Free Republic

Falun Gong Protests China Policy by: Rachel Paulk, July 24, 2008 Falun Gong practitioners met on Friday, July 18th, near the Washington Monument to protest Communist China’s treatment of the peaceful religious sect. Holding signs with statements such as “If you don’t believe what the Communists say about Tibet, why would you believe what they say about Falun Gong?” and “Support 40 Million People Resigning from Chinese Communist Party,” over two thousand people met to raise awareness of the group’s persecution by the Chinese Communists. Officially outlawed July 20th, 1999, the Falun Gong practitioners have weathered a brutal crackdown in...

Flashpoint for US-China Relations in Flushing Showdown Recent events in Flushing New York, unnoticed by most Americans except for ethnic Chinese, may dramatically alter US-Chinese relations. For three years the Falun Gong, a religious group banned and persecuted by the Chinese government, has met outside the Flushing public library to encourage Chinese Communist Party members to turn in their Party membership. The activity attracted little attention until the devastating earthquake in Sichuan province and staggering loss of life put a spotlight on the Chinese government’s response. Since then, Falun Gong’s ‘Epoch Times’ newspaper and its website have relentlessly attacked the...

Where Is the Dignity of the United States? Events in Flushing show Uncle Sam in a compromising position By Stephen Gregory Epoch Times Staff Jun 03, 2008 For over two weeks now, organized mobs have harassed Falun Gong practitioners in Flushing, New York. For over one week, we have known that those mobs have been incited by the Chinese Consul General for New York, Mr. Peng Keyu, yet Peng has not been expelled. The World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG) released a tape on May 23 of Peng talking with one of its investigators. In...

In early 2006, The Epoch Times first exposed the Chinese Communist Party's crime of harvesting organs from live Falun Gong practitioners. Since then new evidence continues to surface. Recently a witness from Wuxi City, Jiangsu Province has come forward and revealed what he discovered during his detention in Wuxi City No.2 Detention Center. According to the witness, many cases of organ harvesting occurred during 2002. He was detained from 2005 to 2007 because he made opposing comments about China's unlawful control of personal speech and media. During his imprisonment he learned that not only death row prisoners were killed for...

An article published in the April 4th edition of Qi Lu Evening , a newspaper in Shandong Province in eastern China, has attracted people's attention and recently circulated throughout the Internet. It reported that a young man temporarily working in Jinan City decided to donate his corneas after a kidney failure diagnosis. However, several major hospitals throughout the area explained that they were "not qualified" to accept the donation. An official in the Ophthalmology Department of the Jinan Central Hospital even mentioned that none of the corneas used by his department came from donations. This report revisits the concern over...

For many of us, the memory of the student-led, pro-democracy Tiananmen Square protest of 1989 is still very fresh and vivid. It served as an indication that, no matter how tightly China tries to restrict the flow of information and ideas from outside their influence, they can’t control everything (keep in mind – 1989 happened before the internet revolution). It also served as a reminder that the Chinese communist regime was still as lethal and cold as ever. They are still the people who supported and fought with the Korean and Vietnamese communists against American forces.....

"Bodies...the Exhibition" has drawn thousands to the Cincinnati Museum Center, but now the company behind it is part of an investigation. The New York Attorney General's Office tells Local 12, its looking into possible misrepresentations concerning how some of those human bodies were obtained in China. Museum center officials say they're approaching 40,000 tickets sold in just 15 days. Now, the company profiting from the bodies is now under investigation. The New York State Attorney General's Office has issued subpoenas for organizers at Premier Exhibitions Incorporated. That's the same company the museum center is using to put bodies on display...

(NEW YORK) — The doctor behind the "Body Worlds" exhibits that show cadavers in different poses says he has stopped using bodies from China for fear that some of them may be executed prisoners, ABC News reported on Friday. Dr. Gunther von Hagens told ABC's "20/20" that he had to destroy some bodies he had received from China because they had injuries that made him suspect they were execution victims. The doctor invented a liquid plastic process that preserves bodies. He has put many of them on display in museum exhibits that show them in poses like playing poker or...

(SACRAMENTO) -- Cars packed the parking lot of a shuttered CompUSA store one recent weekday afternoon as schoolchildren, health professionals and the just plain curious paid $24 apiece to stare at a score of plasticized, dissected human cadavers and roomfuls of preserved body parts. The cadavers are displayed dramatically, with layers of skin and muscle peeled back to reveal internal organs, bones, blood vessels and nerves. The exhibition, with bodies posed as if playing a violin, swinging a golf club or performing other tasks, provoked plenty of hushed comments.   "Where do they come from?" a young woman asked a...

There could be some discord during the Tournament of Roses Parade as demonstrators promise to raise issues during the holiday spectacle that has been going on for more than a century. Human rights advocates plan to protest a float honoring the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and anti-war activists, including "Peace Mom" Cindy Sheehan, intend to rally for peace. The theme of this year's New Year's Day parade is "Passport to the World's Celebrations." It will feature 46 floats, 21 marching bands and 18 equestrian units. Volunteers have busy in Pasadena and nearby areas this past week decorating the floats with...

Mart Laar, two-time Prime Minister of Estonia, has been credited with lifting the small Baltic nation out of economic and social collapse under communism to becoming a prosperous, free society. Currently a member of the Estonian Parliament, Laar first became Prime Minister of Estonia at age 32. During his tenure from 1992-1994, he initiated sweeping economic reforms that included unilateral free trade, privatization, and the introduction of the world's first flat tax. Laar was re-elected in 1999 and served until 2002. Known as the Baltic Tiger, in the past two decades Estonia has experienced unprecedented economic growth and has dramatically...

When Malaka, an Indian tsunami refugee, agreed to sell her kidney, the organ broker told her she would receive $3,500. But after the operation, he gave her only $700 - for an organ that a wealthy foreigner likely paid $40,000. "She got what she deserved," the broker told the National Geographic Channel in an "Explorer" episode, "Inside the Body Trade," that airs tonight. Later, when Malaka's son's kidneys were failing, the doctor told her, "You gave away your kidney. Now your child needs a kidney. Who will give it to him?" While free-market types have talked up Transplant Tourism as...

Could local Falun Gong allegations of organ harvesting become a thorn in Beijing's Olympic crown? When Jeff Kline's mother was diagnosed with end-stage liver cancer in 2003, doctors told her there was nothing they could do. There wasn't time for conventional treatments, and her age and type of cancer made her ineligible for a transplant. At 59, with no hope of getting a new liver, she was given less than two months to live. But in the course of his work developing Web sites for nonprofits in Philadelphia, Kline came across a human-rights organization that described allegations of organ harvesting...

Controversy has followed an exhibit of preserved, plasticized human bodies around the world. Now, a group of Ohio State University students and faculty members is raising questions about "Bodies … The Exhibition" during its six-month stay in Columbus. Like others, the OSU group is challenging whether the bodies are those of people who died of natural causes, as the exhibit's owners insist, or whether they are those of political prisoners who died in Chinese prisons. Premier Exhibitions, the Atlanta company that brought an exhibit of Titanic artifacts to COSI Columbus in 2005, says it's under suspicion because the bodies came...

(SHANGHAI) - More than 10,000 people received liver transplants in China between March 2005 and May 2007. Most of the patients' information is registered with the China Liver Transplant Registration (CLTR) system. Several of Shanghai's more reputable hospitals, including Renji Hospital, Zhongshan Hospital and Ruijin Hospital, are participating in the system. The CLTR statistics showed that the one-year survival rate for people who have undergone a liver transplant has doubled in recent years. From 2003 to 2006, 84 percent of such patients survived for more than a year. And the three-year survival rate increased to about 75 percent in 2006...

Mainland China's well known media Southern Weekly , published a front page article titled "China Puts A Stop on 'Organ Transplant Tourism'" on July 19, 2007. The article reported on the recent restrictions imposed on organ transplants performed on foreigners by Chinese hospitals, and exposed the inside story behind these organ transplants in Mainland China, which are performed under the rule of the Communist Party. A Very Profitable Business Organ transplants skyrocketed after 1999 and hospitals reaped huge profits. The Southern Weekly mentioned that "liver transplants increased at a shocking rate: in 1999 only 24 liver transplants were performed; in...

(HONG KONG)--Paul Lee got his liver from an executed Chinese prisoner; Karam in Egypt bought a kidney for his sister for $5,300; in Istanbul Hakan is holding out for $30,700 for one of his kidneys. They are not so unusual: a dire shortage of donated organs in rich countries is sending foreigners with end-stage illnesses to poorer places like China, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Colombia and the Philippines to buy a new lease of life. Lee, a 53-year-old chief subway technician in Hong Kong, was diagnosed with liver cancer in January 2005 but doctors denied him a transplant because they feared...

The bodies are coming, and with them some questions that will not go away.    "Bodies ... The Exhibition,' featuring 15 full-body human corpses from China that have been preserved by a process called "plastination," is scheduled to open at The Carnegie Science Center in October for a seven-month run. The cadavers are peeled of their skin and arranged in poses -- kicking a soccer ball, setting up a tennis serve -- alongside 200 other body parts and specimens, including embryos and fetuses from 9 to 32 weeks gestation, all plasticized. It is one of three major traveling exhibits that...

On May 4, The Yangtze Evening News reported that China's most famous kidney expert, Dr. Li Baochun, had committed suicide by jumping from the twelfth floor of the Shanghai No. 2 Military Medical University Shanghai Hospital Building. Dr. Li had served as Deputy Director of the hospital and as Professor and Chief Physician for kidney disease. The report said Dr. Li's suicide was caused by depression. On May 24, The Yangtze Evening News report was reproduced on several major websites including the website of China's most important official media, www.xinhua.net. Further analysis revealed that the cause of Dr. Li's depression...

TORONTO—"This is a Holocaust, no question about it," Toronto-based family doctor Gerry Koffman told an audience gathered in the University of Toronto's Medical Science Building on Thursday. Dr. Koffman is the Canadian co-ordinator for Doctors Against Organ Harvesting, a U.S.-based group of medical doctors that is warning the public and the medical community that there are serious ethical implications in receiving organ transplants in China. Thursday's forum discussed recent reports of widespread forced organ removal from living prisoners of conscience in that country. Based on its own independent investigations and a report by Canadians David Kilgour and David Matas, Doctors...

Minghui.net reports that on February 9, 2007, tourists witnessed a group of policemen suddenly attack a person sitting on the grass by Tiananmen Square. The attack lasted only a few minutes time. When it was over there was a large pool of blood left on the ground where the beating took place. The tourist who reported the attack arrived in Tiananmen Square at around noon with two of his friends. On the other side of the square was a man sitting on the grass. He was sitting motionless. Suddenly, several policemen ran up to him and surrounded him. The police...

Followers of the Falun Gong spiritual movement did not suffer discrimination when the group was barred from marching in a Chinese New Year Parade that received city funding, a judge ruled Wednesday. Superior Court Judge Patrick Mahoney sided with the city Human Rights Commission's conclusion that the Chinese Chamber of Commerce was within its rights to exclude Falun Gong, which is banned in China. Mahoney issued a tentative ruling Tuesday, but made it final Wednesday after hearing arguments from attorneys on both sides. The city contributes $77,000 of the parade's more than $800,000 budget along with police protection. This year's...

China's military is harvesting organs from unwilling live prison inmates, mostly Falun Gong practitioners, for transplants on a large scale — including to foreign recipients — according to a study.

After years of denial, China has acknowledged that most of the human organs used in transplants here are taken from executed prisoners and that many of the recipients are foreigners who pay hefty sums to avoid a long wait. Speaking at a conference of surgeons in the southern city of Guangzhou, Deputy Health Minister Huang Jiefu called for a strict code of conduct and better record-keeping to stem China's thriving illegal organ trade, state media reported. "Apart from a small portion of traffic victims, most of the organs from cadavers are from executed prisoners," Huang said Tuesday, according to a...

SAN FRANCISCO — Many of San Francisco's Asian massage parlors — long an established part of the city's sexually permissive culture — have degenerated into something much more sinister: international sex-slave shops. Once limited to infamous locales such as Bombay and Bangkok, sex trafficking is now an $8 billion international business, with San Francisco among its largest commercial centers. San Francisco's liberal attitude toward sex, the city's history of arresting prostitutes instead of pimps, and its large immigrant population have made it one of the top American cities for international sex traffickers to do business undetected, according to Donna Hughes,...

IS CHINA harvesting organs from Falun Gong practitioners -- who are killed in the process? David Kilgour, a former Canadian member of Parliament, and Canadian human rights attorney David Matas admit that they cannot prove or disprove allegations that China has killed thousands of Falun Gong practitioners in order to harvest their organs, but they fear and believe it is happening. So they wrote in a report (investigation.redirectme.net) released this month for the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of the Falun Gong in China. China denies the allegations. An embassy spokesman reminded me that U.S. officials toured a site in...

A man of principles Silence in the face of evil is not David Kilgour's way. Sadly, there are few like him in seats of power Toronto Sun Sunday, July 16, 2006 By Peter Worthington David Kilgour is one of those guys destined to make waves -- never for self-aggrandizement, always on moral issues of principle. At age 64, he's been around the hoop. A former Crown attorney, he was first elected to the House of Commons as a Tory in 1979. He's served in the cabinet, quit the party and joined the Liberals, quit the Liberals to sit as...

Doctor who spoke out against China's organ-harvesting will not be prosecuted WASHINGTON — Dr. Wenyi Wang reached an agreement with prosecutors in which all charges against her will be dropped, she said on June 14. Dr. Wang protested at the White House during a visit by Hu Jintao, head of the Chinese communist regime, on April 20. Under the deal, charges against Dr. Wang will be postponed until April 2007. If she does not commit any crimes during that time period—including confronting foreign officials—the charges will then be dropped. On April 20, after Hu began speaking, Wang, 47, stood up...

Bet this won't get any press... Blogger Hao Wu freed after being held for five monthsReporters Without Borders voiced “immense relief” at the news of the release today of blogger and documentary filmmaker Hao Wu after nearly five months in detention. His release was announced on her blog by his sister, Na Wu. The oppressions of the Commie Chinese is something that the MSM really doesn't like to talk much about. The MSM seems to want to paper over any oppression the Chinese do to their own people as a private or internal issue, or some such thing. “At the...

Team says China harvests Falun Gong organs Thu Jul 6, 3:34 PM ET A respected Canadian human rights lawyer and a former Canadian cabinet member lent their weight on Thursday to charges that China has been killing Falun Gong dissidents so it can use their organs. The two men -- lawyer David Matas, and David Kilgour, former secretary of state for Asia and the Pacific -- spent two months investigating the accusations, which China has regularly denied. "It is simply inescapable that this is going on," Kilgour told reporters as he and Matas released their findings. They provided transcripts of...

Report by Canadian lawyers alleges China is killing Falun Gong members for organs JEFF SALLOT OTTAWA -- An estimated 41,500 transplant operations in China were probably performed using organs of imprisoned Falun Gong members killed by Chinese authorities, says a report released yesterday by two prominent Canadian lawyers.There is no other possible source for the organs used in transplants between 2000 and 2005, says the report by David Matas, a Winnipeg human-rights lawyer, and David Kilgour, a former prosecutor who was also a federal Liberal cabinet secretary for Asian affairs."Where do the organs come from for the 41,500 transplants? The...

NEW YORK -- A Chinatown businesswoman who prosecutors described as one of the biggest "snakeheads'' of all time was sentenced to 35 years in prison Thursday for her role in organizing human smuggling schemes, including the doomed Golden Venture voyage in 1993. Cheng Chui Ping, 57, pleaded for more than an hour for a lenient sentence, saying she was but a simple, hardworking immigrant who loved America and had been terrorized by Chinatown gangs. U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey listened patiently, then dismissed the speech as ``simply incredible'' and gave Cheng the maximum penalty allowed by law. Evidence at the...

Golden Venture Survivors Face Another Hurdle NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- Few Americans have lived through the kind of adventures that brought Arming He to the United States from his Chinese homeland. Seeking a better life, he made a dangerous escape across a mountainous border, traveled by ship to Africa, where he was marooned for months, then crammed into the hold of a rusted freighter carrying 295 other refugees. His ordeal didn't end when the ship, the Golden Venture, ran aground in Queens in 1993 in an ill-fated attempt to unload its battered and starving human cargo. Ten people died trying...

At Wal-Mart's 1992 general meeting, founder Sam Walton asked shareholders to sing God Bless America. The 15,000 Wal-Martians responded to Sam's call - even though Walton had been dead for two months. Walton's request to the shareholder-cum-revival meeting in rural Arkansas - channelled through a spotlit executive crouching on bended knee to speak to the departed Deity of Retail - was scarcely surprising. Wal-Mart is America's most patriotic, flag-waving company. But look under the flags. Stores are decked out like a war rally. Stars and Stripes hang from the ceiling. Cardboard eagles shriek 'Buy America!' But one independent group sampled...

The Falun Gong follower who heckled Chinese President Hu Jintao at a White House ceremony has reached a deal with prosecutors under which all charges against her will be dropped, her attorney announced Wednesday.

Chinese Military Doctor Witness to over 60,000 “Involuntary” Organ Donations – most from Falun Gong Organs extracted from live people and people who survive are cremated alive By Terry Vanderheyden SHENYANG, May 3, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – China's 30 years of brutal, forced abortion to implement its one-child policy and its subsequent devaluing of human life has led has led to a new atrocity. A Chinese military doctor has revealed that he has personally encountered falsified documents for over 60,000 detainees – many of them members of the Falun Gong religion – which falsely claim that the individual named is voluntarily...

SHANGHAI (Kyodo) Two Japanese nationals in their 50s received heart transplants between 2001 and 2004 at a Shanghai hospital whose organs mainly come from death-row inmates, sources at a Taiwanese company that arranged the procedures said Thursday. Japan was seemingly unaware of the cases, as a survey released March 9 by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said there were no cases of Japanese receiving heart transplants in Asia outside of Japan. Ethical and medical concerns have often been raised regarding organ transplants in China over issues that include the use of organs of prisoners on death row and uncertain...

The preliminary hearing of Dr. Wenyi Wang, 47, was postponed again for nearly two weeks, till May 31 as both sides sought more time to prepare. The charges stem from her interruption of the Chinese Communist leader Hu Jintao on April 20 at the White House South Lawn. She was escorted away by the Secret Service, spent the rest of the day in jail, and later was released without bail on her own recognizance, pending further proceedings. The physician protester is being charged with a federal misdemeanor of "willfully intimidating, coercing, threatening and harassing a foreign official." The punishment she...

Large human organ banks consisting of Falun Gong practitioners exist throughout China, providing a multi-billion dollar business run by the Chinese communist regime. STILL ALIVE: Wenyi Wang said she was gratified to wake up in jail the day after her arrest with her two eyes, kidneys, and heart still intact. Dr. Wang spoke Tuesday, May 16, at the National Press Club. (The Epoch Times)Responding to an invitation from the National Press Club (NPC) of Washington, D.C., the 47-year-old physician and Falun Gong practitioner, Wenyi Wang, spoke to the press about the experiences which led her to interrupt the Chinese Communist...

Chinese President Hu Jintao sought to convince President Bush during their meetings to publicly declare the Falun Gong religious group an “evil cult” that should be banned, U.S. officials said. But Bush did not agree to do so and there were no public announcements to that effect. Falun Gong, founded by a former People’s Liberation Army colonel, has changed its posture in recent years from that of a strictly Buddhist-based religious group to a political movement that targets the Chinese Communist Party. Dennis Wilder, a National Security Council specialist on Asia, told reporters after the Bush-Hu meeting that the president...

For many young people in China, Kai-Fu Lee is a celebrity. Not quite on the level of a movie star like Edison Chen or the singers in the boy band F4, but for a 44-year-old computer scientist who invariably appears in a somber dark suit, he can really draw a crowd. When Lee, the new head of operations for Google in China, gave a lecture at one Chinese university about how young Chinese should compete with the rest of the world, scalpers sold tickets for $60 apiece. At another, an audience of 8,000 showed up; students sprawled out on the...

The witness, a former employee at the Liaoning Thrombosis Treatment Center of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, and says the bodies of Falun Gong practitioners are cremated immediately after the organs are removed. (The Epoch Times) [High-resolution image ] A former employee of Liaoning Provincial Thrombosis Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine told The Epoch Times during a recent interview that the Sujiatun Concentration Camp in China was actually a part of a hospital. The concentration camp has engaged in taking organs from Falun Gong practitioners when they were still alive and selling the organs. Since 2001, the concentration...

A HECKLER from the Falun Gong spiritual movement, who entered White House grounds as a reporter, interrupted a formal arrival ceremony for Chinese President Hu Jintao today, prompting President George W. Bush to apologise to his guest. After being welcomed by Mr Bush, the Chinese president was just beginning his response when a woman, who had been allowed into the press section, started shouting. She was escorted away by a uniformed US guard. "President Hu, your days are numbered. President Bush, make him stop persecuting Falun Gong," the woman yelled. US officials later identified her as Wang Wenyi, 47, a...

FLASH: Heckler disrupts Chinese President Hu's speech on south lawn at White House: 'President Bush, stop him from killing'... one cameraman put a hand on her shoulder as she shouted... seemed to be trying to quiet her down... 'Stop persecuting the Falun Gong,' she yelled... She also shouted in Chinese, 'President Hu, your days are numbered'... woman is taken away by uniformed secret service officers... right after Bush urged Hu to allow Chinese to 'speak freely'...

CHINA ORGAN TRANSPLANTS BOOM CHINA IS THE LEADER IN TRANSPLANTS, BUT BUSINESS IS BESET BY CLAIMS THAT ORGANS COME FROM EXECUTED PRISONERS BY TIM JOHNSON Knight Ridder News Service TIANJIN, China - A few weeks after receiving a lifesaving liver transplant, Pakistani businessman Shaukat Javed shuffled slowly around a specialty hospital ward chatting up fellow organ recipients. Patients from around the globe mingled in the fourth-floor ward of the First Tianjin Central Hospital, some of them with nurses bracing their steps. In the past few years, several Chinese hospitals have done a soaring business in liver, heart and kidney transplants....

Falun Gong Accuses China of Running Death Camp Wednesday, 5 April 2006, 11:17 am Press Release Express deepest grievance and concern regarding the suffering of Falun Gong practitioners held in Sujiatun death camp, China. On 6th April New Zealand Falun Gong practitioners will gather at Parliament to express our deepest grievance and concern regarding the suffering of Falun Gong practitioners held in Sujiatun death camp, China. On March 8, 2006, a Chinese journalist on the run from the Chinese communist regime disclosed to Falun Gong practitioners in the United States an appalling news: a secret death camp in Sujiatun,...

1. Report: China Selling Prisoners' Body Parts Chinese doctors are "harvesting" kidneys, corneas and other organs from live concentration camp inmates and selling them for up to $100,000 apiece. That's the shocking report from a former employee at Liaoning Provincial Thrombosis Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, where the organ removal has allegedly been taking place. In an interview with The Epoch Times, the ex-employee said the Sujiatun Concentration Camp in Shenyang City is part of the hospital and since 2001 has secretly detained approximately 6,000 Falun Gong practitioners - none of whom has left the camp alive. "The...

Insider Reveals All at Sujiatun Are Falun Gong Practitioners Subjects of live cornea removal are mainly the elderly or children The Epoch Times Mar 21, 2006 The front entrance to the Sujiatun Concentration Camp and a map of the region (The Epoch Times) [High-resolution image ] The Epoch Times has conducted another interview with the witness who came forward several days ago to reveal details regarding the Sujiatun concentration camp in Northeast China. In this interview the witness revealed that her ex-husband was one of the main surgeons in the concentration camp. He is a brain surgeon, and was mainly...

Exposing Shocking Horrors Inside Sujiatun Concentration Camp By Ji Da Epoch Times Staff Mar 11, 2006 A reporter from China who worked for a Japanese television news agency and specialized in Chinese news recently escaped to the United States after being wanted in China for reporting on controversial issues. (The Epoch Times) High-res image (1200 x 900 px, 72 dpi) [ Warning: graphic photos below ] Falun Gong Practitioners a Cheap Source of Black Market Organs In recent years, international organ buying and selling markets have had extreme shortages. As the world's most populous country with the death penalty, China...

There were no diamond-studded stilettos on display for what Drudge called, "The Night of the Golden Statue" last night. As Hollywood stargazers watched their faves arrive for ceremonies in green cars, a worldwide hunger strike to protest China's recent attacks on Human Rights defenders was getting underway