In an undercover video obtained by NTD and released for the first time at a recent policy forum on Capitol Hill, a Chinese liver transplant doctor can be seen boasting that he and his team can find the highest quality livers for transplant.
“You can see that the quality of this liver is very good. Look at this liver. This is the best liver ever,” the doctor said.
This video is the latest piece of evidence that supports the 14-year-old horrifying allegation that prisoners of conscience are killed for their organs in China.
In the 5-minute video, a number of hospitals in Beijing are visited by Yu Ming—a Chinese Falun Gong practitioner who later escaped to the United States.
Ming recorded the conversations he had with doctors and medical staff in secret, posing as a patient in need of a transplant.
“As long as there are no contradictions, I can do surgery for liver cancer patients in two or three weeks,” one doctor told Ming. “Sometimes even faster, like one week,” he added.
China’s incredibly short wait times has been one of the key reasons investigators believe forced organ harvesting is a reality in China. In the United States, patients can’t just book a transplant. Instead, they have to wait for voluntary donors. Every year, more than 1,000 people die while waiting for a matching donor, wait times can stretch for months or even years.
At the forum where the video was published, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation released a new organ harvesting report. It states that in 2006 when Falun Gong practitioners made the first claims about forced organ removal, Chinese hospitals publicly advertised transplant wait times of one or two weeks.
Falun Gong—also known as Falun Dafa—is a spiritual meditation system and form of qigong. The practice includes slow-moving exercises for the mind and body.
Because of the widespread popularity of Falun Gong in the 1990s, the Chinese Communist regime became fearful the number of Falun Gong practitioners would exceed the members of the regime. The former party leader, Jiang Zemin, launched a violent persecution against the peaceful practice in 1999.
Ming said he was imprisoned by Chinese authorities for a total of 12 years for practicing the meditation disciple Falun Gong. During his imprisonment, he was blood-tested on at least three occasions.
One U.S. official says they’ve known for decades about forced organ harvesting. She pointed out that Falun Gong practitioners are particularly vulnerable targets—thanks to their good health.
Falun Gong seems to be well-known among Chinese patients. In the video, one liver transplant patient offered Ming advice, saying that livers that come from people who meditate are best and that patients can tell their doctor what they want.
“Don’t hesitate to spend this money on a good liver. You can live another ten years with a good liver. This is no joke,” the patient told Ming. “If he can practice Qigong and meditation, this kind of liver is the best,” he added.
Beginning in 2000, China’s organ transplantation sector exploded. Thousands of transplant surgeons were trained, and hundreds of hospitals began offering routine transplants. The timeline coincides with the communist regime’s persecution of Falun Gong, which started in July 1999, according to a report by Matthew Robertson, a human rights reporter and translator for Ming at the forum.
“This is mainstreamed by this Chinese government dictatorship,” New Jersey Congressman Chris Smith said at the forum.
“The fact is that there’s a massive infrastructure, development of facilities and medical personnel for organ transplant operations often started before any voluntary donor system was even planned.”