National Post · OTTAWA — The Conservative government is planning to investigate
allegations in a new report that the Chinese government and its
agencies are torturing religious prisoners and harvesting their
organs, Tory MP Deepak Obhrai indicated on Thursday.
“We take these allegations quite seriously, and we’ll look into
that,” said Obhrai, who is parliamentary secretary to Foreign
Affairs Minister Peter MacKay. “We’ll look to have it confirmed.”
The report, prepared by former Alberta MP David Kilgour and
international human rights lawyer David Matas, included transcripts
of recorded conversations in Mandarin with hospital and
detention-centre officials who admitted they had organs available
for transplants from Falun Gong prisoners.
The Chinese government banned the practice of Falun Gong in the
country in 1999, and rounded up its members accusing them of
anti-government activities.
“What we’ve got here is a new, shocking, different form of evil,”
said Matas at a news conference. “The Chinese Communist party sees
the Falun Gong as an ideological threat to the regime, because of
the large numbers, the ability to mobilize a large group of people,
their commitment and their tenacity.”
Obhrai said the government had already been concerned about the
issue before the report was released, asking the United Nations
Special Rapporteur on Torture to look into allegations of organ
harvesting and human rights violations.
A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Canada has denied the
government has any policy to forcibly harvest organs, dismissing the
allegations as “rumours spread by the Falun Gong.”
The report recommends the Canadian government revoke passports of
citizens suspected of travelling to China for transplants and stop
Chinese doctors from studying transplants in Canada.
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