Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Feb. 5th, 2013

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Your statements today indicate that many Falun Gong are the victims of illegal, non-consensual organ extractions. There are often other prisoners under terrible living and working conditions. These victims are found in both labour camps and sterilized hospitals as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Actually, we can't continue that question because we're out of time for that round. Perhaps it would be possible, in responding to another question, for our witnesses to deal with it.

We'll go now to Professor Cotler.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to begin by commending both our witnesses, David Matas and David Kilgour, for their pioneering and path-breaking work in regard to illegal organ harvesting. I've followed it for years and I think they are correct in characterizing the issue as one in which the evidence that they have adduced needs to be rebutted. The burden of truth at this point must be on the Chinese authorities. Until that rebuttal is forthcoming, then the case that has been put forward by David Matas and David Kilgour stands.

I want to mention parenthetically that I am preparing a private member's bill along the lines that you have indicated and will consult with you so that we can put forward an exemplary private member's bill in that regard.

The question I want to put to you—and reference has been made to it—has to do with the CNOOC takeover of Nexen.

Apart from the overall concerns with a Chinese state enterprise taking over a Canadian resource company that had exemplary human rights standards, as you mentioned, Mr. Kilgour, there is the question of some serious allegations that the Chinese state enterprise, in this instance CNOOC, has itself been implicated in abuses of minority rights in China. In particular there is some evidence respecting the persecution of Falun Gong who were CNOOC employees and at the same time that CNOOC has used its security forces to cooperate with police in the arrest and detention of their own employees who were identified as Falun Gong practitioners.

My question to both of you is whether you have knowledge and can speak to the evidence of the complicity of CNOOC in the abuse of Falun Gong, which would be directly related to our concerns today, apart from bearing on the larger issue of the state-owned enterprise takeover of Nexen.

[David Kilgour]

Thank you.

I would ask David Matas to give that talk. He gave an excellent address in Alberta about a week and a half ago, and one of the issues he talked about is the point you just raised.

[David Matas]

Yes, perhaps I could say something about that.

There are 77 individual documented and verifiable testimonies of CNOOC complicity in the persecution of Falun Gong. CNOOC is a state company, and the Communist Party runs the Chinese government, including all state enterprises. It runs them centrally, regionally, and locally. Everywhere there's a government office or function, there's a Communist Party office or function that instructs the government office or function. There is a Communist Party office that instructs CNOOC. There is a part of the Communist Party that's responsible for the repression of Falun Gong. It is called the 610 office, named after the date it was established: June 10, 1999.

There is a 610 office in the CNOOC affiliate in China, the Bohai Oil Corporation. That 610 office was responsible, as I say, for the persecution of 77 documented individuals, who were interrogated, taken to the local police, arrested, detained, and sent to brainwashing centres or mental institutions. In mental institutions they, including pregnant women, were injected with nerve-damaging drugs.

The employees who were Falun Gong were fined huge amounts, arbitrarily searched, and dismissed. Their pay was held and their possessions confiscated. They were denied benefits and bonuses. They were paid wages only at minimum cost, regardless of seniority of position, expertise, and education.

If you were a Falun Gong practitioner or you are one today, employment in CNOOC in China is the first stop on a train whose final destination, potentially at least for some, is an unmarked white van where your organs are extracted and taken to the nearest hospital. Stops along the way are meetings with your immediate superior, then the Communist Party officials who run your office, then the local detention centre, then either a mental hospital or re-education through a labour camp.

I myself met with people in Alberta who worked for CNOOC, were harassed by it, and managed to get out in time before they suffered the worst ravages, and they know some of these other people who have suffered a lot worse.

I myself, as did David Kilgour, had reservations about this takeover of Nexen, and I thought preconditions for approval of the takeover should have been that all 610 offices in CNOOC would have to be dismantled; that the company would have to admit openly, publicly, and in full detail its human rights violating past; and that the company would have to compensate fully all its victims for the harm that all the affiliates have inflicted.

Now that the takeover has been approved, those conditions still need to be realized, as far as I'm concerned. I don't think we should say it's over and forget it. CNOOC is now a Canadian company, a Canadian neighbour, and we should insist that it respect these standards.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

On the issue of net benefit, which has been the criterion regarding the determination of the takeover, would you say that human rights considerations effectively are not factored into the notion of net benefit and that it is purely an economic concern?

[David Kilgour]

Absolutely not. Maybe the CNOOC and Nexen business isn't an issue the committee has been seized with, but it's....

Ladies and gentlemen, the 3,000 employees of Nexen, the ones who can get jobs somewhere else, are going to be gone immediately, as soon as they can get other jobs. To me as an Albertan, it's a tragedy that this has happened to Nexen.

[David Matas]

When we're dealing with foreign investment approval guidelines, I would say also that the net benefit criteria, or whatever the criteria are, should include that if you're going to be approved for an investment in Canada, you have to respect human rights abroad, acknowledge past violation, and compensate the victims.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you very much.

We next go to Mr. Schellenberger.

[Gary Schellenberger, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Thank you.

Thank you, gentlemen, for your knowledge and abilities to put forth all the work that you've done over the past number of years.

Based on your research, have organ seizures from Falun Gong practitioners increased or decreased since your report was published?

[David Kilgour]

The short answer to that one is—and we agree on this completely—that the number of executions in China has actually gone down a little bit, thank goodness; however, while the number of transplants basically went down for a while in 2007, it's now gone up again. The result is that since the Falun Gong are the only other source of organs, the consequences for Falun Gong have been very negative. More Falun Gong are being killed for their organs than in the past. That's the way I see it.

David, do you want to respond?

[David Matas]

I will afterward.

[Gary Schellenberger, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

I do know that in order to have organ transplants, you have to have someone who wants that transplant.

In your assessment, has illegal global trade in human organs improved or worsened over the past decade?

[David Kilgour]

I don't think I could say anything. I'm really not in any position to make a comment on that.

However, let me give you the example of Australia. In 2006, Edward McMillan-Scott and I went to Australia. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation was extremely good. They put us on three nights in a row, and we talked about this situation. The Australians weren't aware of what was happening and where these organs were coming from when they went to China. About six months later we got an email saying that the number of Australians going to China for organs had...I think the term used was “collapsed”.

If Canadians or Australians or anybody else knows that when they go to First People's Hospital in Shanghai and check in for a kidney or a liver, somebody who has probably been convicted of nothing is going to die, I think most people would not do it.

I know there is huge pressure on people to find the organs.

[David Matas]

I can add something to that.

Transplant tourism into China has definitely decreased since our report came out. In fact, it's not just Australia and other countries that have cut down on it; the Government of China itself has come out against it and said they are giving priority to Chinese nationals as opposed to foreigners.

When we first started going around, we were saying, “Oh, you only have to wait days for an organ”, and then people would say, “Well, I have a relative in China who has to wait a lot longer”, so there was a lot of dissatisfaction over that.

There is still transplant tourism into China. There is a website called Omar, which also appears in Arabic, that advertises transplants in China, but statistically there are definitely fewer. I would say that on the demand side, there is some a transition to a solution of the problem, but on the supply side, there is absolutely not. We're still getting organs sourced from the Falun Gong, and more so.

[Gary Schellenberger, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

I know that here in Canada, it's taken a long time for people to realize they can donate organs. It's been a long process.

That process is happening in China, is it not? Is it because of their culture or their religion? I think we had that initially also. Do you think there is some hope that it will change down the road?

[David Matas]

The Chinese government set up a donation process in 2010 as a pilot project. In the first year, I think they had 37 donations. There were more people working on donations than there were donations.

The numbers picked up in the second year; I think there were 1,600. Of course, these are deceased donor donations. Not everybody dies as soon as they sign a card, so it doesn't actually lead to statistically significant numbers.

People say it's cultural inhibitions, but I don't buy that. The Communist Party of China is culturally far more removed from the culture of China than the culture of organ donation is. Look at the tens of millions of people who have joined the Communist Party.

I think what is really driving it is money and the marginalization of Falun Gong. A huge amount of money is paid to the hospitals and to the prisons. If you start getting donors, then the prisons don't get any money any more.

I think that once the Communist Party gives this a priority—and frankly, pressing them on the human rights matter is going to push them in the direction of giving it a priority—they will get as many donors as they have members of the Communist Party, and then some.

[Gary Schellenberger, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

My understanding is that the only way they finance their prisons is through organ—

[David Matas]

Well, it's not the only way, but in China the military is a business. The military, as a business, sells organs. It's not their only source of money, but it's a big source. In fact, there was a military hospital that had on its website, “Selling organs is our main source of funds”. Like everything else, I quoted it, and they took it down.

[Gary Schellenberger, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

I have a dear friend who, quite a number of years ago, had a live transplant. It was a kidney. You can do that with a kidney, but you can't do it with a heart. I understand that. At that time it was not something that was readily done, 25 years ago or so, and now it's far more prevalent.

[David Kilgour]

You might want to know that one of our inquiries was to go to three hospitals in Canada. This was about four or five years ago. We went to one in B.C., one in Calgary, and one in Toronto, and we asked them how many transplants had come from China, because people have to go for care afterwards. Just going from memory, we got the impression that about 100 Canadians had gone to China for organs. That was just in these three hospitals over the previous year or two.

You can say it's a small number, but we'd like to think it would be zero. I think Canadians wouldn't be going if they knew what you know now.

[Gary Schellenberger, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Yes.

[David Matas]

It's chilling, and there are many chilling incidents. As you say, somebody can survive a kidney donation, but we never came across a surviving kidney donor in China.

[Gary Schellenberger, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

You use both of them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Mr. Kilgour, before we go to our next questioner, I wanted to clarify one of your answers to Mr. Schellenberger's first question.

You indicated that the number of executions had gone down, but you implied that was problematic. Were you saying that the number of official executions has gone down, but as a result the demand for organs has been met by increased extrajudicial killings of Falun Gong practitioners?