Department of State Reaction to Falun Gong Charges More Than Inadequate

I recently wrote about a July 6 report authored by David Matas and David Kilgour, two Canadian human rights lawyers, that accused China of harvesting the organs of Falun Gong practitioners. Back in April, the U.S. State Department issued a letter, not specifically in response to the report, stating that they found no evidence of a "concentration camp" and organ harvesting at a public hospital that representatives inspected. Well, duh. How would a tour of a public hospital reveal that organs are being involuntarily harvested? Moreover, according to the Matas/Kilgour report, the harvesting is occurring at several sights.

The State Department's look-sees are nowhere near to being an adequate response to the credible charges contained in the Matas/Kilgour Report. Nor can they even loosely be defined as an "investigation." As Matas and Kilgour have previously stated about such surface probes, "We were aware of these visits [like those of the State Department] when we wrote our reports, but did not mention them because we did not find them significant. We would not have expected these visitors to find anything even if the initial reports of organ harvesting from the ex-wife of the surgeon were true [who stated her husband removed Falun Gong practitioners' corneas]. An operation leaves no trace in an operating room after it is completed. Operating rooms are cleaned up, sanitized, made antiseptic after each and every operation."

Precisely. China needs to explain why it, and apparently it alone, can offer properly matched organs to purchasers in only one week's to one month's time. In other words, the Department of State's letter is worthless.