Christchurch City Libraries Blog



Speak Up- KōrerotiaOrgan harvesting9 December 2016MaleThis programme was first broadcast on Canterbury’s community access radio station Plains FM 96.9 and was made with the assistance of New Zealand on Air.FemaleComing up next conversations on human rights with “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”, here on Plains FM.SallyE ngā mana, E ngā reo, E ngā hau e whāTēnā koutou katoaNau mai ki tēnei hōtaka: “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”.?Tune in as our guests “Speak Up”, sharing their unique and powerful experiences and opinions and may you also be inspired to “Speak Up” when the moment is right.Nau mai haere mai, welcome to “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”. Ko Sally Carlton tēnei. I’m based in Christchurch and this is Sally Carlton, your host. Today’s topic is something slightly different for us: we’re going to be looking at organ harvesting. We’ve got three very interesting guests. We’ve got Jaya Gibson back again, Jaya nice to see you back. Jaya Thanks for having me back. SallyHe’s here in the studio with us. And we’ve got Robin Palmer from South Africa via Skype today; he’s based in Christchurch but in South Africa at the moment. And also David Kilgour. DavidHi Jaya, long time no see no speak. JayaI’m sorry I couldn’t make it up north; it’s just a bit hectic this time of year. SallyNow if you could all please introduce yourselves that would be fantastic. DavidRobin’s the one who is the hero; why don’t we get him to go first?RobinHolding me up here for no reason there! Yeah I’m Robin Palmer, I am a Professor of Law at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch. Prior to that I spent five or six years as a specialist prosecutor prosecuting a case called Operation Life which involved illegal organ harvesting between Israel, South Africa and Brazil and Romania and that case resulted in a couple of significant convictions which had a significant dampening effect on the trade especially in South Africa and Israel. DavidWow, immense congratulations on that. RobinThank you very much. JayaMy name is Jaya Gibson. I have been involved in various aspects of researching organ harvesting alongside Ethan Gutmann since 2006 and I had some investigation into the Tibetans spending some time undercover in Dharamasala and some other places. DavidHi David Kilgour from Canada and I’m a former prosecutor too, by the way, a long, long time ago and I like to think that prosecutors are ministers of justice on issues like this and that what Robin did and I’m doing basically the same, we’re trying to get unethical people to stop killing people in China so that patients in New Zealand or Canada or wherever can have new hearts or lungs. And what I think we all find is that people somehow don’t realise this is going on. It’s been going on an industrial scale now since about 2001, we just put an update to two books that were written and we concluded that at absolute minimum 60,000 people are being murdered each year in China so that wealthy Chinese and wealthy foreigners - organ tourists, we call them - can have new organs. And it’s a large scale business and it’s one that we call a crime against humanity. We think it’s despicable and anybody that hasn’t anything to do with it frankly is despicable, whether they’re in New Zealand or Canada or China. SallyDavid, how did you get those statistics? DavidOh well actually the 60,000 is an absolute minimum… We looked at 800 hospitals in China very carefully. We had taken in our updated… About a 700 page update - it’s got 2400 footnotes, about 2200 of which are taken from Government of China are hospitals or data within China - and we… For example there’s the one hospital, the Tianjin Hospital that is a large hospital, itself we’re absolutely convinced does a minimum of 7,000-9,000 transplants a year, so when the Government of China says we only do 10,000 a year we are answering that it’s very clear in our report - anybody who wants to look at it, simply go to and get the whole report - it’s absolutely clear that one hospital is doing 8,000 or 9,000 transplants. So with 140 licensed hospitals in China to do transplants it’s clear that it’s a minimum of 60,000 a year and the thing that people try and argue, defenders of party state in China use that these are voluntary donations, all kinds of things.But I’m sure Jaya and Robin and you all know that it’s quite contrary to the culture in China to give organs. So the amount of people who donate organs is miniscule compared to the demand so what happens basically is somebody goes from let’s say Christchurch to China for an organ and they go to the Number One People’s Hospital in Shanghai often, their blood tissue types are taken, there’s a databank and it tells who matches whom and if somebody is basically taken out of a work camp… I don’t think they use the term ‘work camp’ at the moment but somebody is taken out of the equivalent of forced labour camp - probably a Falun Gong practitioner but it could be a Uyghur, it could be a Tibetan, it could be a Hare Krishnan - and that person has their lung, their heart removed and of course their killed in the process. Their body is burned and the liver is flown to Shanghai and the person from New Zealand gets the new liver and flies back to here with a new liver and maybe not realising that somebody has been executed - murdered, is really what it is - in order that they can have a new organ. And that’s… Only the Nazis would have done something like that, they didn’t have the technology in Hitler’s time but it’s only comparable with what the Nazis or other genocide… People who do genocide around the world would do. It’s absolutely outrageous. And for us for example in New Zealand to be having a free trade agreement with a country that does this, frankly I found it’s just incomprehensible that New Zealand would have a free trade agreement with people who treat their… The Government which treats its own people in this way. So we can talk about that I’m sure and forgive me for going on so long. SallyThat’s OK. One of my questions is you mentioned this has been going on since 2001 possibly. DavidNot possibly, for certain it’s been going on since 2001. SallyPossibly earlier or can you pinpoint it to 2001? DavidYes you’re right, it did start earlier. And in fact Dr. Enver Toti has given evidence in the late ‘90s, in Xinjiang part of China he was involved in the removal of an organ from a man who was being executed except they shot him in the right hand side of his chest rather than the left so he was still alive when Toti took his organs out of his body. You’re right; it has been going on but on a larger and larger scale it really started in 2001 and now it’s been growing exponentially since 2001 to the point where - as I say - it’s an absolutely minimum of 60,000 a year. SallyMy question is, why are we talking about it now? What’s the impetus for this discussion right now? JayaWe’ve been talking about it for ten years and it’s been very hard to get traction. China is a powerful economic force and it’s been difficult to engage governments openly. Not impossible - we’ve had some success - so we’re just talking about it because more needs to be done; we just need to keep the momentum going. DavidI think there’s other issues at play too. We, of course, are trying to get the Government of China to stop doing this, I think that in some of the data probably 50 countries now talking about this to the public, raising awareness, to parliamentarians, to journalists, to academics. I was at the hospital yesterday and we’re trying to raise enough awareness that when any for example Chinese diplomat goes to a reception here in Auckland he or she will be approached by people saying “Why are you killing your own people?” And so at some point, I think, soon the Government of China is going to say, this is costing us so much in goodwill around the world that we better stop doing it. On the other hand we estimate that it’s probably about $8 billion or $9 billion a year to people like the surgeons in China and the People’s Liberation Army who fly the organs - there’s a huge incentive not to stop it. But I think naming and shaming is actually helping and we’ve named and shamed the Government of China now for long enough that I think they’re just about at the point where they keep talking about stopping it but of course they don’t do it and I think if enough of us raise the issue… For example, if New Zealand were to pass a law saying that anyone who goes to buy - you don’t have to say China - you just say “Anybody who buys an organ outside of New Zealand or inside New Zealand is guilty of an offence” then I think that would discourage people from going to China. Two countries have done it: Taiwan has done it and Israel has done it and Spain has done a similar thing but there are some countries that have done and I would love to see New Zealand and Canada show some leadership on this and do the same. JayaYes and one of the other reasons we’re talking about it also is that there’s a documentary that’s being shown around New Zealand at the moment called ‘Hard to Believe’ and we’ve had a number of… ‘sold out’ is the wrong word, mostly by invitation but full screenings and you can watch that online and it comes from a primarily a medical standpoint and sort of discusses the issue around the doctors mostly and it features a lot of doctors, a group of doctors called Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting who are very active from their end trying to make the medical establishment more aware of the issue and to urge them, motivate them to take action where they can. So that’s another reason we’re talking about it right now. It’s a very current documentary and it shows David Kilgour’s evidence, Ethan Gutmann’s evidence and others’ as well and I’d urge you to go online and check that documentary out, it’s very powerful. DavidBy the way, Robin, we showed ‘Human Harvest’ last night here in Auckland and that film won a Peabody Award last year in the States and that’s been immensely helpful, the fact that it won this award, a lot of people in New York were in the presentations, that’s helped a lot too but people have to act. People listening to us now have to say, “Look this is unacceptable” and they have to… As you just said, the other place they can go, Robin, they can go to as I mentioned and you can see all kinds of things there that I mentioned that people can do, they can write letters, they can do all kinds of things. They can help us stop this crime against humanity. SallyThat seems like a nice place to have our first break and Robin, we’re going to use your song. Was there a particular reason you chose this one? RobinI just think the analogy between lying there waiting for abuse and waiting for your kidney to be removed is pretty close, it sort of struck an analogous chord there. MUSIC ‘The hand that Rocked the Cradle’Sally Nau mai hoki mai, welcome back to “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”. I’m Sally Carlton and we’re with Robin Palmer, Jaya Mangalam Gibson and David Kilgour discussing organ harvesting. David got us talking in the last section about what’s happening in China and I know this is also happening in other parts of the world so it would be great to get a sense of where is this happening and do we have a sense of scale in addition to what’s going on in China? DavidCan I just jump in, Sally, a moment? We’ve been told by people in New Zealand that there are people from New Zealand who are going to China for organs. I completely accept that this is happening elsewhere in the world but there is a fundamental difference, if you go to say country X you get a kidney, the so-called donor is still alive because he actually probably sells part of the kidney. What happens in China is they take both kidneys and the person is dead. I often use the example… I talked to a man from Taiwan who went to China because he needed a new kidney because he had hepatitis and he basically took eight sets of kidneys that were brought to him, to his hospital bed before a kidney was compatible with his blood and tissue type and so on, so eight human beings were murdered so that this guy could have a new kidney. Now he feels terrible about it now but it’s a bit late because there are eight people who are dead.As I say I can’t make the point strongly enough that there’s only one place in the world to my knowledge where the Government is involved in this up to its armpits in what’s going on - in fact, they set up the system - and from top to bottom the whole system is run by the Government in China. Everywhere else it happens it’s in back alleys and the donors aren’t killed in the process, they sell part of it but this is fundamentally different. It’s the only country where this happens and that’s what I keep stressing to people is just simply New Zealand for example could pass a law saying that nobody from New Zealand can buy a trafficked organ within New Zealand which I’m sure is the law now or outside New Zealand, basically giving the law extraterritorial effect and that would stop it as it stopped people from Taiwan going to China and a lot of them were going before and it stopped people from Israel and a lot of them were going before too so why can’t New Zealand sell leadership on this matter and why can’t Canada do it? We’re pressing hard to get a similar law in Canada. SallyThank you for clarifying that. JayaRobin, do you want to tell us from your perspective? RobinWell, as David says, what’s happening in most of the world and what’s happening in China are two completely different moral planes. On the one hand you have organ executions on demand and in most other places in the world you have organ sales which are illegal in terms of the country’s laws but certainly not on the level of planned organ executions which makes this particularly outrageous. And I think perhaps I can just add, I think what is starting to happen and what needs to happen is to move from incidental campaigns to a broad base campaign based on general moral outrage that people can nod and wink at the fact that a state can sponsor planned organ executions to order and nobody cares that much about it because of the economic power. This is outrageous and is something that needs to be attacked on a broad scale. JayaIt’s an interesting conundrum, it’s all abhorrent this practice but I think over the years the sense of helplessness - and I think this is relevant to a lot of global issues at the moment - is the sort of sense of powerlessness when you talk to people about it they’re like this is terrible but what can I do about it and they’re so removed from that experience, that culture that could even produce that. So I think there’s a large barrier to get over but you’re right, I think a much more widespread global campaign would be very useful. DavidWell we’re trying to do that with our new website and it’s called the International Coalition - - that’s the one I keep mentioning and I think we’re having amazing success. And I think as Robin mentioned, the Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting are doing phenomenal work on this and in fact they’ve been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize this year.But it’s interesting - and there’s not much humour in this subject at all - but one of the things this week that happened that was perhaps a little bit funny was that David Matas and I went to Canberra and we did a 15-minute interview with a journalist from Associated Press and sure enough the article appeared the next day and I think I looked this morning on Google and it’s now been in more than 100 newspapers around the world, in India, in New York Times, in Canada, I think I saw a couple from New Zealand but as far as I could see there was virtually no newspaper in Australia that carried the article. I was here five or six years ago and we had a press conference and somebody from I guess the Dominion Post came and they had photographers there and they had apparently one of their most senior journalists there and we spent quite a long time doing this and yet the next day there was not a single word in the Post about this matter. Now is this because some daffy editor said, “Oh we mustn’t upset China by reporting something that is a matter of life and death to people?” Another thing I learned, I was in Japan very recently or in fact about a week ago and I learned there that at least one MP in Japan has been told that if he raises this issue, the doctors in his district will stop supporting him. And then someone else in Japan told me that, well in Japan some doctors - I mustn’t say all, some doctors - put the wellbeing of their patients ahead of so-called donors in China; in other words, they put their patient having a new liver or kidney ahead of the fact that someone is going to… In all likelihood it’s a prisoner of conscience who is convicted of no crime and is sent to a forced labour camp on a police signature for up to three years - where they work, by the way, making things like McDonalds toys and Christmas decorations, we’re getting close to Christmas and this kind of stuff - and it’s simply inhuman that a doctor could say, “My patient’s wellbeing is more important than a human life in China.” What kind of a world are we living in when doctors in any country take that attitude or any doctor would take that attitude? But please Robin and Jaya, please give your view. JayaWell I think the website that Ethan and the two Davids [David Kilgour and David Matas] are working on is great. I think here in New Zealand - to make it more relevant to the listeners here - is we’ve started a roundtable in Wellington with several interested parties from the medical, the political, the activist movement. Getting together to discuss what we can do here politically and understanding the complex political environment here with the New Zealand’s very strong relationship with China and China’s very sort of overbearing presence here. And I think the first roundtable that Robin and I were a part of was very positive, very productive, very robust discussion and there was some discussion about the term ‘organ pillaging’ as opposed to ‘organ executions’ and I think what that highlighted to me is that whilst we need a global coalition, I think we have to recognise the cultural nuances so that the language and message perhaps needs to be slightly adjusted according to the province and according to the country or culture. But there still needs to be a… If we are going to have a strong global effect, I think there needs to be an agreement on global messaging and then local messaging.We’ve just started this conversation in New Zealand. I think there was definitely a will to carry on and I’m looking forward to meeting up with you, Robin, and discussing what we can do here locally. I think having some kind of legislation that pressures medical doctors rather than sort of demonising or vilifying other victims or the people that get the organs, I think the pressure should be put on the doctors rather than those who are getting the organs as such. Certainly in this culture here I think there’d be a reticence to do that, to punish the patient, as it were. DavidHow do you mean punish the patient? Oh you mean the person who goes we shouldn’t be too hard on them because they didn’t know what was happening or something? JayaWell I mean the doctor. There would normally be somebody who would be an intermediary for that person - either a doctor or a broker - and I think the pressure should be put on them, the medical establishment. DavidI absolutely agree. Go ahead.JayaRobin, you feel strongly in that department too, don’t you? RobinWell yes we did discuss it and I think the focus of the pressure should be on the transplant associations who in many cases relax in a wilful blindness knowing what’s going on but then often give platitude such as: “Well it hasn’t been reported since 2015, how do we know it’s still going on?” which are ridiculous logical statements to make. But having said that, it’s one thing when your child is sick and you illegally buy a kidney from a willing seller; it’s quite another thing that you are aware that somebody is going to be murdered in order to give your child that kidney.And we used the criminal law quite innovately in South Africa in the Operation Life case, we prosecuted on many fronts for fraud, in terms of Human Tissue Act and various innovative prosecutions which were very effective. And in my view, in most countries’ criminal law systems, if you are arranging to have a kidney transplant at a hospital known to facilitate organ executions then you are part of a conspiracy to murder and there is nothing stopping somebody in New Zealand or a local country from prosecuting you from participating in that murder because you are facilitating a murder to get a kidney. So I think some innovative prosecutions could be effective in this regard as well. Having said that, I still think the focus of public pressure should be on the doctors and transplant associations who know what’s going on. JayaAbsolutely. I think a lot of the times patients can be ignorant - whether wilful or not - to the ramifications of their treatment and I think quite often they don’t want to know, they just want to get better. So I think it’s an interesting point you bring up, Robin. DavidRobin, I’m entranced by what you say and agree with you fully, the transplantation society had their annual or semi-annual meeting in Hong Kong as you probably both know or recently and David Matas and I went to it and there were about 4,000 transplant surgeons there from all over the world. We had some fascinating chats with some of them and two of the outgoing president and the former president of the Transplantation Society were both Australians and if you can believe it, our report came out, the 700-page report and one of them was this Dr. Chapman from Australia said something like, “Oh it’s all Falun Gong material.” In other words, he hadn’t read a page of it; he just thought he would slander the Falun Gong community by making an absolutely dumb statement like this. And by the way, David Matas and I are not Falun Gong practitioners. To blame the victims and the fact that your listeners know that Falun Gong has been demonised in the media across China since about June of ‘99, demonised to the point that a friend of mine was in Beijing with her mother several years ago and they had a guide and somehow Falun Gong came up and the guide said Falun Gong eat their children so that’s the level of demonization that goes on, the Falun Gong are subhuman. Ironically we’ve learned that before this war was declared on them of June of ‘99 there were people from the party, academics, military, diplomats, communist party members were practitioners of Falun Gong but because one besotted president of the country, Jiang Zemin, decided to declare war on Falun Gong, thousands and thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been killed and its unimaginable that this should be happening in the 21st century and it’s got to stop. And people keep saying well President Xi JinPing isn’t directly linked to it so he could stop it but he hasn’t done anything about it so far and I wish he would. He would get praise from a lot of us if he would do it but he hasn’t even lifted a finger to stop persecution of Falun Gong so far. It’s a long subject and I wish the Transplantation Society would show more leadership on this issue instead of just reflecting the views of Wang who is the spokesperson for the Government of China on this and the leadership of Transplantation Society tends to just say yes or no so to Mr Wang.SallyThat sounds like a good spot to move into our next song and I think then we’ll pick up this idea you’re getting into, David, about what’s being done or not being done in terms of addressing the issue. MUSIC BY RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE – KILLING IN THE NAME OFSally Welcome back to “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”. We’re talking about organ harvesting with Jaya Mangalam Gibson, David Kilgour and Robin Palmer. And David was just getting into some of the things that people are or aren’t doing to address the issue. Perhaps we’ll pick up where we were heading, what are some things that are being done? DavidI think one of the things that’s being done - and forgive me for referring to it again and again - but it’s this new International Coalition Against Forced Organ Harvesting - that’s new. We’ve had lawyers doing it, we’ve had doctors doing it brilliantly under Doctors Against Forced Harvesting but I think we’re now trying to give a role to everyone who is concerned about the issue and that’s why we set up the… Actually the website is in Stockholm, Sweden but anybody can contact it… and they can go down the list and see what would you like to do, would you like to do research, would you like to write letters, would you like to contact MPs? There’s a role for all of us in this and nobody is more important than anybody else, we’re all together, international coalition, we’re all trying to work together to get the party state in China to stop this hideous crime against humanity and so that’s one initiative that’s been done. The legislation that’s been mentioned, that I think I mentioned, that two countries have done the best job on that are Taiwan, Israel and Spain as well but making it illegal for people to travel to China to get organs that are unethically sourced, we could have a form when people land in New Zealand or in Canada – they could have a form saying have you ever been involved in organ or tissue transplants. Now of course a lot of people, surgeons for example coming from China, will not tell the truth on that but at least it sends a signal to them that this is unacceptable and it’s possible that maybe some of these doctors will face the International Criminal Court one day, that would probably be a major disincentive for them to do it. Now there’s a more tricky one if you say to somebody who has been to China for an organ that they can’t get aftercare. I don’t think we’re seeing that, I hope that New Zealand won’t do that and I hope that Canada won’t do that but at least we can say that you will know that you are taking part in an unethical crime - that’s what you’re taking part in and we’re not going to throw you out on the street and say you can’t get aftercare but the Government of New Zealand or Canada or hopefully many other countries will have taken a position on this. By the way, Taiwan also tells doctors if they have any part in this they can lose their licenses, I’m told… If you don’t mind I won’t give the name but some people found the other day that about a thousand transplants received in that hospital, about 300 of them came from China so we raised a real fuss with them about this and they’ve agreed that if we won’t name the hospital and the doctors they will stop this practice immediately of sending their patients to China. So there’s a huge amount of stuff you can do. Just making people aware of it, talk to…JayaI think one of the good things that people could do that might be quite inspirational is hosting a screening, if you have a community group that has an interest - medical students, I think, for example - that would be a good thing to do if you get in touch with you can get the license to screen either ‘Hard to Believe’ or ‘Human Harvest.’ I think that would be a really good way of spreading the world. I think that medium is very powerful. SallyI also think that the benefit in doing those sorts of screenings is it allows people, in a forum, to discuss the issues. I think there’s a healthy amount of scepticism about this issue and having people there who can talk to it, I think, is quite useful. DavidCan we talk about that scepticism a bit? Because I discovered this in many places and normally you will find that the people who are sceptical are the ones who have a conflict or a professional interest in not having people believe that it’s happening and if you push them a little bit and you say what are you sceptical about? In our original book, as Robin and Jaya know, we had 32 kinds of evidence that it was happening. People say well have you seen it happening? Do they expect us to be in the operating room when it’s going on? After this was reported way back in 2006 in a place called Sujiatun in China, the American Consul sent over some people from their Consulate to look at the operating rooms. I think it was three weeks after the leaks were made that they got there and guess what they found? Nothing. So they reported back they found nothing suspicious and I think what I’m trying to say is people who are sceptical usually find that they have an interest in debunking this evidence but if you look at it seriously there’s absolutely no doubt in anybody’s mind…Let me give you one of the 32 kinds of evidence: the lady who started this whole thing going, her husband was a neurosurgeon in China, he told her that he had removed the corneas from the eyes of 2000 Falun Gong practitioners over 2001 to 2003. He was having nightmares, he couldn’t sleep and so finally she said, “You’ve got to stop doing this” and he did stop. Oh, by the way, he also told her that after he removed the corneas the people were still alive, of course, and they were taken into other operating rooms and all of their organs were taken and their bodies were burned. But he was paid the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of US dollars for this two-year period and he’s left China and she’s left China. So that’s one [kind of evidence.] And if you think she’s making all this up, I was a prosecutor for ten years, I spent a lot of time with her going over her story and pushing her on things and her story is in the book, by the way, Su Jiang is the chapter. I think she was honestly trying to help what happened. But people will say, “Oh well she’s got a conflict or she’s not believable or whatever” so if you don’t like that one go to the other 31 kinds of evidence. But now we’ve got this update which is a very systematic and a huge amount of work went into it and we basically used the records from hospital websites and China from amounts of revenues that are going to hospitals for transplants, a whole lot of data from within China to show - I think beyond any, any doubt - that is now an industrial scale operation that’s going on in China. So when somebody comes along from the Transplantation Society, as they did recently at a press conference in Beijing, and says, “Look oh we went to look at some hospitals” - yes they did, apparently they went to four hospitals and guess what they found, nothing, and so they came out and said to the world or anybody who would believe them - and I hope nobody will believe them - that everything is fine now and nothing is happening anymore. Well please, give us a break, we’re not stupid, people are a lot smarter than the leadership of the Transplantation Society thinks they are. SallyDavid, you mentioned the story of the person who was performing these surgeries and that person and also his wife have left China and I imagine one of the difficulties around this is finding people to testify given there must be some serious consequences if they can’t, for example, get out. DavidAbsolutely. But Sally, we talked to people who did manage to get out of the work camps - not very many - but we’ve actually spoken to 15 people where they managed to get out of the work camps and out of China. But you’re right, for people inside China it’s terribly difficult for them. And of the 15 or so people we talked to, we learned of people who have been in the camps, had been tested every three months. And again it’s interesting that only the Falun Gong practitioners are tested in these camps medically, the other prisoners or other people in the camps aren’t tested and the reason again is…JayaActually David that’s interesting you say that because I spoke to some 200 Tibetans while I was in Dharamasala and they were tested every three months also and there was evidence of Falun Gong and Tibetan monks being placed in the same facility in Sichuan Province and I have overwhelming evidence of systematic blood-taking and recording throughout Tibet. DavidSorry I should have made it clear, I wasn’t speaking about Tibet or Sichuan Province you were talking… I’m talking about other parts of China where I guess there were no Tibetans. So I’m not rebutting what you’re saying, it’s just in the camps where we’ve talked to people from… There were not Tibetans there. SallyThanks, Robin you might be a good person to answer this: I know that you’ve mentioned that Taiwan, Israel and Spain have got good legislation, is there a reason why those three countries are leading the way? RobinI think David investigated that and can speak to that, I think it’s basically they were shamed by the evidence or they allowed themselves to be shamed by the evidence. And there’s one guy in Israel in particular who took the lead because Israel was one of the countries which supplied - through the medical aid facilities and nod, nod wink, wink by the government - supplied patients to South Africa to receive Brazilian kidneys so since 2009, I think, they are adhering to the new protocol. But I think one thing that we have to be careful of is this constant reversion to the strawman argument of the Falun Gong or the Tibetans or the Krishnas or the Uyghurs, that’s all irrelevant in the sense of what’s happening. The reason is that if we took them out of the equation completely - the Falun Gong and all the people who have been detained - they’ve not even been convicted. And if they were just executing convicted criminals to do this it would be just as morally outrageous. The fact that they are solving a double problem at the same time as getting rid of dissidents and supplying the organs and making money out of it, those organs of course are more desirable because they tend to be healthier suppliers than the average criminal would be. But the point is: take the religious element or the groups that are particularly targeted out of the equation completely and say forget about that and just look at the executions, if they were just taking prisoners and executing them on demand for organs that would be outrageous. What makes it doubly outrageous is they are taking dissidents who haven’t been convicted for a crime of any sort and are getting rid of dissidents by actually taking their organs and murdering them in the process. JayaYes it’s the typical ad hominin, the attack demonises the person, attack the person to avoid the argument on a mass scale. It’s a well-used tactic by despotic regimes and what not, for continuing their abuse of minorities. DavidCompletely agree with what you’ve both said. One thing - and again, I’m sure you’re aware - the number of executions, thank goodness, in China is going down but in fact the number of transplanted organs are going up so as the number of people who have been convicted of offenses… I am told there are 58 offences in China - by the way, which are capital offences - I think the number has gone down a bit now so the demand for organs is going up and therefore more Falun Gong and other prisoners of conscious, Tibetans, Hare Krishnas is going up. Something you mentioned about Taiwan and you might all be interested to know that the Mayor of Taipei now is a transplant surgeon by the name of Ko. And Dr. Ko was actually in China trying to find out where the organs were coming from and the city - I forget the name of it where he was - he was told by the transplant surgeons there that all of the so-called donors in that city were Falun Gong practitioners. So he came back and he gave an interview to Ethan Gutmann and this interview ended up in Gutmann’s book called The Slaughter which came out in 2014. And Dr. Ko has not taken part in any of these things, he’s a very admirable person, and I’m happy to tell you that he won the election, the Mayor of Taipei by I think 700,000 votes. So he’s a good guy and he’s helped Ethan Gutmann’s research on his book a lot but…SallyAnother interesting element to add to the Taiwanese story by the sounds of it. OK we’re going to have our final song which is David’s choice of John Denver, ‘Blowing In The Wind.’ MUSIC BY JOHN DENVER – BLOWING IN THE WINDSally Hi everyone and welcome back to “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia.” We’re talking about organ harvesting and David, you might be the person to kick us off thinking about what are some of the parliamentary actions that are taking place around the world? DavidWell there’s been some very good resolutions. There was one in 2015 in the European Parliament, there was one I guess more recently last year. The UN Committee on Torture has done some very good work but the problem we face is that most of the research has been done by independent volunteers and I guess all three of us are independent volunteers. So it would be good if some UN group or a European group or parliament of New Zealand or Australia or Canada would do something - and we are certain they would come to the same conclusions that we’ve come to. And we’ve asked Amnesty International to do a study and they now handle this file out of Hong Kong and they don’t have the resources to do their own investigation but they’ve certainly joined with us in calling for an investigation of the matter so that would help because what happens - and maybe I’d better not mention the country - but I was with a foreign minister of a country fairly recently and the diplomat looked at me and said we have doubts about your evidence. He said until the United States and Canada and Britain say that this is happening we have doubts about your evidence, we can’t accept the conclusions. So it would be good to have other people doing investigations. JayaYes. It would be really good to see a multiagency approach and I think as individual investigators we’ve just been doing what we can do and that’s mostly research and travelling around and talking to people but we really need to get sort of more sophisticated now. And I think in New Zealand this roundtable could be the first step in doing that and if there is anyone out there that’s interested in getting involved in New Zealand perhaps contact the radio show and Sally can put you in touch with us. SallyYes sure. I’m also thinking there are probably quite a few barriers: political will, apathy, scepticism we talked about before, to trying to get people involved. JayaAbsolutely. Like I said, it’s just that having something so culturally and geo-physically removed. SallyMorally. JayaYes. I think there are a lot of cultural barriers to overcome but like I say, I think the most effective method for doing that is the documentaries. I really feel they have the most power to move people so I encourage people to go out there and see it themselves, it’s available for free but if you could host a screening I think that would really help but medical students… Showing it to your local politicians, inviting dignitaries that kind of stuff, anyone you know that might hold an important position. DavidYes and things are changing. I was in Seoul recently and you tried to go to a hospital in Seoul a couple of years ago and they wouldn’t let us in the building and this time the doctors hosted the conference, the students came and the medical and law students came and they showed ‘Human harvest’ so as you were saying, we are making steps, Robin and Jaya, and we have to make a lot more steps. Frankly I think we have to do more in New Zealand and Australia. JayaI agree. And I agree with you; I do think there is progress. I think China ten years ago - especially with the Olympics coming up - was just coming out as a more global country and I think people were a bit worried about what power they would wield and how they would react in international situations. But I think now people are beginning to realise they’re just another country, they actually have a lot of the same issues as other countries and that a lot of their bullying tactics are more bluster than bite and I think that people are beginning to realise that is the case and are feeling a bit more confident in speaking out and hopefully that’s a trend that continues and speeds up. DavidSomebody was complaining last night at the showing we had here in Auckland about the number of jobs in New Zealand and one of the jobs that doesn’t seem to be understood is that - I think the figure for the United States is 20 million manufacturing jobs have been lost in the United States over the last two decades and about 50,000 manufacturing plants, that’s a lot of families, a lot of livelihoods, a lot of people’s wellbeing affected. And believe me I’m not a supporter of Donald Trump but one of his advisors, Peter Navarro who has a PhD from Harvard, has actually gone over to Trump’s side because of what’s happened to the American economy, what’s happened to the American people and I’m sure it’s happening to New Zealanders and Canadians and everywhere else. The Government of China cheats so profoundly on its agreements including its agreement on the World Trade Organisation primarily by keeping their currency at a level where it gives them a huge advantage over everybody else. And remember when the G20 meeting was held recently in China? You may have noticed that they closed the economy, they stopped the economy for a week there so it would look like there wasn’t too much pollution but I happened to notice that there were 200 steel plants closed down in that particular city and if I’m not mistaken it’s about 20 steel plants in United States are bankruptcy protection. So it’s not just the human rights involved, it’s people’s livelihoods and people’s right to earn a decent living for their families that’s at issue here too. And if we can all just get a little bit smarter in realising when we’re being hoodwinked or when we’re signing an agreement with a country that shows no respect for its agreements… I’ll give you the most obvious example: the United States has an agreement with China that they will not import anything by forced labour. Well, they had this law for about 20 years and nobody bothered to enforce it. I asked somebody here in New Zealand a number of years ago if they had a free trade agreement with China, how are they going to keep forced-labour-made goods out of the country? And I’ll remember his answer for a long time. He said, “Oh we’re going to have an inspector in Beijing.” I almost fell of my chair laughing at such a foolish comment! So we’ve all got to get smarter about everything and above all we’ve got to get more determined about stopping this terrible crime against humanity in China. Sorry, another speech.JayaNo, well said. SallyJust to finish up then, Robin, have you got any final comments? RobinI think the key point about the government response: it’s not a question of political will, it’s really a question of political won’t. They won’t act, they won’t do anything that’s going to have what they perceive to be economic consequences and so human rights is trumped by economic considerations once again. I think something which we raised earlier which we need to reiterate with the use of terminology and when one is campaigning - purely to raise the level of public awareness of the outrage happening, one has to be careful that one doesn’t use terms that soften the blow. So I say, for example, organ harvesting. Well, harvesting is a nice positive term, harvesting food. It should be ‘organ removal.’ When you’re talking about executions, we’re not talking about formal executions of criminals, we’re talking about informal executions of dissidents as well. So I think the choice of your terminology is very important because the people trying to defend or deflect the arguments will take every opportunity to raise strawman arguments in order to avoid that real issue and that is the murder of people on demand for their organs. JayaYes we mustn’t underestimate the power of language. As we have seen in the recent election this Orwellian double speak has become quite prevalent throughout society now and I think we do have to be very careful about what terminology we use, I really agree with you Robin. SallyI’ve been calling this show “Organ harvesting”; maybe we need to think about calling it something else. DavidI couldn’t agree more. The problem with using the word ‘pillaging’ is a lot of people who don’t have English as their first language don’t understand that word and ‘harvesting’ has been used for so long now that there is a certain amount of awareness. But I agree with you, ‘pillaging’ is a better word. RobinCan I perhaps make a point? Even ‘pillaging’ has got a medieval context to it, of a sense of vague mayhem. It hasn’t got that sense of people being murdered and their organs being removed. Even ‘organ harvesting’ has usually been used in the sense of people collecting organs from willing donors not in the sense of people being murdered for their organs. So I think some straight talking is going to be needed. DavidWell you notice we call our website SallyUnfortunately guys, we’re running out of time. DavidThank you Sally so much and thank you Jaya and thank you Robin for this. RobinNice meeting you and Jaya nice seeing you again. DavidBye for now. SallyTo our listeners: check out our Facebook page for some of these links. ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download