Members of the Knesset

Members of the Government

This letter is a reaction to the comment "The Falun Gong: Background Material" written by Professor Yuri Pines. In that comment, he labels as a lie the claim of "murder of thousands of its [Falun Gong's] believers and systematic harvesting of their internal organs for organ trafficking, in Sujiatun hospital in Northeast China".

Professor Pines asserts that we signed on to this claim without bothering to examine its reliability - except for interviews with Falun Gong adherents. He asserts that the claim has been rebutted since then by a long line of independent investigations, including those conducted by people opposing the Chinese regime residing in the US, the US Congress Commission, and independent journalists.

Professor Pines is wrong when he asserts that our report on the killing of Falun Gong for their organs is limited to interviews with Falun Gong practitioners and has been rebutted by a long line of independent investigations. Our report, now in book form under the title Bloody Harvest: The Killing of Falun Gong for their organs published by Seraphim Editions, November 2009, is based on a wide variety of evidence, much of it from official Chinese government sources. Moreover, the report and book establish that killing of Falun Gong for their organs has occurred throughout China and not just in Sujiatun.

The statement of Professor Pines that our report is limited to interviews with Falun Gong practitioners means not just that he has not read the report. It means that he has never even seen it, never so much as cast an eye over it. For, the fact that our report is based on a wide variety of independently verifiable information including, in large part, Chinese government sources, is observable even from the most cursory glance.

It is not as if our report is hard to find. The first version came out July 2006. The second version was released January 2007. The book is the third version. The first and second versions are available on the internet at the click of a mouse. The internet address is <www.organharvestinvestigation.net>.

Professor Pines has not bothered to make the simple effort to glance over our report or even the table of contents, readily accessible on the internet. It is stunning to see a university professor with access to independent information assert such blatantly incorrect information as fact without even a minimal effort to determine whether it is true.

Moreover, independent investigations have supported our report and its conclusions - Kirk Allison of the University of Minnesota, British transplant surgeon Tom Treasure, and Yale student researcher Hao Wang. These independent investigations are posted on our web site and reprinted in the book Bloody Harvest.

Many academic publications insist on peer review by two qualified researchers in the field before publication. Because of the independent verification through Kirk Allison, Tom Treasure and Hao Wong our own work has passed this peer review threshold.

In support of his assertion that our report has been rebutted by a long line of independent investigations, Professor Pines refers to one newspaper article. The article was written by Glen McGregor ("Inside China's Crematorium "Nov. 24, 2007) who was given an all expense paid Potemkin village tour by the Communist Party/Government of China.

Glen McGregor's trip to China was, he reports, arranged and paid for by the Chinese Medical Association. According to its charter, the CMA is funded by the Chinese government and its leaders must "uphold the principles, guidelines, and policies of the [communist] party".

More than half of the presidents of the CMA have at the same time been the Chinese health minister or deputy minister. Two of the honourary leaders of the CMA at the time Glen McGregor wrote his article were a current and a past vice‑chairmen of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress. Other CMA executives listed at the time of the publication of the article were heads or high‑level administrators in hospitals that were named in organ harvesting evidence.

The CMA has played an active role in the persecution of Falun Gong. On August 10, 1999, just three weeks after the Chinese communist leader launched the persecution of Falun Gong, Zhang Wenkang, the Chinese Health Minister and CMA president, wrote an op‑ed in the state‑run national newspaper lauding the party's crackdown. His article, titled "Medical professionals should expose and denounce Falun Gong in depth," promised that both party members in the health system and medical professionals would "firmly carry out the spirit of the Central Party Committee and fight the Falun Gong organization to the end."

This article by Glen McGregor hardly qualifies as an investigation, let alone a long line of investigations, and it certainly was not independent. Our own investigation, in contrast, was entirely self financed. We received funding from no one. We received reimbursement of expenses from no one. We did not restrict our investigation to material pre-selected by the Communist Party of China or by anybody. For Professor Pines to characterize a journalist's trip arranged by and all expenses paid for by an agent and mouthpiece of the persecutor as an independent investigation into the persecution makes the concept of independence meaningless.

David Matas and David Kilgour