I have read about the possibility of large-scale harvesting of organs from prisoners for a few months now. First thing to note about this particular article is that "The China Tribunal" has no formal or legal standing, it is basically a volunteer organization trying to collect evidence.
When they say "Worst Fears [...] Were Just confirmed" they are at best misleading.
There has been a notable dearth of reporting by traditional journalistic media about this topic, and so I am still somewhat skeptical. The evidence presented so far is not as conclusive as with the Uyghur suppression.
The practice described in the article would undoubtedly be a crime against Humanity, and among the biggest in history. But I can't tell right now if the process of its discovery is just slow-moving or if there is just nothing that big to discover. I'd appreciate any pointers to more information either way.
The Chinese government itself has admitted that this was done in the past but they promised to no longer allow it to happen...on multiple occasions. That China did this isn’t really in doubt, the argument is only about whether they still do it.
The central government has a hard time getting rid of this practice because they aren’t as omnipotent as they appear, there is a lot of vested interests that localities continue the practice.
Given the very low percentage of organ donors in Chinese culture, you’ll know they’ve stopped harvesting organs when their turn around time for organ transplants goes up by a lot.
They admitted to having used organs from prisoners with relatively "valid" death sentence in so far that there is any such thing as a fair trial in China.
What is alleged here is much worse: Prisoners of Conscience (and not drug traffickers or murderers) are particularly selected for their histocompatibility and executed "on demand".
Therefor I think these allegations need further proof. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and that's why I suggest a cautious approach to this story.
Doesn’t one lead to the other? I mean, that is why organ harvesting of condemned prisoners is so distasteful in the first place: it creates a huge conflict of interest in the dispensing of justice.
Not necessarily. For one thing it depends on consent. There is nothing wrong with a condemned person to consent to organ donation, if there is meaningful consent to be had.
One would think that even China has some compunctions about "creating" capital crimes in order to have enough organ donors. One of the problems with the underlying story is that the non-consenting donors must have been killed somewhat "extrajudiciarily", that is, outside of the "normal" way death sentences have been administered in China.
Therefore the allegations point to an industrial scale process of matching living prisoners to organ recipients, and lacking a judicial death sentence.
I'd say it is possibly if there are no consequences to the decision, and the condemned prisoner has trust in that situation. It's hard to construct such a scenario.
I am completely against the death penalty, in all circumstances.
I still believe that the allegations against China made here are orders of magnitude worse than "just" harvesting organs from executed donors. That would be mainly a violation of the victims post-mortem rights or dignity.
The alleged practice involves doctors and hospitals cooperating in the preparation and execution of the death penalty. That is a fundamental violation of medical ethics. In the US, doctors are forbidden to participate in executions.
And apparently at least the timing of the executions in China, if not even the decision whether to execute a prisoner or not, seems to be affected by the demand for organs.
It's always hard to make a judgement about what wrong is worse, but I'd say here we have a clear "winner".
Also the "we can get you organs in a day, give us the specific requirements..." is a pretty serious red flag even if there's a high normal donation rate.
Yes, I would agree there. Though that might also be a sign of an opt-out donor policy.
Also, the particular crime charged here is that not only are organs harvested from prisoners / execution victims, but prisoners are specifically killed in order to harvest their organs, including a pre-execution check for histocompatibility.
There is a distinction to be made between small scale criminal behavior on the part of the hospitals and prisons, and a large-scale state-sanctioned practice of illicit organ harvesting.
When they say "Worst Fears [...] Were Just confirmed" they are at best misleading.
There has been a notable dearth of reporting by traditional journalistic media about this topic, and so I am still somewhat skeptical. The evidence presented so far is not as conclusive as with the Uyghur suppression.
The practice described in the article would undoubtedly be a crime against Humanity, and among the biggest in history. But I can't tell right now if the process of its discovery is just slow-moving or if there is just nothing that big to discover. I'd appreciate any pointers to more information either way.