Falun Gong members in Taiwan yesterday accused China of running a Nazi concentration camp-style facility to harvest organs from Falun Gong members and sell the organs to patients who need transplants.
The sect, citing information from a Chinese doctor now living in the US, claimed that a hospital in Shengyang, China, has been carrying on the illegal organ trade and the persecution of Chinese Falun Gong members since 2001.
"Since 2001, some 6,000 Falun Gong members have been sent to the Shenyang Thrombosis Hospital and only 2,000 of them are alive," Chang Ching-hsi (
"The other Falun Gong members died after their kidneys, livers, corneas or skin were removed," Chang said.
He said the doctor quit his job and emigrated to the US because he had nightmares after removing organs from Falun Gong members who were still alive.
The doctor said the harvesting of organs was carried out in the hospital's air-raid shelters and its adjacent compound nicknamed "the backyard." The bodies are then cremated in a furnace, he said.
There is no official confirmation of the human-organ trade allegations, but the doctor -- saying he judged by the sudden increase in the hospital's purchase of medical supplies -- estimated that 6,000 Falun Gong members had entered the hospital since 2001.
The Taiwanese Falun Gong group issued an open letter to US President George W Bush, asking him to raise the issue of China's harvesting organs from Falun Gong members when Chinese President Hu Jintao (
China banned the Falun Gong in 2001, but the meditation sect has spread all over the world and has millions of followers.
Several Chinese hospitals are known to use organs harvested from executed prisoners to transplant into foreign and overseas Chinese patients. They advertise transplant services on the Internet.
According to local press reports, hundreds of Taiwanese fly to China each year for liver or kidney transplants.
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