Editor’s note: After taking part in an event on July 8 in
Singapore marking the launch of his book (with David Kilgour) “Bloody
Harvest: The killing of Falun Gong for their organs,” David Matas met
with the press. He was asked the following question: “Why should I care
about the killing of Falun Gong for their organs? What does it have to
do with me?” Matas gave an extemporaneous answer to the question, but
then the next day wrote out a fuller response, which is this article.
What are you waiting for? Are you not going to protest until someone
comes for you, to kill you for your organs? By then, it will be far too
late.
Reverend Martin Niemoller, in 1938, wrote: “First they came for the
Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came
for the communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a
communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak
out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me, and there
was no one left to speak out for me.”
The killing of Falun Gong for their organs is an abuse that did not
start or end with Falun Gong. The killing of prisoners for their organs
began in China with prisoners sentenced to death. As the research of
Ethan Gutmann has shown, it spread to Uyghurs, Tibetans, and house
Christians.
When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, many people asked a
similar question: Why should we care about what the Nazis do to the
Jews? What does it have to do with us?
By the Treaty of Munich in September 1938, British Prime Minister
Neville Chamberlain agreed with Hitler, Mussolini, and French Prime
Minister Édouard Daladier to give the part of Czechoslovakia known as
the Sudetenland to Germany. Czechoslovakia had no say in the matter.
In the House of Commons the same month, Chamberlain justified his
appeasement of Hitler, saying about Hitler’s claims that Czechoslovakia
was mistreating its ethnic German minority, that it was a “quarrel in a
far away country between people of whom we know nothing.”
By ignoring the plight of Falun Gong we erode our own humanity.
It would be all too easy to repeat the gist of this sentiment: that
the people outside of China know nothing about Falun Gong, that the
government of China’s repression of Falun Gong is not a quarrel in which
outsiders have any interest or stake.
Yet, Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler in a quarrel between people
of whom Neville Chamberlain and many of his British colleagues knew
nothing led less than 12 months later to World War II, with over 400,000
British deaths, a global conflagration, and the Holocaust.
The German Nazi ideology of eliminationist antisemitism, the
determination of the Nazi regime to kill Jews everywhere, precipitated,
continued, and prolonged World War II.
Global Loss
For the Jewish community, World War II was a loss beyond words. The
Jewish community lost 6 million souls, one-third of its population. The
Yiddish shtetl culture of Eastern Europe was obliterated.
The global community suffered that loss. Jews have made signal
contributions to global science and arts, culture and learning. Albert
Einstein himself would have been killed in the Holocaust had he not
escaped and been a refugee.
The loss of Falun Gong practitioners through the killing for their
organs is the loss to the global community of the contributions these
individuals could have made if they had lived.
World War II was a disaster and a tragedy for the whole planet. Total
casualties during World War II were 62 million—25 million military and
37 million civilian. Thirty-one million non-Jewish civilians died in
that War.
The link between antisemitism and Nazi aggression was direct because
Nazi Germany invaded foreign countries to kill their Jews. Lucy
Dawidowicz, in her book “The War Against the Jews, 1933–1945,” writes
that in the minds of the Nazi German leaders, World War II was a cover
for its planned murder of the Jews.
Human rights oppression is a spreading, indelible stain.
There was even a link between antisemitism and Japanese aggression.
The Japanese invasions in Asia were made possible by its Tripartite Pact
with Italy and Germany and the power vacuum created in Asia by German
attacks on the Asian colonial powers—France, the Netherlands, and
Britain. Hatred of Jews dragged the whole world down.
After the war, the damage continued. The Nuremberg Tribunal
established in 1945 was abolished in 1948 with half its docket
unprosecuted, including Kurt Waldheim, who later went on to become
secretary general of the United Nations and president of Austria.
Moreover, there were many thousands not yet identified, not yet
charged, that would have been caught by a full-blown prosecution effort.
The Allies were motivated by a desire to bring and keep West Germany
onside in the Cold War.
For immunity against the Nazis to be effective, it had to be
comprehensive. The creation of a general international criminal court,
which had originally been part of the plans for postwar institutions,
was scrapped. Similarly, local systems of justice had to avoid the
prosecution of Nazi mass murderers in their midst.
That immunity became a license for one genocide after another. There
is a direct link between the immunity given to Nazi mass murderers after
World War II and the seemingly endless stream of post-World War II
crimes against humanity—in Rwanda, in Cambodia, in Bosnia, in Sudan.
Vigorous Protest
If there is one thing we could have done to reverse the tragedies of
the 20th century, I suggest it would have been this: Protest vigorously
and globally the Nazi victimization of Jews from the minute it started.
We cannot, of course, reverse history. But we can learn from it.
If there is one lesson that humanity should learn from World War II,
it is that state hatred of a disadvantaged minority in a repressive
country can wreak global damage.
If we know nothing about Falun Gong, we had better learn and learn
fast. The abuses the government of China wreaks on Falun Gong run the
risk of affecting us all.
While China is not about to invade foreign countries to kill their
Falun Gong practitioners, spying, infiltration, and attempts at
suppression are standard fare. The government of China uses threats,
intimidation, political bullying, and the power of its large purse to
corrupt human rights values planetwide in its attempts to demonize and
marginalize Falun Gong.
Human rights oppression is a spreading, indelible stain. It never
stops with today’s victims. Unless today’s victims are defended, we run
the risk of becoming tomorrow’s victims.
Violators divide to conquer. They attack the most vulnerable,
counting on the indifference of those who could help by playing on the
difference between the victims and the outsiders. We must combat that
indifference by convincing outsiders of their unity with the victims.
Regrettably, in combating human rights violations, we have a wealth
of choices. In choosing which violations to combat, first priority
should go to the worst violations. We need to help victims in those
countries who cannot help themselves.
The government of China uses threats, intimidation, political
bullying, and the power of its large purse to corrupt human rights
values planet-wide in its attempts to demonize and marginalize Falun
Gong.
If you become a human rights activist in China combating repression
of Falun Gong, you run a grave risk of becoming a human rights victim
yourself, as the case of Gao Zhisheng demonstrates all too well.
Outsiders must help Falun Gong in China because only outsiders can do so
from the vantage of safety.
Protesting the violations of brutal regimes abroad may seem forlorn.
They may seem so firmly entrenched that nothing will budge them. Yet,
the experience with South African apartheid, the communist Soviet Union
and Eastern Europe, the national security states of Latin America and
more recently the tyrannies in Egypt and Tunisia shows the contrary.
The very inflexibility of these regimes means that they are brittle.
Press against their violations bit by bit and eventually the regimes
shatte
r.
Remedies for Victims
In any case, our primary audience when we protest violations is not the perpetrators but the victims.
Whether our protests move the violators, they surely move the
victims. For many victims, the worst part of their victimization is
their despair at being unnoticed and abandoned. By standing with the
victims, we say we know what is happening and we object to what is
happening; our very protests are for the victims remedies in themselves.
Human rights belong to individuals, not states. Leave human rights to
states and human rights will wither. Individuals must assert human
rights to keep those rights alive.
Crimes against humanity are crimes against us all. When crimes
against humanity are committed, we are all victims. We must not be
silent in the face of our own victimization when part of our human
family suffers from grave abuses.
Protesting human rights violations abroad is not just about others.
Nor is it just an attempt to prevent worse in the future. It is about
us, now.
Combating human rights violations abroad is considerate, humane.
Turning a blind eye and a deaf ear are cruel, inhumane. We become who we
are by what we do. By ignoring the plight of Falun Gong, we erode our
own humanity, turn ourselves into mean, uncaring people.
We who are not Falun Gong must protest human rights violations of
Falun Gong, not in spite of the fact that we are not Falun Gong but
because we are not Falun Gong. By leaping across the geographical,
spiritual, and cultural divide, we affirm our fundamental unity, our
solidarity with all humanity, our common human bond.
David Matas is an international human rights lawyer based in Winnipeg, Canada.
More: The Epoch Times
