The Winnipeg Free Press
Editorial - The face of China
Mon Jul 10 2006
THE face of China is becoming increasingly ugly. As the world's largest
nation assumes an increasingly important economic role in world
affairs, the international community, including Canada, has turned
a blind eye to the fact that as lucrative as the Chinese market is,
there is blood on all that money.
It has long been rumoured that China harvests organs from convicted
criminals who have been executed, and either uses them for privileged
members of the Chinese elite who need an organ transplant or simply
sells them to the highest bidder.
A recent report written by Winnipeg human rights activist and lawyer
David Matas, in conjunction with former Liberal cabinet minister David
Kilgour, now supports these rumours. Mr. Matas and Mr. Kilgour conclude that
China's Communist government is harvesting organs from members of the outlawed
organization Falun Gong.
"We believe that there has been and continues today to be large-scale
organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners," the authors write.
"It's appalling. You don't want to believe it."
But even if you don't want to believe, it seems to be true. China has
perhaps the most oppressive government in the world, although Western
democracies try to close their eyes to the horrors that go on there.
The last of the Communist nations that matter on the world stage, China has
been unique in introducing dramatic economic change without any political
reform. It has become a major player, a powerhouse in the world of trade, while
remaining a brutal political dictatorship.
The world, Canada and the rest of the Western nations that see China's
1.3 billion people as the world's single biggest market for soda pop and
everything else, have let themselves ignore China's great sins of
totalitarianism and torture. Sometimes, however, it is the seemingly
smaller sins, the ones that individuals can more closely identify with -- like
the harvesting of organs from political dissidents -- that gets the world's
attention. Mr. Matas and Mr. Kilgour have done that with their report.
