Book review: The Slaughter, by Ethan Gutmann
Pity anyone who enters China's penal system for any reason. Even "prisoners of conscience" - Uygurs, Tibetans, Christians and Falun Gong members - are systematically slaughtered inside, according to investigator Ethan Gutmann, whose expose rests on interviews with top police officials, doctors who have killed captives on the operating table, and torture survivors including "Lotus".
by Ethan Gutmann
Prometheus Books
"The sensation of being ripped apart was extraordinary," Gutmann writes, describing how plain-clothes police tied and hoisted the Falun Gong member high. Lucky enough to survive such brutality, Lotus - born Wang Huilian - eventually escaped to Thailand.
Treated as guinea pigs, other religious and political captives apparently lose their "retail organs" to transplant tourists from countries including France and Japan. A harvested kidney fetches about US$62,000, according to the foreign-policy wonk who has written for The Wall Street Journal and provided "testimony and briefings" to organisations including the Central Intelligence Agency.
Victims of the invasive trade are apparently plundered while half-alive when their body parts work better. Falun Gong organs are prized because - unlike hepatitis-racked death-row hoods - practitioners exercise religiously and stay in shape, Gutmann says.
Opposed to mainland "spin control", he pans the perception that Falun Gong imaginatively paints "torture tableaux straight out of a Cultural Revolution opera". Emaciated refugees from the Great Leap Forward also met scepticism when they yammered about cannibalism, he notes.