China Hosts 'Memorial for Organ Donors', Defying Evidence of Live Organ Harvesting

The Chinese state newspaper Global Times celebrated the Communist Party on Sunday for hosting a "National commemoration event for human organ donation," giving Beijing's organ industry a veneer of legitimacy as evidence has mounted for years that the Party kills political prisoners to sell their bodies. At a hearing in Congress in late March, one of the top researchers on the topic, Ethan Gutmann, told American lawmakers that China appears to be, based on discrepancies in the government documentation of organ transplants, killing as many as 50,000 Uyghur people a year to steal their organs. In its report on Sunday, the Global Times claimed that 6.7 million people in the country have registered to donate their organs in the event of an untimely death and that many enthusiastically participated in memorial services on Saturday for organ donors. "On Saturday afternoon, a memorial event for organ donors was held at a cemetery in the outskirts of Hangzhou. After some donors were given eco-burials on site, attendees presented flower baskets to them and offered condolences to their families," the state propaganda outlet detailed. The next day, a separate event used "Storytelling, stage plays, recitations, and song and dance" to share "The touching stories and the spirit of great love of organ donors and their families, organ transplant recipients, organ donation coordinators, medical personnel and Red Cross workers and volunteers." The events were scheduled to coincide with the upcoming Qingming Festival, or "Tomb-Sweeping Day," in which many in China visit the tombs of their loved ones, clean them, and leave offerings to honor the dead. "In China, the Qingming Festival and the days before the festival are a time for beneficiaries and people from all walks of life to remember organ donors," the Global Times explained. A 2022 study from the Australian National University concluded that evidence extracted from China's organ transplant system indicated that Beijing was turning surgeons into "Executioners," citing "Problematic declarations of brain death" in which the direct cause of many prisoners whose organs were transplanted appeared to be doctors cutting up their bodies.