Thursday, June 20, 2024

CCP Makes Nearly $9 Billion in Profits Annually From Medical Genocide, Lawyer Estimates

 Mr. (David) Matas said that official figures for organ transplants were 10,000 organs a year, but said this figure may be 10 times higher.

David Matas, international human rights lawyer, before an event on forced organ harvesting at Harvard University in Boston on March 8, 2024. 
https://www.theepochtimes.com/china/ccp-is-profiting-at-least-8-9-billion-annually-from-medical-genocide-lawyer-estimates-5671723?utm_source=China_article_paid&src_src=China_article_paid&utm_campaign=China-2024-06-20-ca&src_cmp=China-2024-06-20-ca&utm_medium=email&est=Wk32%2FRT3rq%2Fz7xql5jOK7Dpq4a4561DIGgzZNgFM3ooLVMrfQC0wMDH0pl1vpwawdK7R&utm_term=news1&utm_content=1

SYDNEY, Australia—International human rights expert David Matas has highlighted the scale of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s medical genocide, estimating that the regime may be earning nearly $9 billion (A$13.5 billion) a year from forced organ harvesting.

“The numbers are large and horrendous,” Mr. Matas told the Sydney audience in a Q&A session following a screening of the documentary “State Organs,” which exposes these clandestine crimes by the communist regime.

“The total figure I was getting was $8.9 billion a year.”

The award-winning documentary is about the perilous search for two youths who mysteriously disappeared in China.

What their families uncovered was far more sinister: a state-sponsored industry targeting innocent, healthy citizens for their organs, which are then sold for transplantation globally.

Mr. Matas said that the CCP’s official figures for organ transplants were 10,000 organs a year, but his calculation produced a figure ten times larger.

“We did our own calculation of volumes by going to hospital websites and adding them up. The Chinese official figures were in total 10,000 organs a year, but our calculation was 100,000 a year,” he said. “That’s an awful lot of people.”

He touched on how large-scale atrocities are sometimes hard to grasp, quoting Joseph Stalin’s adage that “a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic.”

Documentary Would ‘Chill Australians to the Bone’

Kerry Wright, an audience member and former high school teacher, said the film was a timely reminder of the ethical concerns surrounding organ transplants and the need for stricter regulations, as countries increasingly rely on trade with China.

“I think this is something that should chill Australians to the bone,” Ms. Wright, who is involved with the Tibetan movement, told The Epoch Times on June 19.

Practitioners of Falun Gong are not the only prisoners of conscience victims of forced organ harvesting. Tibetans, House Christians, and Uyghurs have also been victims.

“They already know about it, but I think most people don’t want to feel and look. It is just too ... way out, beyond their understanding, but this film does it very well.”

One of the poignant stories featured in the film is that of Sonny Zou, who was detained and tortured for practising Falun Gong. He was released briefly but tricked into returning to the police station in 2000, where he was sentenced to three years in a labor camp.

Mr. Zou fell ill and died the next day; his body was cremated without his family’s consent. Mr. Zou was 28, leaving behind his wife and 11-month-old daughter.

His widow faced police intimidation and surveillance for protesting her husband’s death, and disappeared three months later. The couple’s deaths are shrouded in mystery to this day.

Ms. Wright said that the film should be seen by all lawmakers.

“I actually recommend it as compulsory viewing for all people in politics from all parties. I don’t think this is a party matter,” the Australian educator said.

Origins of the Secret Organ Harvesting Industry

Mr. Matas has dedicated nearly two decades to exposing the Chinese regime’s systematic organ harvesting practice.

His investigative work, including his co-authored book with late Canadian MP David Kilgour, “Bloody Harvest of Falun Gong Practitioners in China,” was nominated for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.

In this work, they found that the main source of organs was practitioners of Falun Gong (also called Falun Dafa), an ancient, spiritual practice rooted in traditional Chinese culture that teaches its adherents to live by the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.

Due to its effectiveness in improving health, by 1999, Falun Gong attracted over 100 million practitioners, including Mr. Zou.

The popularity of Falun Gong, however, led to the jealousy of the top leader of the CCP, Jiang Zemin.

Seeing it as a threat to the communist regime’s totalitarian rule, the dictator launched a brutal persecution campaign against the practice. The ongoing persecution campaign involves, and is not limited to, arbitrary detention, torture, forced labour, and forced organ harvesting.

The practice’s emphasis on traditional moral values, harkening to China’s Buddhist- and Daoist-steeped culture before the communist regime, was perceived as a threat to its atheist ideology.

The documentary was screened across major cities of Australia including Canberra, Perth, and Melbourne, ending in Sydney on June 19.

Raymond Zhang, director of the “State Organs,” said that he spent six years on the documentary.

To truthfully restore history, he overcame many difficulties to find witnesses of forced organ harvesting who were brave enough to be interviewed, including family members of victims, witnesses, and doctors involved in live organ harvesting.

“Millions of families lost their loved ones to the state crime, which is comparable to the holocaust in World War II,” Mr. Zhang said.

“The difference is: it’s still ongoing.”