Investigations have revealed that the Chinese government has had an active program of harvesting organs from the prisoners in its jails, many of whom are Falun Gong members. (Click here for a detailed report) Persecution of members of the Falun Gong has become known world wide. On July 20, 1999, the Chinese government outlawed the practice of Falun Gong because officials feared its popularity challenged government authority. At that time, it was estimated that up to 100 million Chinese citizens practiced the exercises. Suspicions of organ harvesting of Falun Gong members were raised In 2001 when there was an unexplained exponential increase of organ donations in China. These 'donations' of organs are sold later to tourists who come for transplants. David Matas and David Kilgour, former Canadian Minister and member of Parliament, are the lead investigators of this evidence-gathering effort. There have been rebukes from the United Nations and the European Union, but curiously, there has been no official response from the United States.

References:

1. http://www.epm.org/artman2/publish/ethics/Americans_Getting_Transplanted_Organs_from_Chinese_Inmates.shtml
2. http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/washington/news.aspx?id=139457
3. http://www.mahalo.com/answers/countries/has-there-been-any-official-response-from-the-united-nations-the-u-s-or-the-eu-regarding-the-organ-harvesting-in-china-of-prisoners

A video is being distributed by Chinese embassies and consulates that constitutes an admission and new evidence that China has been killing Falun Gong practitioners for their organs. This video contains an admission from Dr. Lu Guoping combined with a prior audio recording from the same doctor. In the audio, the doctor admits that he and his colleagues went to prison to select Falun Gong practitioners for involuntary organ donations to be used in transplants. In the video, the doctor admits that he was the person interviewed in the audio recording.

Beyond the Red Wall: The Persecution of Falun Gong will air on CBC Newsworld on Tuesday, November 6 at 10:00 pm ET/PT, and will repeat on Saturday, November 10 at 4 a.m. ET and 11 PM ET/PT. The film will also be aired in Quebec and Ireland this fall.

The story recounts how Zhang, a Falun Gong practitioner, was arrested while on a return visit to China in 2002. He was sentenced without trial to three years in a labor camp, where he was severely beaten, repeatedly shocked with an electric baton, and brainwashed in an attempt to have him relinquish his faith. Canadian activists forced China to release Zhang with a pressure campaign.

Untold thousands of Falun Gong practitioners in China haven’t been so lucky. Routinely jailed without trial, they face the same sort of brutality inflicted on Zhang simply because they adhere to Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline and meditation practice. Human rights groups have documented over 3,000 torture deaths of Falun Gong practitioners in China, and the most recent U.S. Department of State report on human rights highlighted the ongoing persecution.

The problems began in April 1999 after about 10,000 practitioners quietly gathered outside the communist Party headquarters in to protest harassment, the Party became alarmed.

The official persecution of Falun Gong began on July 20, 1999, with a directive from Jiang Zemin.What followed was a series of mass arrests and an intense propaganda campaign that vilified Falun Gong both in China and overseas. Soon, disturbing reports began to emerge, telling of the systematic persecution, torture, and execution of practitioners.

A part of the broadcast documents the illicit, state-sanctioned harvesting of the bodily organs of Falun Gong practitioners for China’s booming transplant industry. Chinese organ brokers freely admitted in phone conversations that they had “Falun Gong suppliers” immediately available to provide organs. Average wait times for a kidney transplant appear silently on the screen, the figures speaking for themselves: Canada, 2555 days; United Kingdom, 1095 days; United States, 1825 days; and China, 15 days.

Far from being eliminated, Falun Gong has even been quietly growing in rural areas and smaller cities, " because nobody can destroy one's belief," says Guo Guoting, an exiled Chinese lawyer who defended Falun Gong adherents in China before the authorities shut down his law practice. He fled to Canada in 2005.

Johnson, who won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of features he wrote about Falun Gong, says in Red Wall that the persecution “remains one of the scars on the body politic of China,”

“In order for China to move forward, they have to have this kind of a reckoning," says former Canadian Cabinet Minister Kilgour, “...the killing has to stop.”