Feb. 29
CHINA:
Wang Lijun Suspected in Falun Gong Organ Harvest, Group Says
Wang Lijun, the former police chief and deputy mayor of Chongqing, may have
participated in or directed the harvesting of organs from Chinese prisoners of
conscience, according to a new report by a Falun Gong-affiliated organization.
The World Organization to Investigate the persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG) in
a report on Feb. 15, connects Wang Lijun to the harvesting of organs from
prisoners—something reported earlier in The Epoch Times—and also links him to
the persecution of Falun Gong. And it suggests that these 2 sets of activities
of Wang’s likely converged.
Research and Execution
From May 2003 to June 2008 Wang Lijun was the chief and Party Secretary of the
Public Security Bureau in Jinzhou City, and from 2004 onwards he was also the
Vice-Mayor. He evidently spent some of his time engaged in non-official duties,
however.
Wang was also the director of the “On-Site Psychology Research Center” (OSPRC)
of the Public Security Bureau of Jinzhou, with which it shared a building.
The 1st report available on the Chinese Internet about this organization was
from 2005, when the Liaoshen Evening News gave an in-depth presentation of the
OSPRC in action. The Center had been charged with carrying out an execution of
2 criminals, which was witnessed by the reporter and a group of experts. The
set-up was like a scientific research lab, according to the report.
The “research center,” according to that report (archived), became an execution
site where researchers and experts were able to witness “the entire process of
executing a death penalty criminal by injection method.’”
Data collected from these executions would “contribute greatly to the research
on subjects like the dying process of the criminal, the physiological changes
before and after the injection into a healthy person, the residual toxin in
different organs after the injection of the toxin, psychological changes of a
person facing death, organ transplant after the injection,” etc., according to
WOIPFG’s translation of the Liaoshen Evening News article.
In 2006, when Wang received an award for his organ harvesting efforts, he
described his “on-site research center” as “the transplant scene, the very spot
of anatomization, the very spot of organ transplantation into the organ
recipient,” according to an article published on the website of the Dragon
Design Foundation. The award Wang was given was presented by the Guanghua
Science and Technology Foundation, a non-profit with which the Dragon Design
Foundation used to be affiliated, according to staff from the latter. When
contacted by telephone, staff at neither organization could explain much more
about the award, and only said that it had been discontinued.
WOIPFG claims that, according to its own investigation, Wang also supervised a
project titled “Organ Transplantation from Donors Who Have Been Subjected to
Drug Injection,” which involved several universities and a military hospital. A
photograph is provided of a poster or marketing material, with OSPRC in the
title and details about organ transplant from donors given an injection.
‘Still Alive’
In a previous interview with The Epoch Times David Matas, a Canadian human
rights lawyer who co-authored a report on organ harvesting from Falun Gong
prisoners, said that “It used to be that China would shoot for execution, then
they shifted from shooting to using injections. In effect they’re not killing
by injection, but paralyzing by injection, and taking the organs out while the
body is still alive.”
Wang Lijun’s research may have played a role in precipitating this change.
According to a vitae online, he was the project leader for the “Key Research
Project of Trauma-Free Anatomy in the Asia-Pacific Region.” This project
included researchers from the Institute of Forensic Medicine at University of
Bern, Switzerland, Medical University of Graz, Austria, China Medical
University, Jinzhou Medical University and the 205 Hospital of the People’s
Liberation Army, according to WOIPFG.
Wang became head of the Chongqing Public Security Bureau after his political
patron, Bo Xilai, was shunted there in 2008. According to an article in Global
Times, an outlet affiliated with Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily, in
December 2008 Chongqing began gradually eliminating execution by firing squad,
and phasing in execution by injection.
“The whole point of drugging in this context is to keep the organ alive while
it’s removed, so the organ would be healthier. If they weren’t going to do that
they might as well shoot the person,” said David Matas in a previous telephone
interview.
“The disadvantage medically is that the drug taints the organ to an extent, but
the organ is kept alive. In China there has been a movement to kill by drugs
because you get more organs out of that because there’s a longer time in which
to harvest,” Matas said. “That’s what they’re talking about.”
Doing the Math
WOIPFG believes that these technical advances in organ harvesting were
concurrently applied to the population of Falun Gong practitioners in Chinese
labor camps and prisons.
WOIPFG points to the math: the large number of transplantation operations
compared to the much smaller number of death penalty cases and the very few
instances of organ donation.
David Kilgour a former crown attorney and Canadian Secretary of State
(Asia/Pacific),and the international human rights lawyer David Matas, in their
seminal study in 2006 and their 2009 book, “Bloody Harvest” cite Chinese
official statements in concluding there were 60,000 transplants carried out
between 2000 and 2005. They take the number of transplants done in the 5-year
period prior to the persecution of Falun Gong—18,500—as a baseline, assuming
the organs in these operations came from executed criminals.
The difference in the number of transplantation operations done in the 5 years
before and after the persecution—a total of roughly 41,500 transplants—most
likely came from the Falun Gong population, according to Kilgour and Matas.
Wang referred to “thousands” of on-site transplants conducted at his “research
center” in the city of Jinzhou when he received the Guanghua award, during what
is thought to have been the height of organ harvesting activity.
Other circumstantial evidence that WOIPFG presents implicating Wang Lijun in
the harvesting of organs from Falun Gong practitioners includes transcripts of
phone calls made in 2006 to detention centers and courts in Jinzhou.
In the phone calls researchers posing as potential organ recipients or brokers
ask leading questions about the availability of organs from Falun Gong
practitioners. An operator at a People’s Court says “Now we have divided the
tasks among us. Death cases… Falun Gong, our court also assigned their cases to
the First Division of Criminal Law.”
WOIPFG also provides a transcript of an interview with a policeman who was a
subordinate to Wang Lijun at Jinzhou. He said his job was to stand guard in
military hospitals and other buildings where Falun Gong practitioners were
tortured or had their organs removed; in his transcript he recounts witnessing
the organ harvesting from a Falun Gong practitioner.
At one point, the transcript says, “Question: Did you torture them once in the
interrogation process to extract information, or many times? Witness: Many
times. At that time, Wang Lijun, nowadays the chief of the Chongqing Public
Security Bureau, ordered that we ‘must eradicate them all.’”
(source: Epoch Times)
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