Police across China are rounding up
Falun Gong practitioners and forcing
them to give blood samples in order to
set up a DNA database, said a report
published last week on the Minghui
website. The police are believed to be
doing the testing in order to expand the
list of potential donors whose organs
may be taken for forced harvesting.
Minghui is a clearinghouse for reports
by Falun Gong practitioners about the
persecution they suffer in China. A July
19 article lists over 25 incidents, some
involving as many as 10 practitioners,
in Liaoning, Guizhou, Hebei, and
Hunan provinces, as well as in Beijing.
These provinces are dispersed
geographically, stretching from the far
northeast of the country to the
southwest.
In a typical incident, Falun Gong
practitioners report police breaking into
their homes and extracting blood
against their will, sometimes forcibly.
An investigation in 2006 into forced
organ harvesting from Falun Gong
practitioners by international human
rights lawyer David Matas and the
Canadian M.P. David Kilgour
uncovered how practitioners held in
labor camps were selected by
authorities for the drawing of blood
and other tests. Kilgour and Matas's
report was later published as the book
Bloody Harvest.
The testing done was consistent with
determining someone's suitability as an
organ donor, according to Bloody
Harvest. Nonpractitioners held in the
camps were not chosen for these
expensive tests.
Kilgour and Matas listed this testing as
one piece of evidence supporting the
conclusion that practitioners detained
in China were being used as a live
organ bank.
In a phone interview, Matas
volunteered that he had never before
heard of practitioners who were not in
detention having their blood drawn.
"These tests are presumptively for
organ harvesting, unless the authorities
provide an alternative explanation,
which they haven't done," Matas said.
Ethan Gutmann, the author of the
forthcoming book The Slaughter: Mass
Killings, Organ Harvesting, and
China's Secret Solution to Its Dissident
Problem (Prometheus Press) had also
never heard before of testing done on
practitioners not in detention.
Gutmann links the testing to the
decision this spring by the Chinese
regime not to stop using the organs of
executed prisoners. Chinese officials
had earlier announced the
establishment of a volunteer organ
donation system that would take the
place of using prisoners' organs.
"The Chinese medical establishment
essentially reneged on all their claims
of organ harvesting reform back in
March, so the timing appears to fit,"
Gutmann wrote in an email. "If
Minghui's information is correct, the
situation in China is rapidly
deteriorating."
Matas speculated that this new tactic
for gathering practitioners' data might
be linked to the shutdown of the labor
camps in China at the end of 2013.
"It sounds like an adaptation to the
closing of the labor camps," Matas said.
"They only needed the practitioners in
the labor camps to keep them as an
organ donor bank. If authorities can
have that, then they don't need to keep
the practitioners in detention."
"This is typical of things under
communism," Matas said. "Things
change but they don't get better. They
get worse in a different way."
According to the July 17 Minghui
report, officers from a police station in
the city of Weining, Guizhou Province,
told practitioners the blood samples
were being used to set up a DNA
database.
In other Minghui reports, practitioners
have reported having officers forcibly
swab their mouths in order to take
DNA samples. In one case, officers
went into the home of a practitioner
who was missing and collected DNA off
of his personal effects.
Gutmann noted that the testing used in
China to check organ viability has
evolved from extensive medical testing
to the use of DNA samples. The testing
described by Minghui appears to be
consistent with that, he said.
The new testing "Could be just a scare
tactic," Gutmann said. "Practitioners in
China are surely aware of the
significance of these sorts of tests."
"The problem is that even if it is a scare
tactic, history shows that scare tactics
may become reality," Gutmann said.
"I am reluctant to use phrases such as
'a final solution' at this point, but I
must confess that's exactly the hideous
phrase that popped into my mind when
I read the Minghui report."
"This is a truly alarming development,"
Gutmann said. "The U.S. StateDepartment must respond."
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld from Glo Mobile.