Organs for sale. Has this thought ever crossed your mind? From what we have read and heard, activities related to this practice are even now being carried out on individuals.
In one of the readers' correspondence columns of the International Herald Tribune, a man offered to sell his kidney in order to feed his family. That man was forced by the needs of life. He was jobless, and his wife and three children were hungry.
The problem faced by this man was a special case. He was not trying to be a role model. It was just one of many other extraordinary cases. Nevertheless, this case touched the hearts of many people such that, in the end, he did not need to sell his kidney, because a wealthy individual helped him by offering him some money and a job.
In other circumstances, a kidney "transaction" may occur for mutual benefit. The effort to save someone with kidney failure becomes the central activity, not the process of selling the organ.
The backgrounds in these two cases evoke a strong sense of compassion and support. This is very different from the phenomenon that the Falun Gong Association is focusing on. This group has revealed that illegal organ harvesting is happening on a large scale in China, an activity far from human.
On Sunday, October 1st, outside one of the shopping malls in Batam, local Falun Gong practitioner strongly protested the illegal organ harvesting by the Chinese Government. They said that the organ harvesting going on in China is a violation of basic human rights.
An independent investigation team that released its report on July 6th, 2006, concluded that human rights violations are indeed taking place in China. A group of investigators, including former Canadian Secretary of State (Asia Pacific) and Canadian Parliament Member David Kilgour and International Human rights lawyer David Matas, has released an independent report on the allegations of vital organs being harvested from Falun Gong practitioners in China.
Matas said that organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners is a form of evil that we have never seen before on this planet. He said that, in the six-year period from 2000 to 2005, there were around 60,000 organ transplants in China. "While six years before the persecution of Falun Gong, there were 18,500 organ transplants in China," Matas explained.
In order to further confirm the investigation results from the previous teams, the Falun Gong Association invites all parties who are interested in conducting a follow-up investigation. This investigation needs to be conducted over a period of time, since there are still a large number of Falun Gong practitioners currently detained in concentration camps. They are being tortured and their organs taken against their will.
If the investigation results further confirm these human rights violation in China, without doubt, everyone and every country will fully support Falun Gong.
Organ harvesting from unwilling donors is a crime against humanity.
Perhaps addressing the human rights' violations that are happening in China will enable us to create a concrete procedure to save more lives on a bigger scale. We all need to be actively involved in protesting against genocide and illegal organ harvesting, wherever they may occur.
Translated from the original article in the International Herald Tribune, Batam, Indonesia
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