China kills Falun Gong members for organs, ex-MP says
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=4c04f2ba-72bd-4190-879d-ec699696d2e9
National Post, 2013-06-12
OTTAWA — The Conservative government is planning to investigate allegations in a
new report that the Chinese government and its agencies are torturing religious
prisoners and harvesting their organs, Tory MP Deepak Obhrai indicated on
Thursday.
“We take these allegations quite seriously, and we’ll look into that,” said
Obhrai, who is parliamentary secretary to Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay.
“We’ll look to have it confirmed.”
The report, prepared by former Alberta MP David Kilgour and international human
rights lawyer David Matas, included transcripts of recorded conversations in
Mandarin with hospital and detention-centre officials who admitted they had
organs available for transplants from Falun Gong prisoners.
The Chinese government banned the practice of Falun Gong in the country in 1999,
and rounded up its members accusing them of anti-government activities.
“What we’ve got here is a new, shocking, different form of evil,” said Matas at
a news conference. “The Chinese Communist party sees the Falun Gong as an
ideological threat to the regime, because of the large numbers, the ability to
mobilize a large group of people, their commitment and their tenacity.”
Obhrai said the government had already been concerned about the issue before the
report was released, asking the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture to
look into allegations of organ harvesting and human rights violations.
A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Canada has denied the government has
any policy to forcibly harvest organs, dismissing the allegations as “rumours
spread by the Falun Gong.”
The report recommends the Canadian government revoke passports of citizens
suspected of travelling to China for transplants and stop Chinese doctors from
studying transplants in Canada.