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An independent tribunal sitting in London has concluded that the killing of detainees in China for organ transplants is continuing, and victims include imprisoned followers of the Falun Gong movement.
The China Tribunal, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, who was a prosecutor at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, said in a unanimous determination at the end of its hearings it was “certain that Falun Gong as a source - probably the principal source - of organs for forced organ harvesting”.
“The conclusion shows that very many people have died indescribably hideous deaths for no reason, that more may suffer in similar ways and that all of us live on a planet where extreme wickedness may be found in the power of those, for the time being, running a country with one of the oldest civilisations known to modern man.”
He added: “There is no evidence of the practice having been stopped and the tribunal is satisfied that it is continuing.”
[...] China announced in 2014 that it would stop removing organs for transplantation from executed prisoners and has dismissed the claims as politically-motivated and untrue.
[...] There have been calls for the UK parliament to ban patients from travelling to China for transplant surgery. More than 40 MPs from all parties have backed the motion. Israel, Italy, Spain and Taiwan already enforce such restrictions.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 24 2019, @04:30PM (23 children)
I suppose the short form of the judgement can be expected to be short on details. But, there really isn't anything in there, but the conclusions.
https://chinatribunal.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/China-Tribunal-SHORT-FORM-CONCLUSION_Final.pdf [chinatribunal.com]
From that PDF,
That demands a huge WTF!
Everything I read in the articles linked to, looks rather circumstantial. There's no "smoking gun". As for the number of transplants, we're talking about China. Social credits, anyone? Sign your organ donor card! Here, in the states, there is very little social pressure to sign donor cards. In China? A suggestion from an authority figure may be considered an order. And, NO ONE wants to be an embarrassment to their family. Might as well sign the card, and make life easy on the loved ones, right?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by loonycyborg on Monday June 24 2019, @05:16PM (22 children)
iirc there was a Chinese kid who sold a kidney just to buy an iPad. Also, there is unlikely to be a "smoking gun" since this would require investigation on the premises and Chinese are unlikely to allow some tribunal from Europe to operate in their country, mostly due to lack of trust. Their position in the world at large is shaped by those unfortunate events [wikipedia.org]. First Europeans invade just to enforce their rights to sell opium to local population and then they suddenly start caring about survival of locals? That's very unlikely unless it's part of their some plan to make situation even worse.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday June 24 2019, @06:53PM (1 child)
Chinese teenager 'sells kidney to buy iPad and iPhone' [bbc.com]
That does not seem like a sustainable plan for when the next Apple model comes out.
If a sale like that could actually happen, it becomes easier to believe the value of human life is sufficiently low that detainees could have their organs harvested.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 24 2019, @08:22PM
That's what the 'doctor' told him.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Monday June 24 2019, @07:10PM (19 children)
"Suddenly" is beyond Chinese living memory (even the tail end of the "Century of Humiliation ends way back in 1945 and the latter part was non-European humiliation from Japan). Perhaps it's time to stop making excuses for evil.
No one's self-interests will ever perfectly align with someone else's self-interests. That doesn't excuse persecution complexes that somehow result in organ harvesting and the like.
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Monday June 24 2019, @07:47PM (8 children)
You're misunderstanding. I didn't state that organ harvesting stems from persecution complex. but it's rational to assume that any decisions done by foreign powers will not serve interests of locals. No matter whether there is actually organ harvesting or not. They're incapable of serving truth and justice due to conflict of interest, first and foremost they're PR support of trade war and this didn't change over centuries.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 24 2019, @09:06PM (7 children)
What has been "decided" by "foreign powers"?
Right. If actual evil doesn't matter, then why should we care about Chinese concern about alleged decisions by foreign powers?
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Monday June 24 2019, @10:16PM (1 child)
You're right exactly. We do not need to care. It's pure PR. A lot of stuff happens in China but they will always pay attention only to stuff that would help them imitate charity and allow gains in PR war. We should not even pretend to make any decisions over what does and does not happen in China. Let alone pronounce judgements. Because they can be implemented only by going to war. So that tribunal is not accountable to Chinese people, is not materially interested in coming up with truth, since it won't matter anyway because it's unenforceable. It's purely manufacture of justification for war that will be used as a cover if it will be ever decided to go to war with China.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 25 2019, @01:28PM
Or a host of activities and sanctions short of war. Even publicizing evils committed by the Chinese government has an effect.
I guess you've never heard of how easy it is to manufacture justifications for war. They won't need some dusty, old report.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 25 2019, @01:50AM (4 children)
Of course the "independent" [slashdot.org] "tribunal" [slashdot.org].
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 25 2019, @05:53AM (3 children)
Meanwhile it's widely known that China has indeed engaged in organ harvesting from prisoners in very recent time. Perhaps they have stopped organ harvesting in 2014 as claimed (which is only five years ago), but it's established fact (admitted to by China itself) not some fantasy spun by "foreign powers".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 25 2019, @01:26PM (2 children)
Followers of Falun Gong fled China after their atrocities [cambridge.org] resulted in actions from law enforcement, and the atrocities did not even stop [guancha.cn] after the escape.
They have since been sponsored by politically oriented organizations including ones [kaiwind.com] closely related to the CIA, so it is not unfair to say FLG is a representative to foreign powers.
... for questionable [rationalwiki.org] interests, and even by faking evidences [chinadaily.com.cn].
Of course they can call them whatever they like; nevertheless, being biased makes them naturally ineligible as a tribunal.
Wait, what's 3+1?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 25 2019, @01:56PM (1 child)
Then where's the evidence of these "atrocities"? Let us keep in mind that quoting Chinese propaganda doesn't count. They wouldn't ever permit a defense of Falun Gong against whatever accusations you list. And as someone has already noted, manufacturing justifications for war, whether it be against another country or a religious group, is trivial to do.
Assuming this is actually true rather than just more propaganda, so what? Helping groups who have fallen afoul of tyranny is a far better use for CIA talent than many things the CIA does.
Unless, of course, that isn't true. So when is your government going to open its activities to outside view so that we can determine for ourselves whether the admitted crimes of the recent past are still ongoing? Whatever else you can say of developed world countries, the dirt gets out. Government-based criminals in the developed world always have to worry that their activities will come to light. But China has a universal system of suppressing truth. It's not perfect, they had to admit that they were killing people for organs after all, but it's far better hidden than anything which could be arranged in the developed world.
Then there would be no tribunals in the world at all. Bias can be reduced, it can't be eliminated. I already noted one way to reduce such biases. Appoint people to the tribunal who are independent of the sponsors of the tribunal. That's why I brought up the list of the people actually on the tribunal. And yes, it should be "4)".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 25 2019, @02:31PM
Labeling something as propaganda is easy: I would hardly believe any of the propaganda by FLG followers, which are too crazy to be taken seriously.
I have presented quite a lot of evidences against the claims by FLG followers, including some [cambridge.org] at least seemingly independent (and here's more [reddit.com]), and I still wait for your analysis instead of blank denial.
Yes, whether against China or against Falun Gong.
Nice circular argument. Pro-tip: we have not settled-down on the evidences for "tyranny".
Nice accusation, except that I did not attempt to deny the existence of prisoner-based organ transplantation (which has been officially stopped since 2015) and the organ black-market.
However, I have still not seen any concrete evidence for the alleged extent of systematic and forced organ organ transplantation on Falun Gong followers, only plenty of falsified or excessively vague ones.
Of course, and let's see what the FCC lead by Ajit Pai has done in these years.
(Score: 3, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Monday June 24 2019, @10:08PM (9 children)
That has nothing to do with anything.
You live in a country that thinks 100 years is a long time.
I have news for you. People from other places have other ways of seeing things, and people who live in a culture that traces it's roots back 5,000 years look at 1945 as being yesterday.
"Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it".
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 25 2019, @03:43AM (8 children)
Same goes for China. The US is older than the Chinese government by well over a hundred years.
Sorry, the US traces its roots pretty far back too. As does every other country in the world.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday June 25 2019, @08:00PM (7 children)
Goodness.
You live in a fantasy world don't you?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 27 2019, @02:55AM (6 children)
And as I noted earlier, the US easily traces its roots to ancient Greece (already halfway to that imaginary 5000 year past of yours) and beyond to the ancient religions and codes of the Middle East and Egypt, which in turn can trace their roots beyond 5000 years (both being older civilizations than China).
And now we can trace the past of mankind beyond two million years. China doesn't hold a candle to that.
Finally, let us keep in mind that the Communists destroyed much of that past. We all are fortunate that the Chinese turned away from that destructive ignorance to modern society. Much of the world's improvement over the past 40 decades is due to this Chinese ascent. It's tiresome to hear this mystic bullshit from people like you who can't begin to be bothered to think about periods that far back. Yet you feel the need to lecture us.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday June 27 2019, @08:31PM (5 children)
Good lord! Care to explain how 13 colonies of the British Empire can trace it's roots back to Greece?
I am still not sure why you would think that China having some civil wars then changing the structure of it's government makes it forget about it's history. You should explain how that works too.
You have obviously never seen a Chinese movie. They love historical epics that glorify their ancient history.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 28 2019, @05:16AM (4 children)
Greek traditions of philosophy and religion (for example), inherited by Europe via the ancient influence of the Roman Empire, and then inherited by the US through its European immigrants. Pretty straightforward.
The 13 colonies felt the connection strongly enough that they named hundreds of towns after Greek and Roman cities of history, and developed a lot of "neoclassical" architecture in the Roman and Greek traditions.
Well, I guess that lack of certainty depends on you, PTZ not knowing how Communism in the 20th Century worked. Destroying the past and inventing a fictitious past that would display the mythic inevitably progressive nature of Communism was MO for controlling the population.
Because "glorifying the past" is remotely relevant to accurately remembering the past, right?
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday June 30 2019, @05:42AM (3 children)
Oh right.
So your founding fathers read the classics, so therefore you can trace your roots back to the Greeks? It is like you almost know nothing about how Europe rediscovered the ancient Greeks via Islam.
I wouldn't really expect you to actually know the history though, so no surprises there.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 30 2019, @12:47PM (2 children)
Indeed. I think you're getting it now. It's that simple.
Which happened later than the ancient Greeks. Remember that you were bloviating about the ancientness of Chinese "tracing of roots"? Well, that's part of how the tracing went from ancient Greeks and Romans to the modern world. It isn't any more relevant than that.
Why should anyone expect your expectations to be remotely relevant to reality?
Frankly, your expectations are ludicrous, such as your dumbass assertion that China's persecution complex should be excused today because certain bad people did bad things to them more than a hundred years ago. Sorry, that was then. And a hundred years remains a long time no matter where you are.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday June 30 2019, @07:46PM (1 child)
Of course it's that simple to you.
300 hundred years ago some people who set up our system of government read some book so therefore we're just like the people who wrote them?
I'm pretty sure some of them read the Upanishads too. So that makes you the heirs of the various Indian empires too I suppose.
Oh, by the way. If you live in Europe and attend the village church that was built in the 11th century, a hundred years is pretty much yesterday.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday July 01 2019, @01:47PM
It's that simple to you too, even if you choose to ignore it.
What was that book? A typical reading list would have dozens to hundreds of such books, involve learning Greek and Latin, and of course, all that history. This is years of study.
Indeed. Look, the whole mythos about China being some unique, 5000 year entity is bullshit. There is no magical nutrient in Chinese soil or gene in the Chinese genome that transmits this imaginary, 5000 year outlook. It's just culture. And it gets transmitted just like every other culture gets transmitted: by personal interaction with other people who hold to that culture, by the above books, and such.
Except just like everywhere else, almost nobody was around 100 years ago.
I notice you ignore that most places in the world live on land that is millions to billions of years old. So why isn't a 100 years considered just a fraction of a second? Just the other day, I was driving on a 50 million year old volcano (which is a youngster) and I presently live in a 600k year old volcanic caldera (a baby, really).
Time is relative, of course. And sorry, I don't buy that a bunch of short-timers from Europe or China have any better or even different grasp on time than a bunch of short-timers from the US.