Scale of conspiracy alleged by Falun Gong 'impossible'
A prominent Chinese human rights activist in the US has challenged Falun Gong claims that mainland hospitals have harvested organs from thousands of its members.
Harry Wu challenged a report in the Falun Gong newspaper Epoch Times in March that claimed that 6,000 Falun Gong practitioners had been sent to a secret concentration camp in the Sujiatun district of Shenyang, Liaoning, and that 'three-fourths had their hearts, kidneys, corneas and skin extracted before they died'. Mr Wu is head of the China Information Centre in the US and a veteran of 19 years in the Chinese gulag.
Falun Gong - banned in 1999 as an 'evil cult' - claimed the organs were sold for large sums of money to Chinese and foreigners in need of transplants.
Mr Wu, who has spent 15 years gathering evidence on the harvesting of organs from executed Chinese prisoners, said the information was based on the testimony of two witnesses, neither of whom had first-hand information. He believed the reports were fabricated.
Mr Wu, who was on friendly terms with the Falun Gong until he challenged its claims, said he asked to interview the witnesses, but was refused permission by Falun Gong officials. 'I tried several times to see the witnesses, but they said no,' he said. 'Even today, I don't know their names.'
Mr Wu said he sent his own investigators to two prisons in the area mentioned by the Falun Gong, observing the institutions from the outside and interviewing people coming out of the prison and local residents.