The fate of the disgraced former Politburo member Bo Xilai has engrossed Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders since his police chief, Wang Lijun, attempted to defect to the United States on Feb. 6.
At issue is not Bo’s individual fate, but rather how widely other CCP officials are implicated in Bo’s crimes. According to an investigation by the Central Discipline Inspection Committee, many high ranking officials are involved in Bo’s case.
The concern is not for the corruption crimes Bo would be tried for in criminal court, as announced by the regime mouthpiece, Xinhua. While it is true that almost any CCP official could be successfully prosecuted for corruption if the need arises to do so, that is an old story.
The real concerns the Party leadership has focused on are the crimes that Xinhua does not mention—crimes against humanity and in particular the atrocity of forced, live organ harvesting.
Former CCP head Jiang Zemin and the current security czar Zhou Yongkang had the deepest involvement with Bo in carrying out these crimes. The CCP leaders are terrified at the stress that would be put on the fabric of the CCP if Bo is accused of atrocities Jiang and Zhou also took part in.
Bo Xilai’s case could bring the whole house down.
No Limits
Bo Xilai’s path to Qincheng Prison in Beijing began with Jiang Zemin’s decision in July, 1999 to eliminate the spiritual discipline of Falun Gong in China.
To quickly suppress Falun Gong, Jiang Zemin established a special Party organ, the 610 Office, named after the date of its creation (June 6, 1999). The 610 Office is an extra-constitutional body with authority over all levels of the Party and the state in the matter of eradicating Falun Gong.
Jiang secretly ordered the 610 Office to “defame their [Falun Gong practitioners’] reputations, bankrupt them financially and destroy them physically.”
Jiang ordered torture for those practitioners who refused to give up their beliefs. If they died, their deaths should be “counted as suicide.” The torturers serving the 610 Office were told that such practitioners “died in vain.” The 610 Office should “cremate them without finding out who they are.”
A source familiar with the matter revealed that Jiang wrote these orders down on a piece of paper without signing his name. However, people in the central 610 Office knew that they came from Jiang and executed the orders.
Soon after the persecution of Falun Gong began, Falun Gong practitioners began reporting on the website Minghui that policeman told them of these orders, as a way of frightening the practitioners into quitting the practice or justifying themselves as they robbed and abused them.
Two CCP officials have confirmed the existence of these orders.
Hao Fengjun was an officer in the 610 Office in Tianjin City. In June 2005 he defected to Australia, bringing with him a disc full of 610 documents. Hao confirmed the 610 Offices had been given these orders.
So, too, did Chen Yonglin, after he defected to Australia, also in June 2005. Chen was the consul for political affairs for the Sydney Consulate-General and his duties included organizing the spying on dissidents in Australia, especially on Falun Gong practitioners.
The orders Jiang had given regarding Falun Gong removed all limits on how practitioners might be treated. With a stroke of his anonymous pen, Jiang had subverted China’s entire legal system.
With no restraints on officials’ cruelty or greed, the torture of practitioners for the sake of forcing them to give up their beliefs rapidly escalated to the killing of practitioners for their organs, for the sake of making money.
Organ Harvesting
Bo Xilai had whored after the promotions and riches Party chief Jiang Zemin could dispense, and when the persecution of Falun Gong began, Bo saw his main chance.
When the persecution began Bo was the mayor of Dalian, the second largest city in Liaoning Province, but he then rapidly became the governor of Liaoning.
According to a source familiar with the matter, he and Gu Kailai were the ones who first began the practice of forced, live organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners. In addition, Dalian was the first city to sell for profit the corpses of Falun Gong practitioners whose organs had been harvested.
Selling the organs and corpses was a lucrative business, which Bo Xilai and his wife Gu Kailai referred to as a “recycling” business.
Bo Xilai, Gu Kailai, and Wang Lijun were all involved in these crimes. They worked closely with Dalian Medical University. Many officials from the public health, public security, and police systems, as well as medical professionals and children from high-ranking officials in Dalian, in Shenyang City (Liaoning’s capital), and in Liaoning Province were involved. They all made a lot of money.
A policeman who worked for Wang Lijun reported the crimes to the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong in 2009.
On April 9, 2002, in a surgery room on the 15th floor of the general hospital in Shenyang Military Base, the policeman witnessed two military medical personnel removing organs from a female Falun Gong practitioner. The practitioner was in her 30s and was not anesthetized. She died in pain after her organs were removed.
The Epoch Times broke the story of forced live organ harvesting in China on March 6, 2006, with detailed stories about a hospital in Sujiatun, a suburb of Shenyang City.
Twenty-two days later, after the CCP had a chance to remove all traces of the organ harvesting operation in Sujiatun, the Chinese Foreign Ministry finally responded to The Epoch Times reports. The Foreign Ministry denied the allegations and called on the international community to conduct an investigation.
However, when representatives from a human rights organization in Canada and reporters from the U.S.-based, Chinese-language Sound of Hope Radio and New Tang Dynasty Television applied to the Chinese Consulate for visas, their applications were immediately rejected.
On April 16, more than 5 weeks after The Epoch Times broke the story, U.S. consular officials toured the hospital, but there was nothing at that point to see or anyone who would speak about what had happened there.
On Mar. 27, 2006, the day before the official response by the Chinese Foreign Ministry, the CCP hastily published the “Interim Regulation for Human Organ Transplant Practice,” forbidding the selling of human organs. However, the regulation would not take effect until July 1, the anniversary of the Party’s founding.
Now, more than 6 years later, the regulation still has not curbed forced, live organ harvesting in China, according to investigators.
Plastinated Corpses
In August 1999 Bo Xilai personally approved the establishment of a plastination factory in Dalian, which would be operated by Gunther von Hagens.
Plastination is the process developed by von Hagens in which the bodily fluids of corpses are replaced by polymers, preserving the corpses and making them capable of being exhibited.
Von Hagens told the New York Times in 2006 that he had set up the factory in Dalian because he had found cheap labor, eager students, few government restrictions, and easy access to Chinese bodies, which he said he primarily uses for experiments and medical research purposes, not for his exhibitions.
The business of exhibiting plastinated corpses is highly lucrative and von Hagens’ former business manager, Sui Hongjin, soon set up a plastination factory that competed with von Hagens. By 2003, there were 10 such factories in Dalian, and China led the world in the export of plastinated bodies.
According to a source familiar with the matter, Gu Kailai and Bo Xilai provided the Dalian plastination factories with the bodies of Falun Gong practitioners. There is no confirmation nor information that von Hagens or his employees knew that the bodies of Falun Gong practitioners were being supplied.
Wang Lijun’s Involvement
When Wang Lijun fled to the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu in February, Chinese-language websites reported at the time that he brought with him a stack of documents believed to contain information on the crimes of high-ranking CCP officials.
In May, the U.S. Department of State released the 2012 Country Reports on Human Rights. The report on China for the first time included clear allegations of organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners.
Wang Lijun was director of the “On-Site Psychology Research Center” (OSPRC) of the Public Security Bureau of Jinzhou. On Sept. 17, 2006, Wang received an award and research subsidy of 2 million yuan from the Guanghua Science and Technology Foundation, which is affiliated with the Communist Youth League.
Wang was apparently working on injecting drugs that would help preserve organs after they were removed from the body for transplantation and on the effect on organs of lethal injection. In his acceptance speech for the award, he spoke of thousands of transplantation operations having taken place at his center.
Liaoning was the first province in China to make lethal injection the standard practice for all its death penalty convicts, with execution by gunshot discontinued. Execution by lethal injection is more convenient for organ harvesting.
Nationwide Crimes
What began in Liaoning Province spread across all of China.
The demand for organs for transplantation far exceeds the supply. According to Caijing magazine, in China there is an annual demand for 1,500,000 organs for transplantation. In addition to China’s domestic demand, there is worldwide a shortage of organs for transplantation, and foreign tourists come to China for transplantation.
He Xiaoshun, the vice president of the First Affiliated Hospital at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, told Southern Weekly in March 2010, “The year 2000 marked the turning point in organ transplants in China.” In 2000, liver transplants in China were 10 times higher than in 1999.
David Kilgour, a former Canadian secretary of state (Asia-Pacific), and the Canadian human rights attorney David Matas investigated allegations of forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China, and their investigation agrees with He Xiaoshun’s remark.
In their 2006 report “Bloody Harvest,” Kilgour and Matas note that in the six-year period prior to the beginning of the persecution of Falun Gong 18,500 transplantation operations were done in China. In the six-year period of 2000-2005, 60,000 transplantation operations were done.
According to the best available sources of information, the number of executions—executed prisoners have been advanced at times by the regime as the source for organs used for transplantation—had held steady across the 12 years 1994-2005. In addition, the number of executions were not in any case sufficient to cover the increase in transplantations.
Kilgour and Matas conclude, in a study buttressed by the consideration of 33 elements of proof or disproof, that in the years 2000-2005 41,500 transplantations occurred for which the Chinese regime cannot provide a source for the organs. Kilgour and Matas state the most likely source was Falun Gong practitioners.
The number of transplantations peaked in 2005 at 20,000 that year—the year before the practice was exposed.
For the past several years, approximately 10,000 transplantation operations have taken place each year in China. David Matas has estimated that the organs for 1,000 of these operations come from death row prisoners, for 8,000 from Falun Gong practitioners, and for another 1,000 from other prisoners of conscience.
China has two medical systems. One is controlled by the Ministry of Health, the other is controlled by the military.
According to an investigation by the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, of the 150 plus military hospitals spanning China, the majority of these hospitals carry out organ transplants. Given the sourcing of organs for transplantation in China, this means these hospitals are involved in forced organ harvesting.
As the Party continues to sort through the implications of whether to try Bo Xilai for the atrocities he committed, it must consider consequences of high-ranking generals being guilty of the same crimes.
At issue is not Bo’s individual fate, but rather how widely other CCP officials are implicated in Bo’s crimes. According to an investigation by the Central Discipline Inspection Committee, many high ranking officials are involved in Bo’s case.
The concern is not for the corruption crimes Bo would be tried for in criminal court, as announced by the regime mouthpiece, Xinhua. While it is true that almost any CCP official could be successfully prosecuted for corruption if the need arises to do so, that is an old story.
The real concerns the Party leadership has focused on are the crimes that Xinhua does not mention—crimes against humanity and in particular the atrocity of forced, live organ harvesting.
Former CCP head Jiang Zemin and the current security czar Zhou Yongkang had the deepest involvement with Bo in carrying out these crimes. The CCP leaders are terrified at the stress that would be put on the fabric of the CCP if Bo is accused of atrocities Jiang and Zhou also took part in.
Bo Xilai’s case could bring the whole house down.
No Limits
Bo Xilai’s path to Qincheng Prison in Beijing began with Jiang Zemin’s decision in July, 1999 to eliminate the spiritual discipline of Falun Gong in China.
To quickly suppress Falun Gong, Jiang Zemin established a special Party organ, the 610 Office, named after the date of its creation (June 6, 1999). The 610 Office is an extra-constitutional body with authority over all levels of the Party and the state in the matter of eradicating Falun Gong.
Jiang secretly ordered the 610 Office to “defame their [Falun Gong practitioners’] reputations, bankrupt them financially and destroy them physically.”
Jiang ordered torture for those practitioners who refused to give up their beliefs. If they died, their deaths should be “counted as suicide.” The torturers serving the 610 Office were told that such practitioners “died in vain.” The 610 Office should “cremate them without finding out who they are.”
A source familiar with the matter revealed that Jiang wrote these orders down on a piece of paper without signing his name. However, people in the central 610 Office knew that they came from Jiang and executed the orders.
Soon after the persecution of Falun Gong began, Falun Gong practitioners began reporting on the website Minghui that policeman told them of these orders, as a way of frightening the practitioners into quitting the practice or justifying themselves as they robbed and abused them.
Two CCP officials have confirmed the existence of these orders.
Hao Fengjun was an officer in the 610 Office in Tianjin City. In June 2005 he defected to Australia, bringing with him a disc full of 610 documents. Hao confirmed the 610 Offices had been given these orders.
So, too, did Chen Yonglin, after he defected to Australia, also in June 2005. Chen was the consul for political affairs for the Sydney Consulate-General and his duties included organizing the spying on dissidents in Australia, especially on Falun Gong practitioners.
The orders Jiang had given regarding Falun Gong removed all limits on how practitioners might be treated. With a stroke of his anonymous pen, Jiang had subverted China’s entire legal system.
With no restraints on officials’ cruelty or greed, the torture of practitioners for the sake of forcing them to give up their beliefs rapidly escalated to the killing of practitioners for their organs, for the sake of making money.
Organ Harvesting
Bo Xilai had whored after the promotions and riches Party chief Jiang Zemin could dispense, and when the persecution of Falun Gong began, Bo saw his main chance.
When the persecution began Bo was the mayor of Dalian, the second largest city in Liaoning Province, but he then rapidly became the governor of Liaoning.
According to a source familiar with the matter, he and Gu Kailai were the ones who first began the practice of forced, live organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners. In addition, Dalian was the first city to sell for profit the corpses of Falun Gong practitioners whose organs had been harvested.
Selling the organs and corpses was a lucrative business, which Bo Xilai and his wife Gu Kailai referred to as a “recycling” business.
Bo Xilai, Gu Kailai, and Wang Lijun were all involved in these crimes. They worked closely with Dalian Medical University. Many officials from the public health, public security, and police systems, as well as medical professionals and children from high-ranking officials in Dalian, in Shenyang City (Liaoning’s capital), and in Liaoning Province were involved. They all made a lot of money.
A policeman who worked for Wang Lijun reported the crimes to the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong in 2009.
On April 9, 2002, in a surgery room on the 15th floor of the general hospital in Shenyang Military Base, the policeman witnessed two military medical personnel removing organs from a female Falun Gong practitioner. The practitioner was in her 30s and was not anesthetized. She died in pain after her organs were removed.
The Epoch Times broke the story of forced live organ harvesting in China on March 6, 2006, with detailed stories about a hospital in Sujiatun, a suburb of Shenyang City.
Twenty-two days later, after the CCP had a chance to remove all traces of the organ harvesting operation in Sujiatun, the Chinese Foreign Ministry finally responded to The Epoch Times reports. The Foreign Ministry denied the allegations and called on the international community to conduct an investigation.
However, when representatives from a human rights organization in Canada and reporters from the U.S.-based, Chinese-language Sound of Hope Radio and New Tang Dynasty Television applied to the Chinese Consulate for visas, their applications were immediately rejected.
On April 16, more than 5 weeks after The Epoch Times broke the story, U.S. consular officials toured the hospital, but there was nothing at that point to see or anyone who would speak about what had happened there.
On Mar. 27, 2006, the day before the official response by the Chinese Foreign Ministry, the CCP hastily published the “Interim Regulation for Human Organ Transplant Practice,” forbidding the selling of human organs. However, the regulation would not take effect until July 1, the anniversary of the Party’s founding.
Now, more than 6 years later, the regulation still has not curbed forced, live organ harvesting in China, according to investigators.
Plastinated Corpses
In August 1999 Bo Xilai personally approved the establishment of a plastination factory in Dalian, which would be operated by Gunther von Hagens.
Plastination is the process developed by von Hagens in which the bodily fluids of corpses are replaced by polymers, preserving the corpses and making them capable of being exhibited.
Von Hagens told the New York Times in 2006 that he had set up the factory in Dalian because he had found cheap labor, eager students, few government restrictions, and easy access to Chinese bodies, which he said he primarily uses for experiments and medical research purposes, not for his exhibitions.
The business of exhibiting plastinated corpses is highly lucrative and von Hagens’ former business manager, Sui Hongjin, soon set up a plastination factory that competed with von Hagens. By 2003, there were 10 such factories in Dalian, and China led the world in the export of plastinated bodies.
According to a source familiar with the matter, Gu Kailai and Bo Xilai provided the Dalian plastination factories with the bodies of Falun Gong practitioners. There is no confirmation nor information that von Hagens or his employees knew that the bodies of Falun Gong practitioners were being supplied.
Wang Lijun’s Involvement
When Wang Lijun fled to the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu in February, Chinese-language websites reported at the time that he brought with him a stack of documents believed to contain information on the crimes of high-ranking CCP officials.
In May, the U.S. Department of State released the 2012 Country Reports on Human Rights. The report on China for the first time included clear allegations of organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners.
Wang Lijun was director of the “On-Site Psychology Research Center” (OSPRC) of the Public Security Bureau of Jinzhou. On Sept. 17, 2006, Wang received an award and research subsidy of 2 million yuan from the Guanghua Science and Technology Foundation, which is affiliated with the Communist Youth League.
Wang was apparently working on injecting drugs that would help preserve organs after they were removed from the body for transplantation and on the effect on organs of lethal injection. In his acceptance speech for the award, he spoke of thousands of transplantation operations having taken place at his center.
Liaoning was the first province in China to make lethal injection the standard practice for all its death penalty convicts, with execution by gunshot discontinued. Execution by lethal injection is more convenient for organ harvesting.
Nationwide Crimes
What began in Liaoning Province spread across all of China.
The demand for organs for transplantation far exceeds the supply. According to Caijing magazine, in China there is an annual demand for 1,500,000 organs for transplantation. In addition to China’s domestic demand, there is worldwide a shortage of organs for transplantation, and foreign tourists come to China for transplantation.
He Xiaoshun, the vice president of the First Affiliated Hospital at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, told Southern Weekly in March 2010, “The year 2000 marked the turning point in organ transplants in China.” In 2000, liver transplants in China were 10 times higher than in 1999.
David Kilgour, a former Canadian secretary of state (Asia-Pacific), and the Canadian human rights attorney David Matas investigated allegations of forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China, and their investigation agrees with He Xiaoshun’s remark.
In their 2006 report “Bloody Harvest,” Kilgour and Matas note that in the six-year period prior to the beginning of the persecution of Falun Gong 18,500 transplantation operations were done in China. In the six-year period of 2000-2005, 60,000 transplantation operations were done.
According to the best available sources of information, the number of executions—executed prisoners have been advanced at times by the regime as the source for organs used for transplantation—had held steady across the 12 years 1994-2005. In addition, the number of executions were not in any case sufficient to cover the increase in transplantations.
Kilgour and Matas conclude, in a study buttressed by the consideration of 33 elements of proof or disproof, that in the years 2000-2005 41,500 transplantations occurred for which the Chinese regime cannot provide a source for the organs. Kilgour and Matas state the most likely source was Falun Gong practitioners.
The number of transplantations peaked in 2005 at 20,000 that year—the year before the practice was exposed.
For the past several years, approximately 10,000 transplantation operations have taken place each year in China. David Matas has estimated that the organs for 1,000 of these operations come from death row prisoners, for 8,000 from Falun Gong practitioners, and for another 1,000 from other prisoners of conscience.
China has two medical systems. One is controlled by the Ministry of Health, the other is controlled by the military.
According to an investigation by the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, of the 150 plus military hospitals spanning China, the majority of these hospitals carry out organ transplants. Given the sourcing of organs for transplantation in China, this means these hospitals are involved in forced organ harvesting.
As the Party continues to sort through the implications of whether to try Bo Xilai for the atrocities he committed, it must consider consequences of high-ranking generals being guilty of the same crimes.
