His Blood Type Matched an Officer’s… The Army Took His Kidneys | Raymond Zhang

One doctor asked me to take his eyeballs. When I looked at him, I saw fear in his eyes. His eyelids were moving. He was alive. The boy killed in this film for his organs was a 17-year-old army soldier. In this episode, I sit down with award-winning filmmaker Raymond Zhang, the director of State Organs, a powerful new film exposing the brutal realities of forced organ harvesting in China. My sister loved singing and danced well. My sister was kidnapped by police. It was finding the original recording of Yun that inspired me to start the film at the very beginning. It's a story of redemption of a surgeon who once participated in these crimes. This omnipresent fear and never-ending pressure suddenly vanished. He felt like he found a form of redemption. It's the powerful journey of a victim's family from grief to strength. When we get to heaven, we will see each other again. On the spiritual level, the further you distance yourself from the CCP and the closer you are to the divine, the safer and happier your life is going to be. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek. Raymond Zhang, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Thank you for having me, Jan. You actually have made three documentaries. Two of them have been focused on forced organ harvesting. The first, of course, was Human Harvest. It won the Peabody Award, which made it the darling of the Canada Media Fund. Then it also had this incredible reach through an online film festival where literally millions saw it. The second film was particularly close to my heart. It's the film Avenues of Escape. That's because the film is about this underground railroad that was bringing Chinese prisoners of conscience out from China through the Golden Triangle to Bangkok so they could get UN refugee status and get resettled in free countries. My wife and I, back in 2005-2006, were actually working on this railroad. It was wonderful to have a documentation of that in a documentary. Very powerful. I'd recommend that to everyone. Tell me briefly how going through the process of making those first two documentaries inspired state organs. In 2006, when I first heard about organ harvesting, I was shocked but not that surprised. Born and raised in mainland China, I knew CCP had killed about 60 million to 80 million Chinese people over the past 70 years. So I thought I already knew those things. But in 2016, when I first met Dr. George Zheng, I was utterly shocked. The degree of the cruelty of the organ harvesting is beyond imagination. The boy killed in this film for his organs was a 17-year-old army soldier. Since he was under 18, his parents spent about 10,000 Chinese yuan to get him into the army and hope he could get a better job opportunity in the future. Because he was from a countryside, he didn't know how to please or bribe his supervisor. He got a conflict with his officer and was put into a military jail. His blood type matched that of a high-level military officer. So the army decided to kill this boy for his two kidneys and one eyeball. His parents probably never know what happened to their kid. One doctor asked me to take his eyeballs. When I looked at him, I saw fear in his eyes. His eyelids were moving. He was alive. Dr. George Zheng told me it's so demonic. The position cut into the body, the blood springing out, and when he took out the kidney, the vessels still pulsating and trembling. Normal person in that situation would go insane. Overwhelmed with emotion, a couple times he rushed into the washroom, turned on the faucet, and cried down there for a long, long time. The interview stopped on day one because of emotional breakdown. But after the interview, he told me with tears in his eyes, he had been living in the extreme fear every day over the past 17 years. Being scared day and night since there's a secret military operation. He always felt he was being hunted. Someone was chasing him, attempting to assassinate him. But after the interview, to his surprise, this omnipresent fear and never-ending pressure suddenly vanished. As if his life and soul were relieved and redeemed. He felt like he found a form of redemption. When I looked at Dr. George Zheng's eyes, I saw a mixture of complex emotions of fear, worry, but also the courage and determination. Until today, Dr. George Zheng is the only military surgeon who directly involved in organ harvesting and has the moral courage to stand up to expose his most secret state crime. His courage and determination deeply touched me. Something that was really incredible in the film was you actually have this, what I call a voice from history, you know, from 2002, Yun Zhang, you actually have her original voice, her testament. It was finding the original recording of Yun that inspired me to start the film at the very beginning. My sister loved singing and danced well. My sister was kidnapped by police. This film features the original recordings of Yun right before she was kidnapped by the police. After her husband was killed while in detention, she shared his story and distributed flyers in Qingdao, China. This made her a target by the police who handed her down. At about 2 a.m. on April 19, 2001, she left messages for her sister in Toronto, Canada, recounting her family's plight. Her speech was somewhat hurried as she has felt that her situation was extremely dangerous because the policemen were outside her door. In the recording, she said her family's experience was only the tip of the iceberg in the persecution in China and hope the international community could help to end this persecution. And this was her last voice left of the world and was her only wish. The film also features a policeman who participated in this persecution. Can you tell me about him? Sure. A police officer on guard was deeply moved by the steadfast faith of the Falun Gong practitioner. He was a teacher in China. Before this, he had suffered even more humiliation. We had a lot of police officers who were perverted. They would threaten him. They would rape him. There were too many of them. We had to interrogate and torture him for a week. There were countless scars on his body. He was electrocuted. At this time, we sent two people to a secret office in Liaoning Provincial Public Security Bureau. One was a military doctor from the People's Liberation Army, Shen Yun Army General Hospital. The other was a surgeon who graduated from the Second Army University. We sent him to a surgery room in Jingren Hospital. We carried out a set of operations. At that time, each of us took a gun and stood by the side without using any anesthetic. The gun was pointed at my chest. The blood spurted out of my chest. The woman screamed, saying, You killed me. How could you kill so many of us? For the sake of your faith, you persecuted us. The doctor hesitated for a moment. Then he looked at me and our leader. Our leader nodded. He said, I don't believe it. But after seeing their courage, it was so shocking. No matter how strong the man was, when the sharp knife pulled open his chest, blood spurted out of his chest. At that time, I still said, You did a good job. The moment I thought of him, I felt sorry for him. He felt profound respect for them. His reflection and repentance brought him the redemption. The female practitioner who was killed held on her belief until her last moment, awakening the conscience of many, similar to how Jesus saved the two thieves beside him before his crucifixion. For those involved in the persecution, as long as there is a trace of conscience, there's still hope for them. The weakening of their conscience become the process of saving themselves. Raymond, of course, you know that I'm completely with you in this trying to expose more and more people, especially people who are making decisions in our societies about this issue. We've already seen how the lack of action from free countries around this issue when the Falun Gong were initially targeted over decades, that it seems to have now shifted also towards the Uyghur populations as millions of people were incarcerated in the camps. I think you have a really good point in saying that this is something that needs to be dealt with quickly. Let's talk about a couple of the characters. I found this documentary particularly powerful in that you get to know a few people very well that are connected to the issue. Of course, Michelle is living in Canada with her kids, and it's her sister Yun who has disappeared in China. Tell me a little bit about how you found them and tell me a bit about them and their story. This is the journey of the weakening of the victim's family. Michelle Jiang didn't know how to explain what's going on to her children. If the country and society can do this, what hope is left? She saw no hope. Michelle was once an atheist. She didn't understand the energy practice, but gradually came to understand it, and eventually, he embraced the spiritual practice. This is their journey of weakening where she found hope through the disappear. Then we have her father, Jim Zhang. Professor Jim Zhang, a victim's father, was a military officer who served the CCP for most of his life. Spending 18 years searching for his missing daughter, going to various government agencies, police stations, labor camps, only to face evasion, cover-ups, intimidation, and eventually, the death threat. There is no point in living. I have no way out. During these 18 years, he went from fully trusting the CCP to recognizing his evil and lies. Along the way, they uncovered a most secret state crime and a grassroots movement that inspired the nation and then the world. Kaohsiung City Council has received a bomb threat for its plans to organize a screening of state organs, a documentary on China's government-run organ harvesting operations. The threat said several explosives had been put in the city council building and they would explode at 5 p.m. on Tuesday if the event wasn't publicly canceled. Raymond, explain to me some of the challenges that you faced with screening this film, especially in Taiwan. I understand there were bomb threats and even death threats and a multitude of challenges. Until today, there are more than 120 death threat letters in Taiwan. When I heard the news, my first concern was the safety of the audience. After the local police conducted a thorough investigation, they found no explosives in the cinema. This became clear as all those emails were sent via VPN from outside China. And this confirmed this is a typical intimidation tactic used by the Chinese Communist Party aimed at disrupting the normal life of Taiwanese people. City Council Speaker Kang Yuchun says the screening will continue as scheduled, adding that she is not scared of the threats. A meeting will be convened to ensure security on the day of the event. So what was the reaction of the people? Taiwan news agencies believe that this film hits the most sensitive nerve of the CCP. Some legislators believe that this film is an expose of the most secret state crime in China. So from what I understand, even the Taiwanese president actually got threatened as a result of showing this film. Can you just clarify for me why? Here's a story from Taiwan. When we held a press conference in the Legislative Yuan in Taipei, a legislator said with emotion, In 2006, two young people in this very same room held a press conference to expose this crime of organ harvesting. And 18 years later, these two young people became Taiwan's president and vice president. In response to the PRC government's escalating persecution and unlawful imprisonment of Falun Gong practitioners, and the shocking reports of torture, live organ harvesting, and appalling violations of human rights, 52 members of this house have united to sign a motion condemning these atrocities in the strongest possible terms. On behalf of the Legislative Yuan, we call upon international organizations to launch an immediate and independent investigation to expose the truth, stop these crimes, and protect innocent lives. The characters in this film symbolize the various roles played by people, both in China and around the world, during this ongoing genocide. We live in a time where great good and great evil coexist. This page of history will be turned over soon. I hope when we look back, none of us will have any regret. We all have done what we should and what we could. And so during the film, you actually experienced your own personal transformation. So tell me about that. Before producing this film, we have an agreement on the team. We hope all the participants will benefit from the process of producing, distributing, or promoting the film. And how can we achieve that? Chinese saying goes, art reflects the artist. The work of art often shows the true inner world of the artist. For example, Zhang Daqian, famous Chinese painter and calligrapher, before painting the Bodhisattva, he would wash his hands, change clothes nicely, and meditate. And after completing the painting, he would write, Zhang Daqian paint with reverence on the artwork. With that in mind, I paid close attention to my cultivation of moral characters and cultivate the kindness within myself. I feel I have a cleaner and clearer mind. At the same time, I feel true freedom that every artist dreamed of. A true freedom from inside out. A feeling that I never have experienced before. To my humble understanding, the true freedom means being free from sinful desires, being free from complaint, and being free from selfishness. Only then can you be your true self and express yourself freely. That's an amazing process to go through as you're making a film. I'm very interested in your own journey that you described, right? Of personal redemption. So yeah, tell me about that. Producing this documentary is also a journey of self-redemption for myself as well. Born and raised in mainland China, and I thought I had a clear understanding of the CCP. Despite living overseas for over 20 years, during the production, I can always found the CCP culture on me. So peeling away this CCP culture layer by layer become a process of saving myself and restoring my faith in the divine. As my faith growing stronger, I feel like I am being taken care of and blessed by the above. On the spiritual level, the further you distance yourself from the CCP, and the closer you are to the divine, the safer and happier your life is going to be. Well, Raymond Zhang, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. Thank you very much. Thank you all for joining Raymond Zhang and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek. I don't know if you've seen the film State Organs yet or not. But the reason I invited Raymond on the show is because I felt like it really conveyed the horror of what was happening in a meaningful way, in a way that people could accept. Indeed, I'm in the process of publishing a book, it comes out March 17, Killed to Order, in the same vein. The thing about Raymond, which frankly surprised me, or I guess I wasn't expecting, is that in our interview, what came out was how he was really living his faith through making the film. That's something that I deeply appreciate, something that I'm inspired by, and I think lived a little bit as I was writing Killed to Order as well. At killedtoorder.com, if you'd like to pre-order it, it comes out March 17. It's my hope that films like State Organs and my book, Killed to Order, will really help us finally end this atrocity, or at the very least end our complicity in it actually happening.