By STEPHEN COLLISON
WASHINGTON
Thursday 28 June 2001
An exiled Chinese doctor
said today he had been forced to skin corpses of more than 100 executed
prisoners and one convict who was still alive before escaping what
he branded China's "evil" but lucrative organ-harvesting
trade.
Wang
Guoqi, 38, a former army doctor and burns specialist, said in grisly
testimony to a key US congressional committee that he was a member
of teams of doctors who removed organs moments after convicts were
put to death and passed them on for sale.
His testimony is the most
public evidence yet presented in the United States by medical professionals
and Chinese dissidents of a practice which Chinese authorities insist
is outlawed.
"It
is with deep regret and remorse for my actions that I stand here today
testifying against the practice of organ and tissue sales from death
row prisoners," Wang said in testimony one committee member said
raised the horror of "Frankenstein medicine."
Wang said sales of skin
and other human organs to patients in need of transplants and skin
grafts netted huge profits for the People's Liberation Army (PLA).
His testimony came days
after celebrated Chinese dissident Harry Wu released a major report
claiming that organ harvesting was widespread in China, and that foreign
patients had travelled to the country for kidney transplants.
China
executes more people than the rest of the world combined, but does
not publish detailed statistics, as the data is considered a "state
secret."
Wu's report says that
young and healthy death row prisoners often undergo preexecution health
checks and then are shot in the head so that death will be induced
through damage to the brain and leave the lungs, heart, liver and
kidneys intact.
Wang told the House of
Representatives subcommittee on International Operations and Human
Rights, that before fleeing China in April, he was part of plain clothes
teams of PLA doctors who went to work on fresh corpses near death
row prisons in the northeastern city of Tianjin.
"We
had to work quickly in the crematorium and 1020 minutes were generally
enough to remove all skin from a corpse," he said.
Wang, who is seeking political
asylum in the United States, said one particular incident in Hebei
province in October 1995 "tortured my conscience no end".
He said he saw three doctors
remove the kidneys of an prisoner who was not yet dead.
"When they finished
the prisoner was still breathing and his heart continued to beat,"
he said.
"We
burn surgeons remained inside the ambulance to harvest the skin ...
we left our job half done, and the halfdead corpse was thrown into
a plastic bag onto the flatbed of the crematorium truck."
As reports of organ harvesting
in China have emerged, the government has consistently denied the
practice exists and pointed out that it is prohibited under Chinese
law.
But a senior US official,
who also testified before the hearing, said that several times in
recent months, US diplomats had expressed their disquiet over reports
of organ harvesting in China, most recently with senior Chinese embassy
officials yesterday.
"I noted that enforcement
of Chinese regulations governing organ donations appeared to be woefully
inadequate," said Michael Parmly, principal deputy assistant
Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labour.
"We informed Chinese
Embassy officials of the increased level of attention being focused
on this issue in the United States and urged China to work intensively
to ensure that its organ transplant policies are consistent with international
standards."
