Channels

Woody Wu/AFP/Getty Images
David Matas. 'Capacity for doing evil remains the same'
Woody Wu/AFP/Getty Images
Book cover
'State Organs'
Book cover

Jewish lawyer on a mission

Human rights lawyer David Matas, who has been focusing for years on combating anti-Semitism, explains why he is putting so much effort in stopping organ transplant abuse in China

VIDEO – On February 5, 2013, former Canadian MP David Kilgour and international human rights lawyer David Matas testified on their almost seven-year investigation into illegal organ harvesting in China at the International Human Rights Subcommittee of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Canadian Parliament.

 

The two investigators published reports concluding that the Chinese regime is killing its own citizens, most of them Falun Gong adherents in order to harvest their organs for profit.

 

 

David Matas, who is the honorary senior legal counsel of B'nai Brith Canada, has been investigating these crimes since 2006.

 

The conclusion of the investigation about the forced organ harvesting conducted by the Communist regime in China sounded unbelievable when first published. But in recent years more voices all around the world confirm that Matas was right.

 

“One of the lessons we’ve learned from the Holocaust is that human nature does not change,” Matas stated to The Epoch Times. “What changes is the technology, but the capacity for doing evil remains the same.”

 

"Waiting times for transplants of organs in China are days and weeks. Everywhere else in the world, waiting times are years or months... A short waiting time for deceased organ transplant means the presence of a large bank of living organ sources ready to be killed in order to assure such waiting times," says Matas.

 

On October 3, 2012, 106 Congress members sent Secretary of State Clinton a letter asking her to release information about transplant abuse in China that the US government might have in hand. The forced organ harvesting in China was recently discussed in the European parliament and various international fora.

 

Israel has played a part in the international efforts to fight these bloody crimes. Israel passed a law in March 2008 banning the sale and brokerage of organs abroad. The law also ended funding, through the health insurance system, of transplants in China for Israeli nationals.

 

Prof. Jacob Lavee, head of the heart transplants unit at the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, in his contribution to the book “State Organs,” explains this law as a reaction to transplant abuse in China. The Israeli High Court supported the decision as well.

 

In 2010, Matas and his colleague, David Kilgour, were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Canadian MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj and Balfour Hakak, chairman of the Hebrew Writers Association in Israel.

 

Matas, who has been focusing for years on anti-Semitism combat, explains why he is putting so much to investigate the forced organ harvesting in China now.

 

“Once I had come to the conclusion that innocents, prisoners of conscience, were being killed for their organs, I could not just shelve the report David Kilgour and I had written and do nothing. The wrong called out for a remedy. As a human rights activist and advocate, as well as a researcher and writer, I began to campaign for that remedy.”

 

France is considering proposed legislation to follow the Israeli example and prevent its citizens from going to China for organ transplants. But many countries have not taken any real measures to fight these crimes in China.

 

Matas says that he, as well as other people of conscience around the globe, “must work to put in place to prevent abuses of organ transplant abuse, as well as to bring to justice perpetrators of that abuse."

 

Reprinted with permission from NTD Television

 

 


פרסום ראשון: 02.26.13, 06:52
 new comment
Warning:
This will delete your current comment