Another look into LRF's Archive:

On June 18, 1996, Dr. Qian Xiaojiang testified in front of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, detailing his participation in organ extraction from prisoners in China.  During the 80s, Dr. Qian worked as a physician at the Bangpu Medical Institute in Bangpu, Anhui Province. At the time, organ transplantation was in its infancy in China: the surgery itself was extremely risky, and because of traditional Chinese conceptions of the body, virtually no Chinese willingly donated organs.  Qian found out about the hospital's first successful kidney transplant surgery from his medical school roommate, who happened to be the son of the hospital's director of the Urological Department.

The kidney, of course, belonged to an executed prisoner.

Dr. Qian moved to Shanghai and worked in clinical immunology at the Shanghai No. 2 Medical University, where he studied transplant rejection and organ failure.  Dr. Qian testified that approximately 20 kidney transplant procedures took place every year, and nearly all organs came from executed prisoners. And in China, doctors are not required to test if prisoners are brain-dead before beginning organ extraction: in one case in the spring of 1987, doctors "could feel tremblings and pulses in [the prisoner's] limbs.  Everything from that prisoner, kidneys, spleen, heart, and corneas were extracted. [A colleague, Dr. Shao Ming] used the word, 'Empty.'"

Dr. Qian concluded that in China, kidney transplant surgeries using prisoners' organs are an "open secret." "In China," he said, "whenever a patient needs a kidney, the first reaction, no matter whether it is the surgeon, the nurse, or the patient himself, is: 'wait for the guy to be shot.'"

Dr. Qian's full testimony will be available in the LRF digital archive when it launches this fall.

Today, LRF executive director Harry Wu testified to the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of the United States House of Representatives on China's One-Child Policy.  His testimony is below: (PDF version linked to the image on the right)

I am honored to testify here on the coercive population control policy in the People's Republic of China. I appreciate the Commission’s ongoing attention to human rights in China.

In 1998, 2001 and 2004, I testified alongside other witnesses on this issue before the US Congress. Regrettably, the impact of these hearings was minimal, as the coercive population control policy remains essentially unchanged in China, and the violations of human rights associated with this policy are still prevalent throughout the country.

Introduction

Since 1978, the Chinese government has gradually adopted a radical, draconian set of population control measures intended to curb the negative effects of overpopulation in China, home to one-fifth of the world’s population. In 1978, the First Session of the Fifth National People’s Congress introduced the concept of family planning into China’s Constitution. (Read more)

Harry Wu, Laogai survivor and LRF founder, testified for The Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of the United States House of Representatives regarding the state of Internet freedom in China.  His statement is below:

I want to thank Co-Chairman Wolf and Co-Chairman McGovern for inviting me to speak before the Commission today and for the Commission’s ongoing attention to the human rights situation in China.

Over the past several weeks, the Chinese government has caused quite an uproar among its 300 million or so Internet users, the most of any country in the world, after the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced its decision requiring that all computers sold within the country from July 1st onward be preinstalled with the Green Dam Youth Escort (‘Green Dam’).  Developed by Jinhui Computer System Engineering Co., Green Dam is software that uses blacklists and image processing technology to filter out “harmful” words, images, and website addresses.