Former Canadian Minister of State David Kilgour and I wrote a report on organ sourcing in China, released fi rst June 2006 and, in a second version, January 2007 under the title "Bloody Harvest: Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners in China". In that report we concluded that between 2001 and 2006 China killed Falun Gong practitioners in the tens of thousands so that their organs could be sold to foreign transplant tourists. Falun Gong is an exercise regime with a spiritual foundation based on ancient Chinese traditions banned in 1999.

China has no national organized organ donation system, nor a law allowing organ sourcing from the brain dead, cardiac alive. There is a strong cultural aversion against both organ donations and organ sourcing from the cardiac alive. Nor does China have a national organ matching and distribution system. Organs for transplants almost exclusively come from prisoners, whether prisoners sentenced to death or Falun Gong practitioners. Since the report was released, David Kilgour and I travelled to over forty countries and over seventy cities to seek to end the abuse we identifi ed. Subsequent to our report, China changed both its death penalty and organ transplant laws. The combined impact was to cut down on transplant tourism to China. One question this presentation would address is the extent to which abusive sourcing of organs from Falun Gong practitioners remains in light of these changed laws and their application.

The initial response of the Government of China to the report David Kilgour and I wrote was propagandistic, without addressing the substance of the research. More recently, particularly in the last few months, the Government of China has come out with specifi c responses - by way of letter to the United Nations Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak and also by way of video, interviewing some of the sources of our report. The presentation would evaluate these responses and re-assess our own conclusions in light of these responses.

Because of our travels and the publicity surrounding our report, we received much additional evidence relevant to the subject of our report. Some it was just more of the same. For instance, we continued to fi nd new examples of Falun Gong practitioners who in Chinese detention were systematically blood tested while their co-prisoners who were not practitioners were not blood tested. As well, categories of evidence relevant to the conclusion of our report but not previously considered need to be examined. One example is the presence or absence of holding cells for those awaiting execution after having been sentenced to death.

Some of the new evidence is quite recent. For instance, a new witness, a former prisoner, testifying to organ sourcing from Falun Gong practitioners, has surfaced just a few weeks ago. A third purpose of the presentation would be to bring the evidentiary analysis of our report up to date by referring to the most recent evidence available.