Taiwan's Falun Gong society yesterday asked US President George W. Bush to raise the issue of China's harvesting organs from Falun Gong members in his talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao (
In a letter handed to the de facto US embassy, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), Chang Ching-hsi (張清溪), president of the Taiwan Falun Dafa Society, accused China of running a Nazi-style concentration camp facility to harvest organs from around 6,000 detained Falun Gong members and selling them to patients who need transplants.
Taiwan Falun Gong reported on March 20 that the operations were being performed at Shenyang Thrombosis Hospital in northeast China.
According to their source, an unnamed doctor that has since emigrated to the US, organ harvesting was carried out in the hospital's air raid shelters and the bodies of the Falun Gong members were cremated in a furnace.
China denied the accusations.
China banned the "cult" in 2001 and followers who refused to renounce their beliefs were detained for re-education. The movement has millions of followers worldwide.
The group is requesting that Bush bring up the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners with Hu during their meeting on Thursday in Washington.
"Every minute of delay will result in irremediable loss of innocent lives and will be a disgrace to the human race," the letter said.
According to Chang, organ transplant centers across China are working overtime to perform operations before new regulations take effect on July 1.
"Hospital staff members told undercover investigators that patients should come in quickly if they want a transplant, as the hospital can find matching organs in as short as one or two days and it will be difficult after this batch of organs is used up," he said.
Several Chinese hospitals advertise organ-transplant service on the Internet but do not reveal the source of human organs. It is alleged that the organs are harvested from executed prisoners to transplant into foreign and overseas Chinese patients.
According to local press reports, hundreds of Taiwanese patients fly to China each year for liver or kidney transplants.
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