original report only to reveal the fact that the number of innocent people killed for organ harvesting far exceeds our expectation. It was astonishing.” (http://endorganpillaging.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Bloody_Harvest-The_Slaughter-June-23-V2.pdf). The so-called civil rights activists make new accusations without evidence and claim that the number is “astonishing”. It is but their common trick to play with numbers yet they fail to provide evidence.
Ethan Gutmann, one of the authors of the Report, said when interviewed by Falun Gong website Epoch Times, “We already proved in the last Updated Report, namely, Bloody Harvest and Massacre, that the organs were harvested from Chinese criminals who were Falun Gong practitioners. Thus we no longer need to provide evidence of what had already been proved.” Let us assume the evidence can be found in the last report. On page 8 of Bloody Harvest (2007 Updated Report), it says,
“We have to consider a number of factors… Each factor itself cannot serve as evidence, yet combined together, they make a whole picture.”
“The evidence we offer are not hard evidence. Yet without them, we will be questioned by others. When combined together, the charges become convincible. Yet individual evidence doesn’t work.”
On page 50 of the 2007 Updated Report, it says, “Similar varying data cannot prove the claim of organ harvesting.”
Here I could not help ask, over the past years, ”What turns this non-hard evidence into proved facts?”
When the authors make claims of the so-called unambiguous evidence, why they are unwilling to provide new evidence. Here are excerpts from the interview of Ethan Gutmann by Epoch Times.
Q: What is the evidence of organ harvesting on Falun Gong followers?
Ethan Gutmann said, “In my opinion, the prisoners escaping from Chinese prisons are the main evidence. They were examined in prison to determine their organ status, but no examination for other prisoners. There are also physical examinations of Hui, Tibetan, and Christian prisoners, indicating that they are also potential victims of organ harvesting.”
Thus in the eyes of "human rights guard", a blood test and physical examination of prisoners are evidence, and even the main evidence of organ harvesting.
Bus parking lot is evidence of the massacre.
Following the interview above:
“There are other evidences. One of the witnesses I interviewed revealed the secrets of harvesting the organs of the Falun Gong practitioners. The prisoners were taken from the camps onto a bus. The bus stopped by the crematory of the prison. We already know that kind of thing.”
We must repeat a simple truth: witnesses should be eyewitnesses, not just providing hearsay. This truth was written in 2011, but the barristers and activists still do not understand.
I do not know whether the author of the Update Report has seen Walter Scott's novel "The Narrative Poems of Alvin Knight". Their allegations, "witnesses" and "evidence" are very similar to those in the interrogation of the novel, which are all false.
The authors also stress that the military is also involved in organ harvesting. "Page 7 of the 2016 Report states:" Chapter 5 is the testimony of foreign patients who went to China for organ transplants, saying that organs are obtained in a very short period of time in a secret way, indicating the deep involvement of the military and its institutions.
"As is said on Page 15 of the 2007 Report, according to a man who went to Shanghai to have kidney transplants, his kidneys cost 20 thousand US dollars ... The surgeon who gave him a kidney transplant was Tan Jianming of the Nanjing Military Region. He was in a civilian medical institution, but wearing military uniform. I saw him several times wearing uniforms and going outside. After 2-3 hours, he returned with a box filled with a kidney.”
In many countries, military doctors are more professional than ordinary doctors, and many people are willing to look for medical doctors. The problem, however, is that the appearance of a soldier does not prove anything about the killing of a prisoner, because in China, the army has nothing to do with the prisons and the prisons isare under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Public Security.
In the lengthy report released at different periods, most of the information is irrelevant to the theme and the premise for these so-called evidences is the willingness of the readers to believe.
Of course, the witnesses involved in those accusations are pleased to see that.
Uninformed witness
In 2006, when the first report was released, the author made false claims that some Chinese doctors were witnesses. The result was repeatedly refuted by Chinese doctors. The so-called civil rights activists misinterpret the meaning of these doctors and distorted the truth. Among them are Liu Guoping, doctor of Guangxi National Hospital, Professor Shi Bingyi, China Organ Transplant Association, and Liang Xiangjun, ophthalmologist of Foshan Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine. What they said was modified in the Report and Investigation.
As Liang Xiangjun said, “Later I knew that I became an “important” figure who revealed information on the overseas website of Falun Gong. I was quoted for saying “the sources of organ transplant are mostly from Falun Gong practitioners and prisoners under sentence of death.” Below is his narration:
“My name is Liang Xiangjun, originally an ophthalmologist at Foshan Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Guangdong Province. As a doctor, I am well aware that the seriousness of organ donation and that organ transplantation cannot be what is written by overseas Falun Gong websites. Besides, I have not said that at all. I remember one day in early April 2015, a person claiming to be a relative of a patient with eye diseases called me, concerning the cornea transplant surgery. I answered him from a professional point of view. After that the man picked up the topic of organ harvesting. Because I did not understand this matter, and it had nothing to do with my profession, I cannot answer this question, and then the other party hung up. I did not expect that the Falun Gong website would have the kind of coverage.”
On Oc.27, 2014, the office of Ke Wenzhe, candidate of Mayor of Taipei, issued a statement accusing the civil rights activists of distorting the truth and fabricating claims, “The information in the book of Ke Wenzhe contacting mainland officials and purchasing organs is not real. What is written in the book deviates greatly from the interview. Ke Wenzhe has issued the Attorney 's letter and required false information be corrected in the book.” According to Ke, he never said “all the organs are harvested from Falun gong practitioners.”
In practice, false information is hard to avoid and it might not be the fault of the reporter. What the reporter needs to do is to withdraw it in a polite way, Yet Ethan Gutmann did not. He picked up the same false information 2 years later and defended himself on his personal website, saying that though Ke refused to admit, what he implied was Falun Gong. We can make judgments by ourselves. There was no record of the interview, as it was private. Doctor Ke’s English was poor and the interview was carried out through the telephone. Yet Gutmann tried to quote Ke’s words from his memory and persuade others the dialogue was just “between us.”
The overseas civil rights activists are repeatedly refuted, and we could not help ask, “Is the testimony they referred to what is actually said by the witnesses, or what they want to hear from them.”
