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Report on forced organ harvesting in China

238 points by Scotrix 7y ago

Noumenon72 7y ago
If you're going to potentially violate human rights and set up incentives to murder people for profit, saving lives like this is the best reason to do it. The long waiting lists for organs in the US show that our choice is a tradeoff, not a best practice. Insofar as our system is caused by squeamishness and the desire to feel morally pure, it is harming people unnecessarily too.
- MrAlex94 7y ago
  > it. The long waiting lists for organs in the US show that our choice is a tradeoff, not a best practice. Insofar as our system is caused by squeamishness and the desire to feel morally pure, it is harming people unnecessarily too. Apologies if I am misunderstanding, but are you insinuating that forced harvesting of organs is “best practice”?
  - LocalH 7y ago
    I didn't get that reading at all. The US medical system shows very well that we don't always have "best practice" in mind when it comes to health care.
  - Tade0 7y ago
    Or should even be considered "a practice" at all for that matter.
  - Noumenon72 7y ago
    Nope, neither is an unambiguous, strictly better practice. From the Chinese side I would be writing "The scandals where officials have given the death penalty just so they can get the organs show that our choice is a tradeoff, not a best practice. Insofar as our system gives incentives to harvest organs instead of keeping people alive, it is harming people unnecessarily too."
- fsloth 7y ago
  A life saved is not sufficient to counter a murder.
  - sam_lowry_ 7y ago
    Some countries implement an opt-out system. If you do not want your body to be reused after you die, you have to declare it in advance. This is hugely beneficial for patients. Now, even this hugely emotional article does not talk about murder.
    - Nextgrid 7y ago
      It’s one thing to harvest organs if the patient dies of accidents/natural causes, and personally I am in favour of the opt-out system. It’s a whole other thing of killing the patient on purpose to harvest their organs.
      - sam_lowry_ 7y ago
        At least several thousand people are executed in China annually. Can their bodies be used?
        Nextgrid 7y ago
        Wouldn’t it be worth investigating why they are executed? Given this organ trade is going on I wouldn’t be surprised if their “justice” system is being literally trigger-happy because they benefit from the resulting organs being made available.
        fsloth 7y ago
        Executed in a systen where law is not supposed to be impartial but only a tool among many to upkeep the states power. I don't think humans where worth much after death before modern organ transplantation. State arbiter gets more reasons to less leniency when there is a profit to be had from the execution. In an already 'unfair' system adding profit motive to executions can only worsen the humanitarian result.
- dougmwne 7y ago
  This is possibly the most psychopathic thing I've ever read. It belongs on https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitHNSays/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitHNSays/
  - Noumenon72 7y ago
    The article as I understood it said: 1. China executes a lot of Falun Gong and Uyghurs. We consider this genocide. 2. China takes their organs after they're dead without asking. If you are reading me as "it's good to do (1) to get (2)", that would be very psychopathic of me. I didn't mean to say that. What I had done while reading was entirely discard everything in the article about (1) because it was breathless and wasn't performed in order to get the organs. Then I attempted to make a comment on (2). Even (2) by itself is questionable, and I know I could be judged just for my opinion on that. But I didn't mean to get everyone riled up. Sorry.
- LocalH 7y ago
  Not sure why this is being downvoted. It may be a macabre way of looking at it, but it is a valid viewpoint. Poster didn't specify whether they actually felt that way. I agree, in the following sense. A different way to put it - if human rights are to be violated, there better be a damn noble reason for it.
  - monkeyodeath 7y ago
    It's a point of view that makes no sense. Murdering one person to save another is not "noble". It negates the entire point of "human rights" in the first place. You might as well suggest that people who need organs should be able to kill a random person on the street to get them.
    - LocalH 7y ago
      I think the OP was merely opining that they'd rather see this, than people dying for pure profit motive. I know that, were I provided a choice between killing someone for forced organ donation that could potentially save lives, versus killing someone for greed, profit, or punishment, with no way to say "no", I'd choose the former. Making it clear, however, that I'd rather never have to make that choice in the first place.
      - monkeyodeath 7y ago
        I see where you're coming from. I guess to me, it makes no moral difference. The means corrupt the end. The Nazis managed to get some useful science out of the Jews during the Holocaust, but it's hard to see that as a silver lining. I think that if you're at the level of making those kinds of choices, you're already living in hell.
        LocalH 7y ago
        I'd agree there. I don't think humans are at a point (nor will they ever be at a point) where they're capable of making such decisions without corruption clouding things.
- monkeyodeath 7y ago
  Not that it makes a moral difference, but the victims aren't all hardened criminals. They are political dissidents, people who follow the wrong religion, and racial minorities. Most of the greatest mass atrocities in world history have been framed as a "tradeoff". Destroying some lives to save others isn't a functioning society, it's a living nightmare.
  - LocalH 7y ago
    Honestly, if we were even going to begin to entertain any notions even slightly related to this, I'd want to suggest that if we insist on having the death penalty as a punishment, then those who are put to death should, if suitable, become automatic organ donors.
    - arkitaip 7y ago
      Absolutely not. If anything their bodies should be protected from any kind of harvesting as to not incentivize the state from handing out death penalties.
      - LocalH 7y ago
        I believe the death penalty should be abolished anyway. But, disregarding the complexity of the implementation of such a policy, if the government is in the business of ending people's lives, I'd rather it be done to directly help people, instead of in a punitive fashion. If you think about it, the death penalty isn't really a punishment - some people commit heinous crimes specifically so they can be killed.
        thwarted 7y ago
        "Suicide by Justice" doesn't seem like it would be or is a popular enough form of suicide to warrant what you're suggesting. Your logic doesn't make much sense.
    - sdwa 7y ago
      Nah that's totally ridiculous. Death is as serious a punishment as possible and can never be appealed once delivered, there should never be any incentives to deliver the death sentence besides seeing that justice is done.
- deleted 7y ago
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HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
While stopping short of concluding that the killing and forced organ removal of these peoples constitutes genocide in its legal definition (due to a lack of proof of actual intent to commit genocide), the panel nonetheless condemned the forced organ removals as a crime against humanity and an act of "unmatched wickedness". This article made me shiver. How did China get away with this for so long?
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  >How did China get away with this for so long? Because no other nation(s) is willing and able to engage in military conflict with China to stop it.
  - FartyMcFarter 7y ago
    Other nations could do less drastic things though. Sanctions would be an example.
    - lotsofpulp 7y ago
      But they’re not willing to give up access to cheap labor and environmental standards for their manufacturing and waste removal desires.
      - derefr 7y ago
        A strange thought: maybe the somewhat-global trend among Western powers toward political parties attempting to foment a climate of populist nationalism, is really an attempt to make people more willing to sacrifice profit margins to move manufacturing “back home”, such that China can actually be faced on level ground. I feel like our politicians have maybe decided that voters are too smart for a sudden switch to “China bad, Chinese people bad, hate them, cut ties with them” rhetoric (as has usually historically happened in the run-up to a declaration of war), so instead they’ve just dropped the specific context of who is supposed to be bad, and are kind of vague-polemic-ing about all foreigners instead, in the hopes that that’ll stir up at least some of the same effects that historical politicians were taking advantage of.
everybodyknows 7y ago
Shortcut link to officers of the organization: https://chinatribunal.com/who-we-are/ https://chinatribunal.com/who-we-are/
- Merrill 7y ago
  The China Tribunal has been initiated by the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC), an international not for profit organisation, with headquarters in Australia and National Committees in the UK, USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. ETAC is a coalition of lawyers, academics, ethicists, medical professionals, researchers and human rights advocates dedicated to ending forced organ harvesting (a form of organ trafficking) in China. https://chinatribunal.com/about-etac/ https://chinatribunal.com/about-etac/ Susie Hughes Executive Director, Co-Founder https://www.linkedin.com/in/susie-hughes-904288119/?originalSubdomain=au https://www.linkedin.com/in/susie-hughes-904288119/?original...
optimalsolver 7y ago
Has anyone here read Larry Niven's Gift From Earth? This is literally the plot (but on another planet).
ralphstodomingo 7y ago
Truly jarring if this is true. The systematic persecution of and violence against political opposition is one thing, the oppressive surveillance another, but I think forced organ harvest (especially on living people!) crosses a line. What can we do?
- joaomacp 7y ago
  Vote anti-China in the next elections, speak to your representatives.
- fwsgonzo 7y ago
  Lines are crossed all the time. Makes me think of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window Suddenly now the concentration camps are the lesser evil of stealing organs from political enemies.
bayesian_horse 7y ago
I have read about the possibility of large-scale harvesting of organs from prisoners for a few months now. First thing to note about this particular article is that "The China Tribunal" has no formal or legal standing, it is basically a volunteer organization trying to collect evidence. When they say "Worst Fears [...] Were Just confirmed" they are at best misleading. There has been a notable dearth of reporting by traditional journalistic media about this topic, and so I am still somewhat skeptical. The evidence presented so far is not as conclusive as with the Uyghur suppression. The practice described in the article would undoubtedly be a crime against Humanity, and among the biggest in history. But I can't tell right now if the process of its discovery is just slow-moving or if there is just nothing that big to discover. I'd appreciate any pointers to more information either way.
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  The Chinese government itself has admitted that this was done in the past but they promised to no longer allow it to happen...on multiple occasions. That China did this isn’t really in doubt, the argument is only about whether they still do it. The central government has a hard time getting rid of this practice because they aren’t as omnipotent as they appear, there is a lot of vested interests that localities continue the practice. Given the very low percentage of organ donors in Chinese culture, you’ll know they’ve stopped harvesting organs when their turn around time for organ transplants goes up by a lot.
  - rdl 7y ago
    Also the "we can get you organs in a day, give us the specific requirements..." is a pretty serious red flag even if there's a high normal donation rate.
    - bayesian_horse 7y ago
      Yes, I would agree there. Though that might also be a sign of an opt-out donor policy. Also, the particular crime charged here is that not only are organs harvested from prisoners / execution victims, but prisoners are specifically killed in order to harvest their organs, including a pre-execution check for histocompatibility. There is a distinction to be made between small scale criminal behavior on the part of the hospitals and prisons, and a large-scale state-sanctioned practice of illicit organ harvesting.
jtdev 7y ago
A hard line stance on China’s human rights abuses, currency and trade manipulation, and intellectual property theft will be a top requirement for my support of 2020 US presidential candidates.
- xenocyon 7y ago
  It's weird to speak of literal organ harvesting and the legal fiction (admittedly, an arguably useful fiction) of intellectual "property" in the same sentence. One of these things is not like the other.
- deleted 7y ago
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- AsyncAwait 7y ago
  While I'd imagine you'd ignore U.S. abuses and provocations, (Iran?), I imagine? Is China worse than Saudi Arabia for example? Because I can't imagine U.S. speaking strongly against KSA, can you? The U.S. doesn't really care about human rights, or its own abuse of them, (was any top official prosecuted for Iraq?), so you'd be voting for posturing.
  - ilikehurdles 7y ago
    See, this is pretty typical of how the Chinese are told about their own government’s abuses in schools and media: “but what about the other guy?!”. It’s just not a valid argument. It serves only to change the topic and justify nationalism.
    - AsyncAwait 7y ago
      I just want OP to be aware that if he wants to vote for somebody like Trump for i.e. his 'stance' on China, it's worth noting that the U.S. doesn't really care, it's just posturing, this is not to say I like what China does here, if they're indeed doing it. It's possible to hold both of these positions i.e. being against the Iraq war and not believing that the U.S. really believes in the propaganda they're putting out on it does not mean you had to like Saddam.
FartyMcFarter 7y ago
> While extracting the liver and kidneys from an executed victim who had been shot in the head and dumped by the side of a road, Tohti made a horrifying discovery. > "I started cutting down the middle and then he started struggling and I knew then that he was still alive, but he was too weak to resist me, " Tohti told The Telegraph. What the actual fuck.
- youareostriches 7y ago
  Harvested Alive (2017): https://www.reddit.com/r/Documentaries/comments/akbaxf/harvested_alive_2017_since_2003_china_has_been/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Documentaries/comments/akbaxf/harve...
- smoyer 7y ago
  Sometimes the only correct response is to cry ... but when you stop, make what you do count. You may not have the power to change the original situation but you can always make someone's day at least a little bit better.
jdietrich 7y ago
This is a textbook thought experiment in utilitarianism, carried to its logical conclusion. Kill one person, save eight. We might not like it, we might consider it abhorrent, it might contravene international human rights law, but we can't argue that it's senseless.
- keymone 7y ago
  Right, but is utilitarianism not senseless? Maximum happiness for majority of population is free heroin distributed and administered by state.
- wsxcde 7y ago
  What you're leaving out is that the one person being killed is not picked randomly from the citizen pool, they are all persecuted minorities. So, a more accurate statement would be that China is murdering one person from a group the communist party doesn't like to save eight from the ethnic group that constitutes the overwhelming majority of the ruling class. That is not utilitarianism, it's just tribalism and xenophobia.
  - jdietrich 7y ago
    Is it completely implausible to believe that people from "a group the communist party doesn't like" are simply less useful to Chinese society than a randomly selected citizen? I'm not trying to defend China here, but it's futile to condemn an action if you have not made a good-faith effort to understand the rationale. China is a collectivist society - the rights of the individual are always secondary to the rights of the whole. We believe that people have a fundamental right to cause trouble, even if that's detrimental to social order; the Chinese Communist Party don't and a substantial proportion of their population agree wholeheartedly. Saying "the Chinese shouldn't do this because it contravenes human rights" is like them saying "the First Amendment is terrible because it undermines social cohesion". It's an argument that seems nonsensical or in bad faith, because it's grounded in a completely alien conceptualisation of the role of the state and the rights of the individual. If you want to make a persuasive argument, you need to address that core ideological difference. Why is your right to freedom of religion more valuable than our collective right to freedom from religious conflict? Why is your right to free speech more valuable than our collective right to social cohesion and stable governance? Why is your right to life more valuable than the right to life of the eight people who your organs could save? Answering those questions is difficult and uncomfortable, but it's fundamentally necessary if you actually want to promote the values of liberal democracy rather than ineffectually condemning a different political culture.
StavrosK 7y ago
Setting aside the persecutions, torture and possible genocide, which are undoubtedly heinous, something perplexes me: Why do we consider it ethical for a state to execute prisoners, but consider harvesting their (now useless) organs to save more lives is ethically abhorrent? I am much more outraged by the fact that they're killing people for political reasons, the fact that they're harvesting their organs afterwards seems comparatively tame to me. I realize that harvesting organs from not-quite-dead prisoners, or killing prisoners just to harvest the organs is extremely unethical, but if someone was executed for a different reason, is it so bad to use their organs? They didn't consent to getting killed either, why are we drawing the line at organ harvesting?
- ilikehurdles 7y ago
  Your premise is false, we don’t consider it ethical for the state to execute prisoners. I’m glad you’re lucky enough to be born in the right place, with the right ethnicity, family name, and religious beliefs. Imagine if you were unlucky enough to get one of those things wrong, and be born to be imprisoned, tortured, and taken apart to be sold for scraps by China.
- ysleepy 7y ago
  It creates an incentive to hand out death sentences instead of lesser more appropriate punishments.
- therealjumbo 7y ago
  Because it creates a conflict of interest in the state. Similarly we don't let the state employ prisoners in any sort of for profit endeavor. Back in the day the British had prisoners move large rocks from one side of the prison yard to the other and then back again. That's brutish but there some logic behind it to keep the state from enjoying the activity.
  - IanCal 7y ago
    > Similarly we don't let the state employ prisoners in any sort of for profit endeavor. Doesn't the US have prisoners working for well under a dollar an hour in places?
devteambravo 7y ago
I was on an operation table, as surgeons cut deep and worked fast, and I cannot imagine what it's like to be one one such surgeon's table when they goal isn't wellbeing. Nightmarish
everybodyknows 7y ago
A friend who traveled widely in China back in the '80s described a busy cornea transplant trade around the prisons in outlying areas. Wait times were typically one day. One day.
brainless 7y ago
1984 is being played out inside this country if this is true. The horror is beyond imagination since this seems state directed/aided. My only hope is this news spreads like wildfire within its boundaries and citizens of China wake up.
- aembleton 7y ago
  What has this got to do with 1984? I don't remember anything about forced organ transplants in there.
  - samschooler 7y ago
    Honestly it takes 1984 a step further. We can’t say because they are harvesting organs it doesn’t have the same themes as 1984. This is terrifying.
    - deleted 7y ago
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- youareostriches 7y ago
  And this wasn’t enough already? Tiananmen Square protest death toll was 10,000: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-42465516 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-42465516 >"Students linked arms but were mown down including soldiers. APCs then ran over bodies time and time again to make 'pie' and remains collected by bulldozer. Remains incinerated and then hosed down drains. "Four wounded girl students begged for their lives but were bayoneted."
hydrox24 7y ago
The report this is referencing is available here[0] The tribunal was setup, for what it is worth, by a campaign group called: "International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China"[1] [0]: https://chinatribunal.com/final-judgement-report/ https://chinatribunal.com/final-judgement-report/ [1]: https://endtransplantabuse.org/ https://endtransplantabuse.org/
- dang 7y ago
  We changed the URL to that from https://www.sciencealert.com/our-worst-fears-about-where-china-s-human-organs-come-from-were-just-confirmed https://www.sciencealert.com/our-worst-fears-about-where-chi....
  - FartyMcFarter 7y ago
    Could you please answer the question in this comment? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20250367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20250367 Thanks!
    - unityByFreedom 7y ago
      It was probably flagged to death and revived by an admin.
RenRav 7y ago
Can't we restrict the flights to China of people that are on organ transplant waiting lists?
- ilikehurdles 7y ago
  HIPAA
  - RenRav 7y ago
    Then I guess there is no real way to stop people from going to China for organ transplants.
rdl 7y ago
There is something brilliant about using a group of people who intentionally keep their organs in the best possible condition (Falun Gong does exercise, avoids alcohol, smoking, and some foods, etc.) as your oppressed-minority-live-organ-banks. OTOH, I think the only reason they were hated was due to being popular and somehow offending or scaring someone in power. They were tolerated or even supported for a long time and then suddenly The Enemy. The Falun Gong repression is probably one of the greatest examples of evil in the world today.
- krn 7y ago
  > I think the only reason they were hated was due to being popular and somehow offending or scaring someone in power. The idea of not being the highest authority to the people is the scariest thing to any authoritarian power. That's why they are closing churches, jailing pastors, and rewriting scripture in China as Christianity’s popularity grows[1]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/13/china-christians-religious-persecution-translation-bible https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/13/china-christia...
  - deleted 7y ago
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- thedudeabides5 7y ago
  This doesn’t help either as cultural context https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Heavenly_Kingdom https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Heavenly_Kingdom
- throwaway2019B 7y ago
  It's incredible the mysticism that outsiders assign to Falun Gong. If Falun Gong were in the West, you'd look at them the same way you look at Scientologists and anti-vaxxers. The entire premise behind Falun Gong is that it cleanses your body of diseases such that you won't need medication. So you had people literally dying from abandoning their medication in favor of Falun Gong exercises while the leader collected fees from giving seminars/selling books on his system. Remove the context of this taking place in the evil country that is China, and all you have left is just another cult leader selling snake oil.
youareostriches 7y ago
Shamefully, my HN account was shadowbanned for posting ethical objections to chinese nationalism on the basis of these atrocities committed by the government merely several months ago.
- whamlastxmas 7y ago
  Hoping for unbiased moderation here is a waste of time.
- dang 7y ago
  I call this class of comment the "linkless martyr". People make grand, self-flattering claims about why they were supposedly banned. Strangely, what they never do is supply links so readers can make up their own minds. Why do you suppose that is? Could it be that we don't ban accounts for "posting ethical objections"?
  - youareostriches 7y ago
    That’s a rather passive aggressive way to ask for a link, isn’t it? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19507288 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19507288 Oh and what do you know, now that comment appears to have been flagged, too! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20249650 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20249650
    - dang 7y ago
      That account wasn't banned. The comment was flagged by users. Your second link also was flagged by users. No moderator did anything there. Perhaps it was flagged for being an overheated, unsubstantiated (and false) claim.
throwaway619 7y ago
This is a controversial subject. It is important to get information from sources that have rigorous fact-checking and a reputation to defend.
- abricot 7y ago
  So, lets err on the side of genocide?
- FartyMcFarter 7y ago
  How about the BBC, is that good enough? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-asia-china-45474277/uighur-exile-describes-life-in-china https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-asia-china-45474277/uigh...
  - portobello 7y ago
    I don't see anything about this topic at that link.
    - FartyMcFarter 7y ago
      Tap the image to hear the account of a Chinese surgeon who was involved in organ harvesting.
  - throwaway619 7y ago
    BBC is absolutely good enough. They have a legally binding corporate governance structure, a team of editors fact-checking the reporters and sources, annual audits from an external team, and a reputation for honest journalism to defend for continued readership. https://www.bbc.com/news/help-41670342 https://www.bbc.com/news/help-41670342 I recommend getting information from sources like the BBC over sources like the "China Tribunal".
alexbresler 7y ago
This is an interesting interview with a well known CCP critic that discusses the history of this program and a bunch of other minimally discussed things. I would encourage people to take the time to watch this. https://youtu.be/nxyVZh_fVVw https://youtu.be/nxyVZh_fVVw
hirundo 7y ago
It's important to realize that this isn't what the Chinese government is capable of, it's what governments are capable of. It can't happen here overnight, but it can happen here. Just look at the otherization and dehumanization increasingly embraced by people across the political spectrum, and dial it up to eleven. This should give people at least sympathy, if not agreement, with gun rights advocates. While private guns can't stop a powerful government from having their way with us, they can at least make it more expensive. Would China be able to do this as quietly and without civil war if the Chinese people had the same number of private guns per capita as the US? Many of us quite reasonably believe that gun rights aren't worth the huge number of gun crimes in this country. Others of us fear state actors even more than individual criminals and feel that the high cost of gun crimes is worth the price. Even if you disagree, stories like this should give you empathy for their argument. If you think it can't happen here, did you think that this country would move in the political direction that it has in the last few years? I didn't. Uncertainty about the social future should translate into humility about the quality of our prognostications ... and fear about how bad it could get, and how fast.
- nightwing 7y ago
  Unfortunately guns alone are not enough, china didn't get this way quietly but after a civil war where socialists won. So the future will not be decided by guns but by the portion of people who value freedom, and understand the importance of keeping the government small. Paradoxically this also requires a government providing some social services, because the people who decide that they do not have anything to lose are very dangerous for the society as a whole. (Note this is not an argument against gun ownership, just an argument for better education and having more children.)
QuickToBan 7y ago
It's simply the absence of an opt-out system that leads to either organ shortages or forced donations. An opt-out system fixes all of this immediately.
- hereiskkb 7y ago
  Opt-out system fixes the forced extraction of organs from dissidents and prisoners? Please, do explain how?
  - RenRav 7y ago
    Maybe he meant it fixes shortages and reduces waiting lists, which reduces demand for China's prisoner organs.
  - QuickToBan 7y ago
    An opt-out system means that anyone (not limited to Falun Gong and other cults) who is already dead will potentially have their organs harvested except if they registered in a national opt-out registry while they were alive. Organs will then be in such abundance that no one will have to be killed for them as they are now. This will be at no cost to the living. It requires a cultural shift.
    - hereiskkb 7y ago
      It's unlikely that the supply-demand ratio of organs will be balanced anytime soon, or if ever we will have greater supply than demand. An organ donation registry works only if there is governmental support for maintaining and respecting the wishes of those that sign-up in the registry, whether opting out or opting in. In China's case, the government has time and again shown disregard for the rights and wishes of dissidents and those that the party classifies as threat. And as such, there is slim hope of any respect shown towards their wishes and decisions. So, I am not really sure such a system will solve anything. At least till the time the Government stance remains as it is today.
      - 7y ago
yzlnew 7y ago
What worried me is that actually someone out there believe in this shit.
- hereiskkb 7y ago
  Provide contradicting evidence for your assertion.
- Ambele 7y ago
  We can only ask for the UN or another entity to investigate this and draw a rightful conclusion. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty and not the reverse. We won't know until after an investigation occurs. This post may draw up enough of a report to request that an investigation takes place.
yretresw 7y ago
Because the russian boogeyman is so last year, let's invent a new one.
- hereiskkb 7y ago
  You lack a basic understanding of what the term 'invent' is. There are evidential documents to support the findings.
sam_lowry_ 7y ago
«hundreds of Chinese scientific papers might be compromised due to their reliance upon thousands of unethically sourced organs.» This is like saying that theses people died or were killed, and now some dumbsters will take away even the slightest hope that their death was somehow useful for the rest of us. If I were dying in a concentration camp from the experiments of Doctor Mengele, knowing that my death would contribute to the progress of the science would have been a consolation for me.
- Bakary 7y ago
  That's an interesting perspective, but faced with an immediate painful death I doubt science would be on your mind. Not to mention that it's not known if the research obtained is useful at all. There's already a serious crisis in Chinese science in terms of falsified results.
  - sam_lowry_ 7y ago
    I bet you watched Tim Cook's commencement address, applauded the closing sentence "...you can’t take it with you. You’re going to have to pass it on." but did not realize the scope of it.
    - Bakary 7y ago
      If it helps, I am certainly in favor of opt-out organ donation. I don't hold religious beliefs. I think you are applying utilitarianism to a point where it is no longer useful. Sure, I guess if a dissident is executed we might as well make good use of it, right? But this misses the forest for the trees. An ethical climate like this makes for a worse society overall, since people will naturally be inclined to do worse things out of their own subjective interpretation of utilitarian value. In a place where people try to aim for abstract and idealistic moral values, you paradoxically have a situation where life gets easier as there is an additional mental block against poor incentive cycles such as arresting more dissidents and destroying more families to have more organs. There's a reason why abstract moral frameworks like abrahamic religion have enjoyed a good evolutionary run. Ultimately calculating utility in a helpful way is an almost impossible task for a group humans with different aims. That's why the satisfaction of coming up with edgy utilitarian conclusions is in fact a red herring.
apo 7y ago
> In its "unavoidable" final conclusion, the China Tribunal found forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale, primarily sourcing body parts from detained Falun Gong practitioners, and possibly also an ethnic minority called the Uyghurs (although other groups are also targeted). Oddly enough Falun Gong enjoyed approval from the Chinese Government in the early 90s: > According to David Ownby, Professor of History and Director of the Center for East Asian Studies at the Université de Montréal, Li became an "instant star of the qigong movement",[119] and Falun Gong was embraced by the government as an effective means of lowering health care costs, promoting Chinese culture, and improving public morality. In December 1992, for instance, Li and several Falun Gong students participated in the Asian Health Expo in Beijing, where he reportedly "received the most praise [of any qigong school] at the fair, and achieved very good therapeutic results", according to the fair's organizer.[15] The event helped cement Li's popularity, and journalistic reports of Falun Gong's healing powers spread.[15][20] In 1993, a publication of the Ministry of Public Security praised Li for "promoting the traditional crime-fighting virtues of the Chinese people, in safeguarding social order and security, and in promoting rectitude in society." That changed when the organization refused to become more closely aligned with the regime: > In 1995, Chinese authorities began looking to Falun Gong to solidify its organizational structure and ties to the party-state.[53] Li was approached by the Chinese National Sports Committee, Ministry of Public Health, and China Qigong Science Research Association (CQRS) to jointly establish a Falun Gong association. Li declined the offer. The same year, the CQRS issued a new regulation mandating that all qigong denominations establish a Communist Party branch. Li again refused. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong
_lancen 7y ago
I have no way of knowing if this particularly is true. I am Chinese myself and lived overseas for most of my life, a year or so ago I backpacked around Xinjiang so I can certainly attest to the police state over there. When I returned from Xinjiang, I thought about it a lot and the only conclusion I could come to in the end is that human beings in aggregate are for the most part scum and cowards. It's conclusion that gives me no hope in the future but I cannot avoid it. Taking into account the scale but not the novelty (genocide/ethnic cleansing as a form of statecraft, in fact I am reminded of Japanese experiments on Chinese in WW2, the irony of the oppressed eventually becoming the oppressor). I have to conclude that given the right circumstances, anyone can do just about anything. It takes constant vigilance and self-courage to be a consistently good person, most of us in the developed west have just never been put into a situation where we are compelled to do something real shitty.
- arcticbull 7y ago
  > When I returned from Xinjiang, I thought about it a lot and the only conclusion I could come to in the end is that human beings in aggregate are for the most part scum and cowards. It's conclusion that gives me no hope in the future but I cannot avoid it. I also spent time there, and I don’t think that’s a fair conclusion at all. Most people aren’t cowards and scum, most people follow and focus their energies on their survival and that of their kin. The less they have in terms of wealth the less time and head space they can devote to anything else. We’ve seen here on HN studies that show poverty changes the way you think. Of the few that lead, there are good and there are bad. However I think the leaders and followers tend to be disjoint sets and it’s unfair to project the morality of one onto the other. It neglects the realities of human behavior. I think you’re inferring some broader mission or value statement that doesn’t exist from largely self serving small scale actions.
- baybal2 7y ago
  > I have to conclude that given the right circumstances, anyone can do just about anything. It takes constant vigilance and self-courage to be a consistently good person, most of us in the developed west have just never been put into a situation where we are compelled to do something real shitty. I can't do anything but to strongly agree with you on this point. A lot of discourse for which I run into trouble on HN (and in real life as well...) is me tryint to correct somebody's wrongs, just to see somebody popup with "calm down man", "do not disturb peace", "do not make it a problem", " there is nobody right or wrong" I can say the West has this problem, and it comes from attitudes of people higher up on social ladder. This unreadiness to be forceful in confronting wrongs is: 1. totally disgusting; 2. errodes things that make society a society; 3. will eventually cost dearly to the West
carapace 7y ago
"I owe you my life." Since time out of mind, the ultimate, unpayable, debt. "I owe you my life." Hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people who have received life-saving organs owe their lives, their very lives, to their donors. "I owe you my life."
FartyMcFarter 7y ago
Why did this article disappear so quickly from the front-page? It got 206 points in 2 hours, which is a lot better than most front page articles...
appleflaxen 7y ago
chinese doctors and scientists should be banned from international meetings until this stops.
echaozh 7y ago
The page itself and both of the "short form"/"summary" reports downloadable are vacant claims and introduction of the organization and of Falun Gong. After years of propaganda, I don't believe there still are so many Falun Gong followers in Mainland, let alone to have their organs harvested. Yes, most of us Chinese Mainlanders are fucking Atheists. And even if most of us more or less believe in karma and reincarnation and other forms of buddaism, Falun Gong is vastly different, especially as I know it, it's not compatible with going to buddist temples.
- echaozh 7y ago
  Basically, if your search Google for 法轮大法/Falun Dafa and 寺庙/buddist temple, you will see entries posted and reposted with title "寺庙修行半辈子，不如念念法轮大法好"[1][2]/"Reading Falun Dafa for a while is better than practicing buddism in a temple for half of your life". I don't think it's fair or honest to make such claims to convert buddists. And I think it may lead to backfire from the buddist religious circle. [1]https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=8&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjlnPSlyP7iAhVRnp4KHaMrCLQQFjAHegQICBAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fhongzhi.li%2Fknowflg%2F1672.html&usg=AOvVaw1NByfjBq4nL7XRPHWAPLKU https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c... [2]https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=22&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjVlZHIyP7iAhUS7J4KHTpfC9o4FBAWMAF6BAgBEAE&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bannedbook.org%2Fbnews%2Fhealth%2F20171213%2F826109.html&usg=AOvVaw3fqEnbLZkZahNJl7tVNDaj https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

238 points by Scotrix 7y ago

If you're going to potentially violate human rights and set up incentives to murder people for profit, saving lives like this is the best reason to do it. The long waiting lists for organs in the US show that our choice is a tradeoff, not a best practice. Insofar as our system is caused by squeamishness and the desire to feel morally pure, it is harming people unnecessarily too.

MrAlex94 7y ago
> it. The long waiting lists for organs in the US show that our choice is a tradeoff, not a best practice. Insofar as our system is caused by squeamishness and the desire to feel morally pure, it is harming people unnecessarily too. Apologies if I am misunderstanding, but are you insinuating that forced harvesting of organs is “best practice”?
- LocalH 7y ago
  I didn't get that reading at all. The US medical system shows very well that we don't always have "best practice" in mind when it comes to health care.
- Tade0 7y ago
  Or should even be considered "a practice" at all for that matter.
- Noumenon72 7y ago
  Nope, neither is an unambiguous, strictly better practice. From the Chinese side I would be writing "The scandals where officials have given the death penalty just so they can get the organs show that our choice is a tradeoff, not a best practice. Insofar as our system gives incentives to harvest organs instead of keeping people alive, it is harming people unnecessarily too."
fsloth 7y ago
A life saved is not sufficient to counter a murder.
- sam_lowry_ 7y ago
  Some countries implement an opt-out system. If you do not want your body to be reused after you die, you have to declare it in advance. This is hugely beneficial for patients. Now, even this hugely emotional article does not talk about murder.
  - Nextgrid 7y ago
    It’s one thing to harvest organs if the patient dies of accidents/natural causes, and personally I am in favour of the opt-out system. It’s a whole other thing of killing the patient on purpose to harvest their organs.
    - sam_lowry_ 7y ago
      At least several thousand people are executed in China annually. Can their bodies be used?
      - Nextgrid 7y ago
        Wouldn’t it be worth investigating why they are executed? Given this organ trade is going on I wouldn’t be surprised if their “justice” system is being literally trigger-happy because they benefit from the resulting organs being made available.
      - fsloth 7y ago
        Executed in a systen where law is not supposed to be impartial but only a tool among many to upkeep the states power. I don't think humans where worth much after death before modern organ transplantation. State arbiter gets more reasons to less leniency when there is a profit to be had from the execution. In an already 'unfair' system adding profit motive to executions can only worsen the humanitarian result.
dougmwne 7y ago
This is possibly the most psychopathic thing I've ever read. It belongs on https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitHNSays/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitHNSays/
- Noumenon72 7y ago
  The article as I understood it said: 1. China executes a lot of Falun Gong and Uyghurs. We consider this genocide. 2. China takes their organs after they're dead without asking. If you are reading me as "it's good to do (1) to get (2)", that would be very psychopathic of me. I didn't mean to say that. What I had done while reading was entirely discard everything in the article about (1) because it was breathless and wasn't performed in order to get the organs. Then I attempted to make a comment on (2). Even (2) by itself is questionable, and I know I could be judged just for my opinion on that. But I didn't mean to get everyone riled up. Sorry.
LocalH 7y ago
Not sure why this is being downvoted. It may be a macabre way of looking at it, but it is a valid viewpoint. Poster didn't specify whether they actually felt that way. I agree, in the following sense. A different way to put it - if human rights are to be violated, there better be a damn noble reason for it.
- monkeyodeath 7y ago
  It's a point of view that makes no sense. Murdering one person to save another is not "noble". It negates the entire point of "human rights" in the first place. You might as well suggest that people who need organs should be able to kill a random person on the street to get them.
  - LocalH 7y ago
    I think the OP was merely opining that they'd rather see this, than people dying for pure profit motive. I know that, were I provided a choice between killing someone for forced organ donation that could potentially save lives, versus killing someone for greed, profit, or punishment, with no way to say "no", I'd choose the former. Making it clear, however, that I'd rather never have to make that choice in the first place.
    - monkeyodeath 7y ago
      I see where you're coming from. I guess to me, it makes no moral difference. The means corrupt the end. The Nazis managed to get some useful science out of the Jews during the Holocaust, but it's hard to see that as a silver lining. I think that if you're at the level of making those kinds of choices, you're already living in hell.
      - LocalH 7y ago
        I'd agree there. I don't think humans are at a point (nor will they ever be at a point) where they're capable of making such decisions without corruption clouding things.
monkeyodeath 7y ago
Not that it makes a moral difference, but the victims aren't all hardened criminals. They are political dissidents, people who follow the wrong religion, and racial minorities. Most of the greatest mass atrocities in world history have been framed as a "tradeoff". Destroying some lives to save others isn't a functioning society, it's a living nightmare.
- LocalH 7y ago
  Honestly, if we were even going to begin to entertain any notions even slightly related to this, I'd want to suggest that if we insist on having the death penalty as a punishment, then those who are put to death should, if suitable, become automatic organ donors.
  - arkitaip 7y ago
    Absolutely not. If anything their bodies should be protected from any kind of harvesting as to not incentivize the state from handing out death penalties.
    - LocalH 7y ago
      I believe the death penalty should be abolished anyway. But, disregarding the complexity of the implementation of such a policy, if the government is in the business of ending people's lives, I'd rather it be done to directly help people, instead of in a punitive fashion. If you think about it, the death penalty isn't really a punishment - some people commit heinous crimes specifically so they can be killed.
      - thwarted 7y ago
        "Suicide by Justice" doesn't seem like it would be or is a popular enough form of suicide to warrant what you're suggesting. Your logic doesn't make much sense.
  - sdwa 7y ago
    Nah that's totally ridiculous. Death is as serious a punishment as possible and can never be appealed once delivered, there should never be any incentives to deliver the death sentence besides seeing that justice is done.
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HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago

While stopping short of concluding that the killing and forced organ removal of these peoples constitutes genocide in its legal definition (due to a lack of proof of actual intent to commit genocide), the panel nonetheless condemned the forced organ removals as a crime against humanity and an act of "unmatched wickedness". This article made me shiver. How did China get away with this for so long?

lotsofpulp 7y ago
>How did China get away with this for so long? Because no other nation(s) is willing and able to engage in military conflict with China to stop it.
- FartyMcFarter 7y ago
  Other nations could do less drastic things though. Sanctions would be an example.
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    But they’re not willing to give up access to cheap labor and environmental standards for their manufacturing and waste removal desires.
    - derefr 7y ago
      A strange thought: maybe the somewhat-global trend among Western powers toward political parties attempting to foment a climate of populist nationalism, is really an attempt to make people more willing to sacrifice profit margins to move manufacturing “back home”, such that China can actually be faced on level ground. I feel like our politicians have maybe decided that voters are too smart for a sudden switch to “China bad, Chinese people bad, hate them, cut ties with them” rhetoric (as has usually historically happened in the run-up to a declaration of war), so instead they’ve just dropped the specific context of who is supposed to be bad, and are kind of vague-polemic-ing about all foreigners instead, in the hopes that that’ll stir up at least some of the same effects that historical politicians were taking advantage of.

everybodyknows 7y ago

Shortcut link to officers of the organization: https://chinatribunal.com/who-we-are/ https://chinatribunal.com/who-we-are/

Merrill 7y ago
The China Tribunal has been initiated by the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC), an international not for profit organisation, with headquarters in Australia and National Committees in the UK, USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. ETAC is a coalition of lawyers, academics, ethicists, medical professionals, researchers and human rights advocates dedicated to ending forced organ harvesting (a form of organ trafficking) in China. https://chinatribunal.com/about-etac/ https://chinatribunal.com/about-etac/ Susie Hughes Executive Director, Co-Founder https://www.linkedin.com/in/susie-hughes-904288119/?originalSubdomain=au https://www.linkedin.com/in/susie-hughes-904288119/?original...

optimalsolver 7y ago

Has anyone here read Larry Niven's Gift From Earth? This is literally the plot (but on another planet).

ralphstodomingo 7y ago

Truly jarring if this is true. The systematic persecution of and violence against political opposition is one thing, the oppressive surveillance another, but I think forced organ harvest (especially on living people!) crosses a line. What can we do?

joaomacp 7y ago
Vote anti-China in the next elections, speak to your representatives.
fwsgonzo 7y ago
Lines are crossed all the time. Makes me think of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window Suddenly now the concentration camps are the lesser evil of stealing organs from political enemies.

bayesian_horse 7y ago

I have read about the possibility of large-scale harvesting of organs from prisoners for a few months now. First thing to note about this particular article is that "The China Tribunal" has no formal or legal standing, it is basically a volunteer organization trying to collect evidence. When they say "Worst Fears [...] Were Just confirmed" they are at best misleading. There has been a notable dearth of reporting by traditional journalistic media about this topic, and so I am still somewhat skeptical. The evidence presented so far is not as conclusive as with the Uyghur suppression. The practice described in the article would undoubtedly be a crime against Humanity, and among the biggest in history. But I can't tell right now if the process of its discovery is just slow-moving or if there is just nothing that big to discover. I'd appreciate any pointers to more information either way.

seanmcdirmid 7y ago
The Chinese government itself has admitted that this was done in the past but they promised to no longer allow it to happen...on multiple occasions. That China did this isn’t really in doubt, the argument is only about whether they still do it. The central government has a hard time getting rid of this practice because they aren’t as omnipotent as they appear, there is a lot of vested interests that localities continue the practice. Given the very low percentage of organ donors in Chinese culture, you’ll know they’ve stopped harvesting organs when their turn around time for organ transplants goes up by a lot.
- rdl 7y ago
  Also the "we can get you organs in a day, give us the specific requirements..." is a pretty serious red flag even if there's a high normal donation rate.
  - bayesian_horse 7y ago
    Yes, I would agree there. Though that might also be a sign of an opt-out donor policy. Also, the particular crime charged here is that not only are organs harvested from prisoners / execution victims, but prisoners are specifically killed in order to harvest their organs, including a pre-execution check for histocompatibility. There is a distinction to be made between small scale criminal behavior on the part of the hospitals and prisons, and a large-scale state-sanctioned practice of illicit organ harvesting.

jtdev 7y ago

A hard line stance on China’s human rights abuses, currency and trade manipulation, and intellectual property theft will be a top requirement for my support of 2020 US presidential candidates.

xenocyon 7y ago
It's weird to speak of literal organ harvesting and the legal fiction (admittedly, an arguably useful fiction) of intellectual "property" in the same sentence. One of these things is not like the other.
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AsyncAwait 7y ago
While I'd imagine you'd ignore U.S. abuses and provocations, (Iran?), I imagine? Is China worse than Saudi Arabia for example? Because I can't imagine U.S. speaking strongly against KSA, can you? The U.S. doesn't really care about human rights, or its own abuse of them, (was any top official prosecuted for Iraq?), so you'd be voting for posturing.
- ilikehurdles 7y ago
  See, this is pretty typical of how the Chinese are told about their own government’s abuses in schools and media: “but what about the other guy?!”. It’s just not a valid argument. It serves only to change the topic and justify nationalism.
  - AsyncAwait 7y ago
    I just want OP to be aware that if he wants to vote for somebody like Trump for i.e. his 'stance' on China, it's worth noting that the U.S. doesn't really care, it's just posturing, this is not to say I like what China does here, if they're indeed doing it. It's possible to hold both of these positions i.e. being against the Iraq war and not believing that the U.S. really believes in the propaganda they're putting out on it does not mean you had to like Saddam.

FartyMcFarter 7y ago

> While extracting the liver and kidneys from an executed victim who had been shot in the head and dumped by the side of a road, Tohti made a horrifying discovery. > "I started cutting down the middle and then he started struggling and I knew then that he was still alive, but he was too weak to resist me, " Tohti told The Telegraph. What the actual fuck.

youareostriches 7y ago
Harvested Alive (2017): https://www.reddit.com/r/Documentaries/comments/akbaxf/harvested_alive_2017_since_2003_china_has_been/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Documentaries/comments/akbaxf/harve...
smoyer 7y ago
Sometimes the only correct response is to cry ... but when you stop, make what you do count. You may not have the power to change the original situation but you can always make someone's day at least a little bit better.

jdietrich 7y ago

This is a textbook thought experiment in utilitarianism, carried to its logical conclusion. Kill one person, save eight. We might not like it, we might consider it abhorrent, it might contravene international human rights law, but we can't argue that it's senseless.

keymone 7y ago
Right, but is utilitarianism not senseless? Maximum happiness for majority of population is free heroin distributed and administered by state.
wsxcde 7y ago
What you're leaving out is that the one person being killed is not picked randomly from the citizen pool, they are all persecuted minorities. So, a more accurate statement would be that China is murdering one person from a group the communist party doesn't like to save eight from the ethnic group that constitutes the overwhelming majority of the ruling class. That is not utilitarianism, it's just tribalism and xenophobia.
- jdietrich 7y ago
  Is it completely implausible to believe that people from "a group the communist party doesn't like" are simply less useful to Chinese society than a randomly selected citizen? I'm not trying to defend China here, but it's futile to condemn an action if you have not made a good-faith effort to understand the rationale. China is a collectivist society - the rights of the individual are always secondary to the rights of the whole. We believe that people have a fundamental right to cause trouble, even if that's detrimental to social order; the Chinese Communist Party don't and a substantial proportion of their population agree wholeheartedly. Saying "the Chinese shouldn't do this because it contravenes human rights" is like them saying "the First Amendment is terrible because it undermines social cohesion". It's an argument that seems nonsensical or in bad faith, because it's grounded in a completely alien conceptualisation of the role of the state and the rights of the individual. If you want to make a persuasive argument, you need to address that core ideological difference. Why is your right to freedom of religion more valuable than our collective right to freedom from religious conflict? Why is your right to free speech more valuable than our collective right to social cohesion and stable governance? Why is your right to life more valuable than the right to life of the eight people who your organs could save? Answering those questions is difficult and uncomfortable, but it's fundamentally necessary if you actually want to promote the values of liberal democracy rather than ineffectually condemning a different political culture.

StavrosK 7y ago

Setting aside the persecutions, torture and possible genocide, which are undoubtedly heinous, something perplexes me: Why do we consider it ethical for a state to execute prisoners, but consider harvesting their (now useless) organs to save more lives is ethically abhorrent? I am much more outraged by the fact that they're killing people for political reasons, the fact that they're harvesting their organs afterwards seems comparatively tame to me. I realize that harvesting organs from not-quite-dead prisoners, or killing prisoners just to harvest the organs is extremely unethical, but if someone was executed for a different reason, is it so bad to use their organs? They didn't consent to getting killed either, why are we drawing the line at organ harvesting?

ilikehurdles 7y ago
Your premise is false, we don’t consider it ethical for the state to execute prisoners. I’m glad you’re lucky enough to be born in the right place, with the right ethnicity, family name, and religious beliefs. Imagine if you were unlucky enough to get one of those things wrong, and be born to be imprisoned, tortured, and taken apart to be sold for scraps by China.
ysleepy 7y ago
It creates an incentive to hand out death sentences instead of lesser more appropriate punishments.
therealjumbo 7y ago
Because it creates a conflict of interest in the state. Similarly we don't let the state employ prisoners in any sort of for profit endeavor. Back in the day the British had prisoners move large rocks from one side of the prison yard to the other and then back again. That's brutish but there some logic behind it to keep the state from enjoying the activity.
- IanCal 7y ago
  > Similarly we don't let the state employ prisoners in any sort of for profit endeavor. Doesn't the US have prisoners working for well under a dollar an hour in places?

devteambravo 7y ago

I was on an operation table, as surgeons cut deep and worked fast, and I cannot imagine what it's like to be one one such surgeon's table when they goal isn't wellbeing. Nightmarish

everybodyknows 7y ago

A friend who traveled widely in China back in the '80s described a busy cornea transplant trade around the prisons in outlying areas. Wait times were typically one day. One day.

brainless 7y ago

1984 is being played out inside this country if this is true. The horror is beyond imagination since this seems state directed/aided. My only hope is this news spreads like wildfire within its boundaries and citizens of China wake up.

aembleton 7y ago
What has this got to do with 1984? I don't remember anything about forced organ transplants in there.
- samschooler 7y ago
  Honestly it takes 1984 a step further. We can’t say because they are harvesting organs it doesn’t have the same themes as 1984. This is terrifying.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
youareostriches 7y ago
And this wasn’t enough already? Tiananmen Square protest death toll was 10,000: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-42465516 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-42465516 >"Students linked arms but were mown down including soldiers. APCs then ran over bodies time and time again to make 'pie' and remains collected by bulldozer. Remains incinerated and then hosed down drains. "Four wounded girl students begged for their lives but were bayoneted."

hydrox24 7y ago

The report this is referencing is available here[0] The tribunal was setup, for what it is worth, by a campaign group called: "International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China"[1] [0]: https://chinatribunal.com/final-judgement-report/ https://chinatribunal.com/final-judgement-report/ [1]: https://endtransplantabuse.org/ https://endtransplantabuse.org/

dang 7y ago
We changed the URL to that from https://www.sciencealert.com/our-worst-fears-about-where-china-s-human-organs-come-from-were-just-confirmed https://www.sciencealert.com/our-worst-fears-about-where-chi....
- FartyMcFarter 7y ago
  Could you please answer the question in this comment? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20250367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20250367 Thanks!
  - unityByFreedom 7y ago
    It was probably flagged to death and revived by an admin.

RenRav 7y ago

Can't we restrict the flights to China of people that are on organ transplant waiting lists?

ilikehurdles 7y ago
HIPAA
- RenRav 7y ago
  Then I guess there is no real way to stop people from going to China for organ transplants.

rdl 7y ago

There is something brilliant about using a group of people who intentionally keep their organs in the best possible condition (Falun Gong does exercise, avoids alcohol, smoking, and some foods, etc.) as your oppressed-minority-live-organ-banks. OTOH, I think the only reason they were hated was due to being popular and somehow offending or scaring someone in power. They were tolerated or even supported for a long time and then suddenly The Enemy. The Falun Gong repression is probably one of the greatest examples of evil in the world today.

krn 7y ago
> I think the only reason they were hated was due to being popular and somehow offending or scaring someone in power. The idea of not being the highest authority to the people is the scariest thing to any authoritarian power. That's why they are closing churches, jailing pastors, and rewriting scripture in China as Christianity’s popularity grows[1]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/13/china-christians-religious-persecution-translation-bible https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/13/china-christia...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
thedudeabides5 7y ago
This doesn’t help either as cultural context https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Heavenly_Kingdom https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Heavenly_Kingdom
throwaway2019B 7y ago
It's incredible the mysticism that outsiders assign to Falun Gong. If Falun Gong were in the West, you'd look at them the same way you look at Scientologists and anti-vaxxers. The entire premise behind Falun Gong is that it cleanses your body of diseases such that you won't need medication. So you had people literally dying from abandoning their medication in favor of Falun Gong exercises while the leader collected fees from giving seminars/selling books on his system. Remove the context of this taking place in the evil country that is China, and all you have left is just another cult leader selling snake oil.

youareostriches 7y ago

Shamefully, my HN account was shadowbanned for posting ethical objections to chinese nationalism on the basis of these atrocities committed by the government merely several months ago.

whamlastxmas 7y ago
Hoping for unbiased moderation here is a waste of time.
dang 7y ago
I call this class of comment the "linkless martyr". People make grand, self-flattering claims about why they were supposedly banned. Strangely, what they never do is supply links so readers can make up their own minds. Why do you suppose that is? Could it be that we don't ban accounts for "posting ethical objections"?
- youareostriches 7y ago
  That’s a rather passive aggressive way to ask for a link, isn’t it? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19507288 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19507288 Oh and what do you know, now that comment appears to have been flagged, too! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20249650 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20249650
  - dang 7y ago
    That account wasn't banned. The comment was flagged by users. Your second link also was flagged by users. No moderator did anything there. Perhaps it was flagged for being an overheated, unsubstantiated (and false) claim.

throwaway619 7y ago

This is a controversial subject. It is important to get information from sources that have rigorous fact-checking and a reputation to defend.

abricot 7y ago
So, lets err on the side of genocide?
FartyMcFarter 7y ago
How about the BBC, is that good enough? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-asia-china-45474277/uighur-exile-describes-life-in-china https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-asia-china-45474277/uigh...
- portobello 7y ago
  I don't see anything about this topic at that link.
  - FartyMcFarter 7y ago
    Tap the image to hear the account of a Chinese surgeon who was involved in organ harvesting.
- throwaway619 7y ago
  BBC is absolutely good enough. They have a legally binding corporate governance structure, a team of editors fact-checking the reporters and sources, annual audits from an external team, and a reputation for honest journalism to defend for continued readership. https://www.bbc.com/news/help-41670342 https://www.bbc.com/news/help-41670342 I recommend getting information from sources like the BBC over sources like the "China Tribunal".

alexbresler 7y ago

This is an interesting interview with a well known CCP critic that discusses the history of this program and a bunch of other minimally discussed things. I would encourage people to take the time to watch this. https://youtu.be/nxyVZh_fVVw https://youtu.be/nxyVZh_fVVw

hirundo 7y ago

It's important to realize that this isn't what the Chinese government is capable of, it's what governments are capable of. It can't happen here overnight, but it can happen here. Just look at the otherization and dehumanization increasingly embraced by people across the political spectrum, and dial it up to eleven. This should give people at least sympathy, if not agreement, with gun rights advocates. While private guns can't stop a powerful government from having their way with us, they can at least make it more expensive. Would China be able to do this as quietly and without civil war if the Chinese people had the same number of private guns per capita as the US? Many of us quite reasonably believe that gun rights aren't worth the huge number of gun crimes in this country. Others of us fear state actors even more than individual criminals and feel that the high cost of gun crimes is worth the price. Even if you disagree, stories like this should give you empathy for their argument. If you think it can't happen here, did you think that this country would move in the political direction that it has in the last few years? I didn't. Uncertainty about the social future should translate into humility about the quality of our prognostications ... and fear about how bad it could get, and how fast.

nightwing 7y ago
Unfortunately guns alone are not enough, china didn't get this way quietly but after a civil war where socialists won. So the future will not be decided by guns but by the portion of people who value freedom, and understand the importance of keeping the government small. Paradoxically this also requires a government providing some social services, because the people who decide that they do not have anything to lose are very dangerous for the society as a whole. (Note this is not an argument against gun ownership, just an argument for better education and having more children.)

QuickToBan 7y ago

It's simply the absence of an opt-out system that leads to either organ shortages or forced donations. An opt-out system fixes all of this immediately.

hereiskkb 7y ago
Opt-out system fixes the forced extraction of organs from dissidents and prisoners? Please, do explain how?
- RenRav 7y ago
  Maybe he meant it fixes shortages and reduces waiting lists, which reduces demand for China's prisoner organs.
- QuickToBan 7y ago
  An opt-out system means that anyone (not limited to Falun Gong and other cults) who is already dead will potentially have their organs harvested except if they registered in a national opt-out registry while they were alive. Organs will then be in such abundance that no one will have to be killed for them as they are now. This will be at no cost to the living. It requires a cultural shift.
  - hereiskkb 7y ago
    It's unlikely that the supply-demand ratio of organs will be balanced anytime soon, or if ever we will have greater supply than demand. An organ donation registry works only if there is governmental support for maintaining and respecting the wishes of those that sign-up in the registry, whether opting out or opting in. In China's case, the government has time and again shown disregard for the rights and wishes of dissidents and those that the party classifies as threat. And as such, there is slim hope of any respect shown towards their wishes and decisions. So, I am not really sure such a system will solve anything. At least till the time the Government stance remains as it is today.
    - 7y ago

yzlnew 7y ago

What worried me is that actually someone out there believe in this shit.

hereiskkb 7y ago
Provide contradicting evidence for your assertion.
Ambele 7y ago
We can only ask for the UN or another entity to investigate this and draw a rightful conclusion. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty and not the reverse. We won't know until after an investigation occurs. This post may draw up enough of a report to request that an investigation takes place.

yretresw 7y ago

Because the russian boogeyman is so last year, let's invent a new one.

hereiskkb 7y ago
You lack a basic understanding of what the term 'invent' is. There are evidential documents to support the findings.

sam_lowry_ 7y ago

«hundreds of Chinese scientific papers might be compromised due to their reliance upon thousands of unethically sourced organs.» This is like saying that theses people died or were killed, and now some dumbsters will take away even the slightest hope that their death was somehow useful for the rest of us. If I were dying in a concentration camp from the experiments of Doctor Mengele, knowing that my death would contribute to the progress of the science would have been a consolation for me.

Bakary 7y ago
That's an interesting perspective, but faced with an immediate painful death I doubt science would be on your mind. Not to mention that it's not known if the research obtained is useful at all. There's already a serious crisis in Chinese science in terms of falsified results.
- sam_lowry_ 7y ago
  I bet you watched Tim Cook's commencement address, applauded the closing sentence "...you can’t take it with you. You’re going to have to pass it on." but did not realize the scope of it.
  - Bakary 7y ago
    If it helps, I am certainly in favor of opt-out organ donation. I don't hold religious beliefs. I think you are applying utilitarianism to a point where it is no longer useful. Sure, I guess if a dissident is executed we might as well make good use of it, right? But this misses the forest for the trees. An ethical climate like this makes for a worse society overall, since people will naturally be inclined to do worse things out of their own subjective interpretation of utilitarian value. In a place where people try to aim for abstract and idealistic moral values, you paradoxically have a situation where life gets easier as there is an additional mental block against poor incentive cycles such as arresting more dissidents and destroying more families to have more organs. There's a reason why abstract moral frameworks like abrahamic religion have enjoyed a good evolutionary run. Ultimately calculating utility in a helpful way is an almost impossible task for a group humans with different aims. That's why the satisfaction of coming up with edgy utilitarian conclusions is in fact a red herring.

apo 7y ago

> In its "unavoidable" final conclusion, the China Tribunal found forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale, primarily sourcing body parts from detained Falun Gong practitioners, and possibly also an ethnic minority called the Uyghurs (although other groups are also targeted). Oddly enough Falun Gong enjoyed approval from the Chinese Government in the early 90s: > According to David Ownby, Professor of History and Director of the Center for East Asian Studies at the Université de Montréal, Li became an "instant star of the qigong movement",[119] and Falun Gong was embraced by the government as an effective means of lowering health care costs, promoting Chinese culture, and improving public morality. In December 1992, for instance, Li and several Falun Gong students participated in the Asian Health Expo in Beijing, where he reportedly "received the most praise [of any qigong school] at the fair, and achieved very good therapeutic results", according to the fair's organizer.[15] The event helped cement Li's popularity, and journalistic reports of Falun Gong's healing powers spread.[15][20] In 1993, a publication of the Ministry of Public Security praised Li for "promoting the traditional crime-fighting virtues of the Chinese people, in safeguarding social order and security, and in promoting rectitude in society." That changed when the organization refused to become more closely aligned with the regime: > In 1995, Chinese authorities began looking to Falun Gong to solidify its organizational structure and ties to the party-state.[53] Li was approached by the Chinese National Sports Committee, Ministry of Public Health, and China Qigong Science Research Association (CQRS) to jointly establish a Falun Gong association. Li declined the offer. The same year, the CQRS issued a new regulation mandating that all qigong denominations establish a Communist Party branch. Li again refused. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong

_lancen 7y ago

I have no way of knowing if this particularly is true. I am Chinese myself and lived overseas for most of my life, a year or so ago I backpacked around Xinjiang so I can certainly attest to the police state over there. When I returned from Xinjiang, I thought about it a lot and the only conclusion I could come to in the end is that human beings in aggregate are for the most part scum and cowards. It's conclusion that gives me no hope in the future but I cannot avoid it. Taking into account the scale but not the novelty (genocide/ethnic cleansing as a form of statecraft, in fact I am reminded of Japanese experiments on Chinese in WW2, the irony of the oppressed eventually becoming the oppressor). I have to conclude that given the right circumstances, anyone can do just about anything. It takes constant vigilance and self-courage to be a consistently good person, most of us in the developed west have just never been put into a situation where we are compelled to do something real shitty.

arcticbull 7y ago
> When I returned from Xinjiang, I thought about it a lot and the only conclusion I could come to in the end is that human beings in aggregate are for the most part scum and cowards. It's conclusion that gives me no hope in the future but I cannot avoid it. I also spent time there, and I don’t think that’s a fair conclusion at all. Most people aren’t cowards and scum, most people follow and focus their energies on their survival and that of their kin. The less they have in terms of wealth the less time and head space they can devote to anything else. We’ve seen here on HN studies that show poverty changes the way you think. Of the few that lead, there are good and there are bad. However I think the leaders and followers tend to be disjoint sets and it’s unfair to project the morality of one onto the other. It neglects the realities of human behavior. I think you’re inferring some broader mission or value statement that doesn’t exist from largely self serving small scale actions.
baybal2 7y ago
> I have to conclude that given the right circumstances, anyone can do just about anything. It takes constant vigilance and self-courage to be a consistently good person, most of us in the developed west have just never been put into a situation where we are compelled to do something real shitty. I can't do anything but to strongly agree with you on this point. A lot of discourse for which I run into trouble on HN (and in real life as well...) is me tryint to correct somebody's wrongs, just to see somebody popup with "calm down man", "do not disturb peace", "do not make it a problem", " there is nobody right or wrong" I can say the West has this problem, and it comes from attitudes of people higher up on social ladder. This unreadiness to be forceful in confronting wrongs is: 1. totally disgusting; 2. errodes things that make society a society; 3. will eventually cost dearly to the West

carapace 7y ago

"I owe you my life." Since time out of mind, the ultimate, unpayable, debt. "I owe you my life." Hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people who have received life-saving organs owe their lives, their very lives, to their donors. "I owe you my life."

FartyMcFarter 7y ago

Why did this article disappear so quickly from the front-page? It got 206 points in 2 hours, which is a lot better than most front page articles...

appleflaxen 7y ago

chinese doctors and scientists should be banned from international meetings until this stops.

echaozh 7y ago

The page itself and both of the "short form"/"summary" reports downloadable are vacant claims and introduction of the organization and of Falun Gong. After years of propaganda, I don't believe there still are so many Falun Gong followers in Mainland, let alone to have their organs harvested. Yes, most of us Chinese Mainlanders are fucking Atheists. And even if most of us more or less believe in karma and reincarnation and other forms of buddaism, Falun Gong is vastly different, especially as I know it, it's not compatible with going to buddist temples.

echaozh 7y ago
Basically, if your search Google for 法轮大法/Falun Dafa and 寺庙/buddist temple, you will see entries posted and reposted with title "寺庙修行半辈子，不如念念法轮大法好"[1][2]/"Reading Falun Dafa for a while is better than practicing buddism in a temple for half of your life". I don't think it's fair or honest to make such claims to convert buddists. And I think it may lead to backfire from the buddist religious circle. [1]https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=8&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjlnPSlyP7iAhVRnp4KHaMrCLQQFjAHegQICBAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fhongzhi.li%2Fknowflg%2F1672.html&usg=AOvVaw1NByfjBq4nL7XRPHWAPLKU https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c... [2]https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=22&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjVlZHIyP7iAhUS7J4KHTpfC9o4FBAWMAF6BAgBEAE&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bannedbook.org%2Fbnews%2Fhealth%2F20171213%2F826109.html&usg=AOvVaw3fqEnbLZkZahNJl7tVNDaj https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...