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Report on forced organ harvesting in China

chinatribunal.com

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Re: Report on forced organ harvesting in China

#81

Post by bayesian_horse »

rdl wrote: post #55
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese government itself has admitted that this was done in the past but they promised to no longer allow it to happen...on multiple occasions. That China did this isn’t really in doubt, the argument is only about whether they still do it. The central government has a hard time getting rid of this practice because they aren’t as omnipotent as they appear, there is a lot of vested interests that localities contin…

Also the "we can get you organs in a day, give us the specific requirements..." is a pretty serious red flag even if there's a high normal donation rate.

Yes, I would agree there. Though that might also be a sign of an opt-out donor policy.

Also, the particular crime charged here is that not only are organs harvested from prisoners / execution victims, but prisoners are specifically killed in order to harvest their organs, including a pre-execution check for histocompatibility.

There is a distinction to be made between small scale criminal behavior on the part of the hospitals and prisons, and a large-scale state-sanctioned practice of illicit organ harvesting.

Re: Report on forced organ harvesting in China

#82

Post by hirundo »

It's important to realize that this isn't what the Chinese government is capable of, it's what governments are capable of. It can't happen here overnight, but it can happen here. Just look at the otherization and dehumanization increasingly embraced by people across the political spectrum, and dial it up to eleven.

This should give people at least sympathy, if not agreement, with gun rights advocates. While private guns can't stop a powerful government from having their way with us, they can at least make it more expensive. Would China be able to do this as quietly and without civil war if the Chinese people had the same number of private guns per capita as the US?

Many of us quite reasonably believe that gun rights aren't worth the huge number of gun crimes in this country. Others of us fear state actors even more than individual criminals and feel that the high cost of gun crimes is worth the price. Even if you disagree, stories like this should give you empathy for their argument.

If you think it can't happen here, did you think that this country would move in the political direction that it has in the last few years? I didn't. Uncertainty about the social future should translate into humility about the quality of our prognostications ... and fear about how bad it could get, and how fast.

Re: Report on forced organ harvesting in China

#83

Post by [deleted] »

Noumenon72 wrote: post #2

If you're going to potentially violate human rights and set up incentives to murder people for profit, saving lives like this is the best reason to do it. The long waiting lists for organs in the US show that our choice is a tradeoff, not a best practice. Insofar as our system is caused by squeamishness and the desire to feel morally pure, it is harming people unnecessarily too.

[deleted]

Re: Report on forced organ harvesting in China

#85

Post by luckylion »

HeWhoLurksLate wrote: post #3

While stopping short of concluding that the killing and forced organ removal of these peoples constitutes genocide in its legal definition (due to a lack of proof of actual intent to commit genocide), the panel nonetheless condemned the forced organ removals as a crime against humanity and an act of "unmatched wickedness". This article made me shiver. How did China get away with this for so long?

> How did China get away with this for so long?

There's a busy "organ transplant tourism" going on, from Japan, Korea and Western countries to China. You can be certain that's it's not the poor, powerless from these countries that profit from the murder-for-organ-harvesting schemes the Chinese run in their prisons.

Re: Report on forced organ harvesting in China

#86

Post by AsyncAwait »

ilikehurdles wrote: post #60
AsyncAwait wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I'd imagine you'd ignore U.S. abuses and provocations, (Iran?), I imagine? Is China worse than Saudi Arabia for example? Because I can't imagine U.S. speaking strongly against KSA, can you? The U.S. doesn't really care about human rights, or its own abuse of them, (was any top official prosecuted for Iraq?), so you'd be voting for posturing.

See, this is pretty typical of how the Chinese are told about their own government’s abuses in schools and media: “but what about the other guy?!”. It’s just not a valid argument. It serves only to change the topic and justify nationalism.

I just want OP to be aware that if he wants to vote for somebody like Trump for i.e. his 'stance' on China, it's worth noting that the U.S. doesn't really care, it's just posturing, this is not to say I like what China does here, if they're indeed doing it.

It's possible to hold both of these positions i.e. being against the Iraq war and not believing that the U.S. really believes in the propaganda they're putting out on it does not mean you had to like Saddam.

Re: Report on forced organ harvesting in China

#88

Post by scarmig »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #43
jtdev wrote: post #12

A hard line stance on China’s human rights abuses, currency and trade manipulation, and intellectual property theft will be a top requirement for my support of 2020 US presidential candidates.

While I'd imagine you'd ignore U.S. abuses and provocations, (Iran?), I imagine? Is China worse than Saudi Arabia for example? Because I can't imagine U.S. speaking strongly against KSA, can you? The U.S. doesn't really care about human rights, or its own abuse of them, (was any top official prosecuted for Iraq?), so you'd be voting for posturing.

Yes, China is worse. It harvests tens of thousands of organs from political prisoners. It holds hundreds of thousands of minorities in concentration camps in Xinjiang. And that barely scratches the surface.

The KSA needs to face severe repercussions too, but repression, censorship, and extralegal assassinations are all in a day's work for the PRC.

Re: Report on forced organ harvesting in China

#89

Post by bayesian_horse »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #27
bayesian_horse wrote: post #11

I have read about the possibility of large-scale harvesting of organs from prisoners for a few months now. First thing to note about this particular article is that "The China Tribunal" has no formal or legal standing, it is basically a volunteer organization trying to collect evidence. When they say "Worst Fears [...] Were Just confirmed" they are at best misleading. There has been a notable dearth of reporting by t…

The Chinese government itself has admitted that this was done in the past but they promised to no longer allow it to happen...on multiple occasions. That China did this isn’t really in doubt, the argument is only about whether they still do it. The central government has a hard time getting rid of this practice because they aren’t as omnipotent as they appear, there is a lot of vested interests that localities contin…

They admitted to having used organs from prisoners with relatively "valid" death sentence in so far that there is any such thing as a fair trial in China.

What is alleged here is much worse: Prisoners of Conscience (and not drug traffickers or murderers) are particularly selected for their histocompatibility and executed "on demand".

Therefor I think these allegations need further proof. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and that's why I suggest a cautious approach to this story.

Re: Report on forced organ harvesting in China

#90

Post by everybodyknows »

stavros wrote: post #21

Setting aside the persecutions, torture and possible genocide, which are undoubtedly heinous, something perplexes me: Why do we consider it ethical for a state to execute prisoners, but consider harvesting their (now useless) organs to save more lives is ethically abhorrent? I am much more outraged by the fact that they're killing people for political reasons, the fact that they're harvesting their organs afterwards…

For a start, how about the observation that ponying up cash for an organ apparently triggers scheduling of the state murder?

"...man in need of a kidney..." "...organs are still readily available in China for transplant tourists with very short waiting times."

https://chinatribunal.com/reading-material/

Matching of donor kidneys to immune system of specific recipients is critical to avoiding rejection.

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