David Matas | Falun Gong: Prélèvements d’organes forcés en Chine

Hello David Mathers. Welcome to the show Etre Vrai. You are a Canadian lawyer. That's right. And you are specialized in human rights. And you are known for your 10 years of investigation on forced organ transplants in China against Lungong practitioners. 17. Ah, 17 years of investigation. And you are also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for your work. So today we are going to talk about all of this and also crimes in China. First of all, for the public who does not know Falun Gong, it is a belief of Buddha based on the principles of authenticity, benevolence and tolerance. The persecution of Lungong practitioners began in 1999. And I would like to know why you launched this investigation. There was a woman with the pseudonym Annie who made a statement in the United States, in Washington, the capital. And she said that her ex-husband had taken eye samples from Lungong practitioners in China for transplantation. The hospital is called Sujiatun. It is in the city of Shenyang. It is in the province of Liaoning in China. And she said that she did it between 2002 and 2005. She said that after the transplants that killed Lungong practitioners, the bodies were burned in a crematory. My ex-husband and I worked in this hospital from 1999 to 2004. I want to apologize on behalf of my ex-husband, because he was a neurological surgeon who had harvested organs from these Falun Gong practitioners. I heard from my ex-husband that most of them had strong bodies. When their organs were harvested, they still had breath. After their organs were harvested, their bodies were thrown directly to the incinerator without any trace left. My ex-husband made requests not to perform these kinds of surgeries, but he was not allowed to make this decision. The organs were sold for tourist transplantation. The Chinese government said that what she said was not true. There was a non-governmental organization that created a list of experts to investigate what she said. I was on the list. After 17 years of investigation, what is your conclusion? We found that there were practitioners who were in prison or in detention in China. They left the prison, the detention, and left China. We interviewed them. We also interviewed the non-practitioners of Falun Gong who were in prison or in detention and left China. They all told us, everywhere in China, that Falun Gong practitioners were examined on the type of blood, the type of tissue. It was not for their health, because they were tortured to perform Falun Gong. But it was necessary for transplantation, because you need to have the same type of blood for transplantation. It is better if you have the same type of tissue. We conducted such examinations for Falun Gong practitioners in prison and in detention. But not for the non-practitioners, only for the practitioners. It was one thing. Another thing is that we can see, with the statistics of the Chinese government, that after the beginning of the persecution of Falun Gong, the transplantation in China increased a lot. China said it was the donations. But at that time, there was no donation system. You could not make a donation unless you were a relative. So there was no explanation for the large number of transplantations. It was a second track. Another track is that we had investigators to make phone calls, to ask the hospitals if they had Falun Gong organs for transplantation. Because Falun Gong is an exercise, even with a belief, but it is an exercise. With these exercises, the practitioners are in good health, and their organs are in good health. The investigators pretended to be the parents of people who were sick and wanted transplantation. And the phone conversations were recorded, and the hospitals all over China said, yes, we had Falun Gong, and we can make an appointment. From 2006 to 2007, posing as patients' families seeking transplant opportunities, they called and interviewed 23 hospitals. They were mainly looking to see if there were organs from Falun Gong practitioners. The results were overwhelming. Subject, doctor in Shanghai Fudan University Zhongshan Hospital Transplant Center. Time, March 16, 2006. I need to consult a doctor. I'll be right back. Hello? Hello, are you a doctor? How long will the transplantation take? It will take a week or so. Do you have any Falun Gong organs? We all have Falun Gong organs. Subject, Director Song, Tianjin First Hospital. Time, March 15, 2006. We also knew that there were prices listed on the Internet, promotions for transplantation tourists. And we can make an appointment for a transplant. The date is up to you, and for any organ, even the course, even the appointment. If you make an appointment for a transplant, it means that someone will treat you when you arrive. You can see that it happens. It's another track. The persecution for Falun Gong practitioners began in 1999. There was an explosion of transplantation activities in China in 2000. Yes, 2000. Is that what you suspect? Yes, it's another track. What is the extent of these organ transplants? In the beginning, we accepted the data from the Chinese government, which said that there were about 10,000 organs per year. But in 2014, we made our own calculations, and we went to the hospitals, to the hospitals' websites, which posted the number of transplants. And we made a simple addition, hospital by hospital, and the number of organ transplants was not 10,000 per year, it was 100,000 per year. 100,000? Yes, organs, not people, but organs per year. There were still a few donations, but most of them must have been the prisoners of conscience of Falun Gong practitioners. According to you, what is your estimate of the number of Falun Gong practitioners who have been killed for their organs? If you make 100,000 every year, it will increase over the years. In the beginning, it was not 100,000, it was 70,000 in the beginning, and then it went up to 100,000. We had maybe six organs per person, the eyes, the lungs, and so on. And I would say that the victims of Falun Gong must have been in the tens of thousands over the years, but I can't tell you the exact number. This crime of taking forced organs was organized by the Chinese state? Yes, because it happens in prisons, in military hospitals, in government institutions. It's not a private market, it's a market to finance the hospital. And after this investigation, does it make you see the nature of the Communist Party much clearer? That is to say, can they kill their people like that? But taking forced organs was not the first time that the Communist Party killed people for a reason. It was part of their history. A massacre after another. For me, it's the continuation of the Communist Party's history. For people who don't believe that such a crime can exist in China, what do you want to tell them? Is it real? I want to tell them to look at the evidence. Because it's not necessary to believe me, because everything we have written, we can see what we have seen. We don't have confidential information. Most of our evidence comes from the Chinese government. We have kept all the original sources in the archives. If you have any doubts, do the research yourself. Do you have any reason why the Chinese state is doing such a terrible thing? I would say that there is not one reason, there are several. There is the money, because they earn a lot of money. There is the need for money for the health system, because the communists in China have changed. They left socialism and accepted capitalism. They took the money from the state, from the hospitals. The hospitals needed another source of funds, and this other source is the Pentagon. That's one thing. Another reason is the persecution of Falun Gong. The government started the persecution of Falun Gong because it was too widespread, too popular. They were afraid because it was so popular. But they couldn't say, we are doing a repression of Falun Gong because it is too popular. They created a false narrative. The false narrative is that Falun Gong is bad, even bad for health. They demonized Falun Gong. For the people who know what Falun Gong is, we know that it is false. But for the people who work for the government, in the prisons, in the hospitals, in the Communist Party, they accept what the Party says. That's how they demonize the victims. That's another reason. Thirdly, as I told you, the Communist Party, its part, how it killed the innocents with Falun Gong, that's the whole story of the Communist Party. For them, it's the same thing with another target. For them, it's easier to do that when they did something like that before. I would say that's another reason for what's happening. As Falun Gong practitioners, their belief is based on authenticity, benevolence and tolerance. The execution of Falun Gong is against the fundamental human values. Yes, I agree. Before concluding our interview, what is your message? Even to the French hospitals, that is, to cooperate with China for transplantation. What is your message? The message I give them is not to cooperate. Cooperation is complicity, and complicity is a crime. With cooperation, everyone who cooperates is a criminal. Thank you very much, Daniel Mathis. You're welcome. Where I can see a civilian clothed man lying on the ground with a single bullet wound to his right chest. My chief surgeon then ordered me, ordered and guided me, extracted the liver and took the kidneys. The man was alive. He tried to resist my scalp cut, but too weak to avoid there was bleeding. He was still alive, but I didn't feel guilty. In fact, I didn't feel anything, but like a full programmed robot doing its task. I thought I was carrying my duty to eliminate them, eliminate the enemy of the state. It was called the slaughter, because these people, Uyghurs, Falun Gong, Falun Gong pregnant women, are not even given any form to sign. There is no consent form to write out, as a final act, I want to donate my organs to the state. The government in China is doing a terrible thing, which is comparable to what the Nazis did. The military is making money off of it. The hospitals are making money off of it. The middlemen are making money off of it. And we talk about money. We're talking about a multi-million dollar operation. If you are going to China right now to get an organ, chances are a perfectly innocent person is dying for you. After I left China, and my perspective totally changed, then I said, oh my God, I committed a crime.