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>Mr. Rogers is East Asia Team Leader at the human-rights organization CSW, deputy chairman of the U.K. Conservative Party’s Human Rights Commission Hm, I wonde

• mc32 8y ago
  Maybe regardless of politics they’re just appalled at the idea someone can be forced to donate organs?
• _bxg1 8y ago
  Unless you're suggesting he's part of a grand conspiracy to fabricate this data, I find his politics extremely irrelevant.
  • coldtea 8y ago
    Why wouldn't he be "part of a grand conspiracy to fabricate this data"? It's called promoting their country's national interests, and it's part of the job description for such roles. Conspiracy doesn't have to include loonies, aliens, and illuminati. Nation states do conspiracies perfectly well, they just call them "foreign policy", and include presenting the data as they like, painting the pictures to fit the politics of the day, having cosy relations with journalists, getting selective people on the other side (e.g. opposition leaders) to give the kind of statements they like, and so on.
    • _bxg1 8y ago
      Seriously? "In 2006 Chinese-speaking researchers posed as organ buyers and directly asked if organs from Falun Gong practitioners could be arranged for transplant. Hospitals throughout China confirmed they had such organs available, no problem. The stories are brutal. Dr. Enver Tohti, a former surgeon from Xinjiang, testified in the British, Irish and European parliaments to removing organs from a prisoner forcibly in 1995. “We had been told to wait behind a hill, and come into the field as soon as we’d hear the gunshot,” he recalled. “A moment later there were gunshots. Not one, but many. We rushed into the field. An armed police officer approached us and told me where to go. He led us closer, then pointed to a body, saying, ‘This is the one.’ By then our chief surgeon appeared from nowhere and told me to remove the liver and two kidneys.” According to Dr. Tohti, the man’s wound was not necessarily fatal. But Dr. Tohti went ahead and removed the liver and kidneys while the man’s heart was still beating. Experts around the world have testified to China’s crimes. Israel, Taiwan and Spain have banned “organ tourism” to China. United Nations rapporteurs have called China to account for the sources of their organs but received no response." This isn't just some rogue pundit, this is a major geopolitical topic. I swear, parts of HackerNews recently have been reading more like InfoWars.
      • coldtea 8y ago
        Well, it can be totally true, and it possibly is. Chinese government did kill and torture several million people during the "Cultural Revolution", so there's that. But it's not true because some organization or high ranking official couldn't possibly be lying or presenting a fine-tuned picture. Whole trillion dollar wars were supported on false testimony and lies or exaggerations. E.g. it could just be part of the "China is suppressing Falun Gong" (including executing prisoners they consider leaders etc, and then using their organs) as opposed to "Chinese are so evil that they routinely kill Falun Gong members just to get their organs" (which I find harder to fathom). I'm skeptical because a lot of times very official testimonies are very official BS (WMDs, "collision", Nayirah testimony, Iran-Contra, and lotsa others), so bullshitting the population and spinning the media is not some unique habit of undemocratic countries. E.g. one basic pillar of this China-organ story is the so-called "Kilgour-Matas" report. Matas was on the board of the International Centre for Human Rights & Democratic Development, which is not unknown to controversy itself (basically funding radical organizations and R&D to covertly promote foreign interests out of line with its stated purpose) and was closed down later ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Centre_for_Human_Rights_and_Democratic_Development#Controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Centre_for_Human... ).
        • _bxg1 8y ago
          Fear is the death of reason. By all means investigate the sources if you wish, but don't peddle conspiracy theories without any actual evidence.
          • door5 8y ago
            The conspiracy theory is "China is wholesale slaughtering political dissidents in order to harvest their organs". Questioning why claims by two researchers funded by the Falun Gong cult get uncritical attention from a Tory writing in the Wall Street Journal isn't a conspiracy theory.
          • coldtea 8y ago
            In politics there's seldom evidence available to average Joes. They release/open some files after decades (not even everything) and you find out that they were lying through their teeth. If people are to make any difference now, not in several decades, they should doubt most things said officially said, especially for matters concerning trading competitors, or the "enemy du jour" -- evidence or not, they should take things with a grain of salt. (I'm also from a much smaller country. In countries where politics directly affect you, history is lived and wars are fought directly -- not 10.000 miles away --, and everybody knows everybody, being cynical of official announcements -- of yours and other governments --, and recognizing duplicity and private interests at play, is a survival skill. In larger countries like the USA, you can live your life oblivious of politics and major historical events, except on a much larger and slower scale. Heck, your country can even be at war decade after decade, and it will only affect a tiny minority of poor folk that go a draft, 99% of the people will live business as usual. But I digress -- and of course that's not proof that I'm right on this, just my 0.02 in why some can better recognize that "political and private interest conspiracies" are everyday realities, and not the stuff of conspiracy nuts who believe in illuminati. Try telling that to Italians, for example, who have suffered politicians in bed with the Mafia for half a century, had whole establishment programs to meddle with elections (and prevent parties with 20%+ of the popular vote to ever reach power), and even "enjoyed" government backed extremist organizations killing their own citizens -- and all those verified by courts, albeit much much later).
• jasonhansel 8y ago
  Maybe his motive is...supporting human rights?