July 28, 2006
A ghoulish display awaited Red Deer residents who wandered through sunny City Hall Park on Thursday.
Two men, representing Chinese doctors, were pretending to harvest the organs of a Falun Gong practitioner, depicted by a mannequin lying on a stretcher covered by a bloody sheet.
"It's hard for people living in a safe, tolerant community to imagine what's happening to Chinese people" -- just for practicing a peaceful religion, said Doris Liu.
The Toronto director of the Global Mission to Rescue Persecuted Falun Gong Practitioners is traveling Alberta to raise public awareness of China's human rights abuses.
Groups such as Amnesty International have long condemned China for imprisoning, torturing and killing people from minority groups such as Falun Gong -- a [practice] based on meditation, gentle exercises and "the cultivation of compassion."
The latest stories of cruelty center on China involuntarily harvesting organs from prisoners, including Falun Gong practitioners.
These allegations were recently supported by respected Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas and former secretary of state for Asia and the Pacific, David Kilgour.
Both men spoke out after spending two months investigating the charges, which the Chinese government has repeatedly denied.
They concluded that "it is simply inescapable that this is going on," said Kilgour, who recently released phone transcripts from the investigation.
In one call, a Mr. Li in the Mishan City Detention Center confirmed that he did have organs from Falun Gong members, including quite a few males under the age of 40 from whom organs could be taken.
Kilgour and Matas also interviewed a surgeon's wife who said her husband harvested corneas from 2,000 people over two years. She said the victims would first be given an injection to cause heart failure.
If China rejects these "shocking" findings, said Matas, it should ensure hospitals keep records of each transplant for the inspection of human rights groups.
He and Kilgour found that 41,500 transplants performed between 2000 and 2005 had no identified source for the organs.
Liu wants the Canadian government to discourage its citizens from going to China for organ transplants. "We would also like Canadian citizens to ask their government to condemn the Chinese regime for horrific crimes against humanity."
Liu wants to increase pressure from the international community.
"We would urge China to stop the persecutions and open the doors to their labor camps, prisons and mental hospitals for independent inspections."
Red Deer resident Ed Schulte, who accepted a pamphlet from Liu, said the United Nations should pressure China for more inspections. "I'd like more documentation, proof and verification."
If people are being killed for their organs, the world needs to know about it, he added.
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