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Footage from Chinese state media caught President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and President Xi Jinping of China talking about the possibility of living forever, during a military parade in Beijing on Wednesday.
Genetically modified lung functioned for nine days, in latest development in xenotransplantation aimed at solving organ shortage crisisSurgeons have transplanted a lung from a genetically modified pig into a brain dead human recipient for the first tim…
CHINA’S regime is significantly expanding its empire of organ harvesting centres in a twisted bid to make money, experts say.
A plot to build six new sites in Xinjiang Uyghur by 2030 has stoked fears of forced organ removal, given staggeringly low donation rates in the region.
An organ removal operation takes place in China[/caption]
A hospital in Urumqi in Xinjiang, China[/caption]
China’s organ trade is already estimated to have a market value of $1 billion per year – which the Communist government wants to swell.
A liver transplant, for example, can cost around £118,000 ($160k) in China – but with a much shorter waiting time compared to the rest of the world.
This draws in not only recipients from inside the sprawling nation, but also unsuspecting international visitors who travel there for a transplant.
China’s regime has long been accused of orchestrating a non-consensual organ harvesting campaign against persecuted minorities.
Prisoners are known to be killed specifically for the extraction of their organs.
Experts say the primary victims of forced organ harvesting are those who follow Buddhist qigong and meditation practice of Falun Gong.
They also believe that incarcerated Uyghurs fall victim – and new facilities are planned to open in their autonomous region of Xinjiang.
At least six transplant institutions are tipped to open in the next five years, which campaigners say is hugely disproportionate to Xinjiang’s low organ donation rate.
Xinjiang is understood to have an organ donation rate of just 0.69 per cent per million people – significantly below the national average of 4.66 per cent.
It has raised questions among experts who fear it could be part of a sickening plot to use detained Uyghurs as a living organ “donation” bank.
Ughur detainees have reported forced blood tests, ultrasounds and organ-focused medical scans while in custody.
Insiders say such procedures are consistent with chilling organ compatibility testing.
Wendy Rogers, Chair of the International Advisory Board of the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC), told the Sun: “The guise is that all the organs will come from voluntary donations.
“But this is implausible given the reported rate of just 0.69 donors per million people in Xinjiang.
“This massive expansion in Xinjiang – a region already under scrutiny for systematic repression – raises deeply troubling questions about where the organs will come from.
“There is simply no justification for such growth in transplant capacity given the region’s official organ donation rate, which is far below the national average.”
by Katie Davis, Chief Foreign Reporter (Digital)
THE first known survivor of China’s brutal organ harvesting scheme says the regime is plotting to kill him and stage his death as suicide.
Cheng Peiming told how Xi Jinping‘s communist party is on a mission to silence him after he helped expose its organ harvesting plot.
He revealed how he was tortured and had parts of his liver and lung removed by Xi’s stooges after being imprisoned for practicing the Falun Gong religion.
Leaked insider information reveals China’s security services and high-level Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders have taken notice – and have unleashed a plot to try and discredit, or even kill, Cheng.
The CCP has said to “kill him directly and make it look like a suicide” if needed, according to bombshell information from an internal source.
Cheng has faced several suspicious threats to his physical safety, including an early hours break-in of his home in New York in November.
The intruder forced open the bolt on the garage door, left two doors open and left deep tyre marks in his backyard.
Cheng believes the break-in was an attempt to intimidate and silence him after a series of other attacks.
Up to 100,000 organ transplants are estimated to be carried out in China every year – with huge swathes harvested without consent.
New facilities – which will triple the number in the region from three to nine – will offer heart, lung, liver, kidney and pancreas/ small intestine transplants.
The Chinese government claimed back in 2015 that it had stopped using organs from executed prisoners – but no legal reforms were coupled with the announcement.
Experts say sourcing organs from prisoners was never explicitly banned either.
Rogers, who is a professor of Clinical Ethics, added: “We know that China is expanding its transplant capacity in Xinjiang, despite the relatively small population, low voluntary organ donation rates and existing capacity.
“This doesn’t make sense unless the hospitals involved are confident that there will be a steady supply of organs for transplantation.
“In the absence of any other organ source, we believe that the organs will come from Uyghur and other minorities who are incarcerated in camps Xinjiang, and killed for their organs.
“Organ transplantation generates a lot of income, so the motive may be financial.”
It comes after The Sun reported how China’s government uses cash bribes and death threats in a warped intimidation crusade against critics.
Leaked documents exposed a shocking escalation of attacks on whistleblowers and victims of a forced organ harvesting campaign orchestrated by the regime.
Whistleblowers who attended a secret Chinese Communist Party (CCP) meeting have revealed information from inside Xi Jinping‘s government.
This and a dossier of evidence laid bare a multi-pronged scheme spearheaded by Xi to silence members of Falun Gong and other groups vocal about China’s severe persecution.
Cheng Peiming, pictured showing a huge scar from forced surgery, has been threatened[/caption]
Scans show part of Cheng’s lung was cut out[/caption]
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Health service issued amber alert last year over blood stocks for hospitals and wants to hit target of 1 million donorsThe NHS needs to fill a shortfall of more than 200,000 blood donors in England to avoid a threat to public safety, officials have sai…
Musician co-founded cancer charity that helped sign up 250,000 people as stem cell donorsMike Peters, frontman of the Welsh rock band The Alarm, has died from blood cancer aged 66.The musician, who was forced to cancel a US tour last year after being d…
IN the private patient unit of the Royal Free Hospital, London, Sonia Ekweremadu, the 25-year-old daughter of the then deputy president of the Nigerian senate, waited for a kidney donor.
Private organ donation in the UK is limited to immediate blood-tied relatives, but Sonia carried a rare gene that ruled out family donors.
Sonia Ekweremadu with Daniel, the man who was brought into the UK to donate his organ[/caption]
The scheme was masterminded by her father Ike Ekweremadu, an influential Nigerian politician[/caption]
Physician Obinna Obeta served as the middleman for the operation[/caption]
To help find a donor, her father Ike, 60, approached physician Obinna Obeta, who sourced *’Daniel’, a 21-year-old street vendor from Lagos, Nigeria, and a UK visa was fast-tracked for him.
Sonia’s father assured the hospital – where 140 private kidney transplants are conducted every year – that Daniel was her cousin and a match.
But a court would later hear that a broker, in return for £1,500, had coerced Daniel into giving up his kidney.
The operation didn’t go ahead because hospital staff believed he didn’t understand he was going to have an organ removed.
Despite their suspicions, staff did not inform the police.
They only got involved after Daniel, fearing Obeta was going to have his kidney removed back in Nigeria instead, ran away and slept on the street until he had the courage to go to the authorities.
The Metropolitan Police’s modern slavery chief investigator Esther Richardson said the donor was “treated as a commodity,” and called the exchange “a transactional process just like any drugs or firearm deal”.
Esther said: “Had this been successful, the victim would have had long-term medical implications that may even have had the requirement for dialysis.”
She adds: “He is innocent and naive. Having never been on a flight, he was petrified the plane would fall from the sky.”
Obeta engaged in witchcraft to try to brainwash his victim not to escape, which is a common tool in the trafficker’s arsenal, especially in Nigeria where a curse is regularly performed on women being groomed for sex trafficking.
The rich lawmaker arranged for a man to donate his kidney to his daughter Sonia[/caption]
Beatrice was sentenced to four years[/caption]
After an investigation, Sonia’s father Ike Ekweremadu was arrested, convicted and sentenced to more than nine years in prison for trafficking the street vendor for his kidney.
His wife Beatrice, 56, was sentenced to four years and six months in prison. Obeta was convicted for helping traffic the street vendor.
During the trial at the Old Bailey in 2022, the court heard Obeta had earlier received a successful kidney transplant himself at the Royal Free Hospital.
His donor was also a young man he had falsely presented as his cousin. No prosecutions were ever carried forward on that case.
The case against the Ekweremadus was the first of its kind to be successfully tried under the UK’s 2015 Modern Slavery Act, introduced to crack down on organ trafficking and other forms of exploitation.
Daniel, who now lives under police protection in the UK, told investigators he “owed” Obeta his kidney in exchange for a visa and permit to stay in the UK.
“He [Obeta] did not tell me he brought me here for this reason,” Daniel said. “He did not tell me anything about this. I would not have agreed. My body is not for sale.”
Sonia, who was believed to be still awaiting a kidney transplant, was not charged with any crimes as she believed her donor was a relative she had never met before.
Statistics show that almost 10 per cent of organ transplants are from organ trafficking[/caption]
Although organ trafficking is rare inside the UK, the global organ trafficking trade was believed to be worth as much as £1.3billion annually.
In the second part of her book, investigative journalist Barbie Latza Nadeau has laid bare the extent of the sale of body parts, banned by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 1987.
Almost 10 per cent of all transplants are from trafficked organs, according to the Global Financial Integrity think tank.
The WHO estimates 10,000 kidneys are traded on the black market a year, averaging more than one illegal kidney transplanted every hour of every day.
There are three categories of organ donors. Firstly, legitimate donors who have joined the NHS’s Organ Donor Register or those who have not “opted out” from the system, as it stands in the UK, meaning their organs can be used in the event of their death.
The second category is those who are murdered or trafficked for their organs without consent.
He [Obeta] did not tell me anything about this. I would not have agreed. My body is not for sale.
Daniel
They may be placed under duress, which can include debt bondage or extortion, and forced to sell a kidney or even a cornea, after which they continue living.
In the worst cases, they may be killed for vital organs like their lungs, heart or pancreas, which are sold to desperately sick buyers for large sums of money.
The third category is a living person who knowingly consents to sell an organ like a kidney for financial gain. This can be done illicitly on the black market, or legitimately, for example, to help a loved one.
“Organ trafficking may be facilitated by corrupt officials or criminal groups and may include brokers or other middlemen who connect individuals providing the organ with prospective recipients, negotiate the price, and identify medical facilities where the transplant can occur,” a 2021 report to US Congress said.
In 2023, the crime data-gathering group Havocscope, which keeps a tally on the black market in organ prices based on open-source information, including police reports and the dark web, listed the average global price paid to a kidney seller as £3,800, enough to support a family for several years in some developing nations.
The buyer, however, pays on average £116,100, depending on the country.
Brokers in places where organ trafficking is more prevalent, like the Philippines, make no more than £1,160 a kidney, while in places where the trade is less transparent, like Yemen, they can make up to £46,400.
Someone in China will pay around £36,700 for a kidney, while a transplant tourist in Israel will pay around £9,700.
Vital organs, which require a deceased donor, are naturally more expensive. A lung goes for about £242,000 in Europe, the group found.
For those in the organ trafficking business, the real money being made is in the US and countries that do not have the protective layer of a national public healthcare system.
In the US, kidneys sell for around £193,400 on the black market, skin around £8 an inch and a heart can fetch £774,000, according to the Medical Futurist.
In countries where national healthcare systems exist, private patients with the right connections can expect to pay £23,000 for a cornea, £116,000 for a set of lungs, £100,000 for a heart and £76,000 for a liver.
In 2020, one organ broker in Beirut admitted selling 30 kidneys a year, harvested from the residents of refugee camps and once bought an eye from a desperate donor.
The deal was done over WhatsApp and even included a photo of the eye to see if the buyer liked the colour.
There are hundreds of thousands of people on kidney transplant waiting lists worldwide, with the average wait in the UK between two to three years, and kidneys are available for only around one-third.
Mortality rates on waiting lists are high, between 15 and 30 per cent, depending on location – factors that allow for the exploitation of desperate people.
As well as backstreet clinics, organs are harvested in private clinics like that in London’s Royal Free Hospital and similar settings all over the world.
Intensive medical expertise is required not only to remove organs but to keep them in a fit state for transplantation.
Human organs have a short shelf life outside the body. Kidneys, if kept properly, can remain viable for up to 36 hours after removal and the donor can go on to live a normal life.
Things become murkier when organs like the heart are involved. The suggestion that people are murdered for their organs implies an unthinkable complicity by medical doctors and hospitals.
But a transplant doctor in Italy, who preferred to remain anonymous, insists that it is not the surgeon’s duty to vet the organs they are presented with.
THERE have been several reported cases of human organ trafficking from around the world. Middlemen often target desperate people living in poverty.
In cases of car accidents, for example, the doctor will be told a vital organ is available while a specialist team keeps the donor alive on life support.
The donor is then taken off life support, usually in accordance with family wishes or living wills.
Iran remains the only country in the world where buying and selling organs is legal for its citizens.
All other countries have banned the practice, at least on paper, but some countries, including China, have been accused by the group Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting of executing prisoners to harvest organs for their large population.
Globally, the demand for organs is high and getting higher because of the increase in cancer, chronic kidney disease and cardiovascular diseases, especially in developed nations.
In 2022, 157,494 transplants were carried out and WHO estimates that ten per cent of those used trafficked organs – meaning 15,749 organs came from people who either sold them illegally or were killed for them.
Organs are also trafficked on the battlefield, where prisoners of war are killed so their organs can be harvested for dictators and injured soldiers.
Battlefield organ trafficking was a common activity in the Syrian civil war and has been documented in Yemen, and most recently, the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, where the illegal trade in human organs was well established before Russia’s invasion.
*Name has been changed to protect the victim
Battlefield human trafficking has been documented in countries such as Syria and Yemen[/caption]
Men show off their scars from organs taken from them[/caption]
Surgeons may be duped into using trafficked organs (stock photo)[/caption]
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