Category Archives: Enforcement

What is the Evidence of ‘Forced Organ Harvesting’ in China?

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 7, July 2019

Tianjin First Center Hospital, left, and the Oriental Organ Transplant Center, right, seen in Tianjin, 2018. Data from official records about the hospital, and admissions by medical staff, suggest it performs thousands of transplants annually. Source: Wikimedia commons.

Matthew Robertson
Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation

On June 17 in London a “people’s tribunal” chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, prosecutor of Slobodan Milosevic at The Hague, issued a judgement stating that “forced organ harvesting” has taken place in China for over 20 years, and continues to this day. It concluded that practitioners of Falun Gong have been “probably the main” source of organ supply, adding that the violent persecution and medical testing of Uyghurs make it likely that they too are victims, or at least are highly vulnerable targets for organ harvesting now and in the future. The findings have been widely reported.

The tribunal has thus reaffirmed a long-standing allegation: that the Chinese security services and military, working with transplant surgeons in hospitals, use prisoners of conscience as a living organ bank — blood and tissue-typing them, entering their biometric data into databases, and killing them on demand (or removing their organs before they die, as some Chinese medical papers suggest, and as testified to by the Uyghur former surgeon Enver Tohti) for paying recipients. Transplant surgeries typically cost hundreds of thousands of yuan (or hundreds of thousands of dollars for tourists), and recipients then take immunosuppressants for the rest of their lives. Depending on the scale of the practice, this would make it a multi-billion dollar industry. Continue reading →

Celebrating Independence In Al Anbar, Iraq

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 7, July 2019

Al Anbar Province, Iraq, in Summer 2007. Photo: Heath Hansen.

Heath Hansen
U.S. Army

Even though it was only 0500, the heat was already approaching the high 90’s and I could feel my sticky uniform only too well, sandwiched between skin and body armor. The Humvee engines were idling and the smell of JP-8 fuel stung my nostrils. “Hansen, 2nd platoon’s electronic warfare vehicle is down. We’ll need you in the lead element for the mission. You’re truck commander.”

“Roger, sir,” I replied to my platoon leader, “My truck’s ready, I’ll let the crew know.” More than four years had passed since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and we were still trying to secure independence for this country. It was the summer of 2007, in Anbar Province, and my company was headed out for another assignment in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

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Canada’s Conflict With China Can Be Solved With Joint Tariffs By Democratic Allies

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 6, June 2019 

(Front L-R) Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro, French President Emmanuel Macron, Indonesia President Joko Widodo, Chinese President Xi Jinping, US President Donald Trump, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Salman, Japan Prime Minister Shinxo Abe, Argentine President Mauricio Macri, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, South Korean President Moon Jae-in, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte, (Second row L-R) Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, Egypt President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker, Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison, British Prime Minister Theresa May, India Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, European Union President of the European Council Donald Tusk, Senegal President Macky Sall, Chile President Sebastian Pinera and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and third row’s invited guests attend the family photo during the G20 Osaka Summit in Osaka on June 28, 2019. Source: OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development via Flickr.

Anders Corr, Ph.D.
Publisher of the Journal of Political Risk

Canada is in an awkward dispute with China. On the one hand, it wants two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, released from detention, under conditions some would call torture. The lights are left on 24 hours a day, they cannot see loved ones, they undergo daily interrogations without legal counsel present, and they only get short visits from their consular officials once a month. On the other hand, Canada wants to comply with its extradition treaty with the U.S., which wants Meng Wanzhou for alleged lies to financial institutions in order to evade Iran sanctions. Perhaps more urgently, Canada wants to continue its lucrative trade with China. A solution is for other allied democracies, including in the U.S. and Europe, to use their substantial power to impose tariffs on China to help out their fellow democracy, Canada. Our neighbor to the north could do the same, in its own defense. Canadian tariffs against China, linked to demands for the release of Kovrig and Spavor, would likely get them freed overnight.

China is not too subtle about its demands. It wants Meng sent back safe and sound to China. Until then, apparently, the two Canadians will be detained and Canada will undergo increasing difficulty with its agricultural exports to China. All of Canada’s China problems will go away if it just signs on the line and releases her from home detention, according to China and its Canadian intermediaries.

The Kovrig-Spavor predicament is awkward for Canada because it is arguably a result of decades of democracies’ prioritization of trade over human rights issues. That includes Canada. Now that Canadian citizens have been targeted, Canada is wondering whether it is getting the same cold shoulder from its allies that it gave to human rights activists in the past.

The newly-found Canadian human rights concern for Kovrig and Spavor rings hollow after it largely ignored, for purposes of trade, the thousands killed by China at Tiananmen Square in 1989, and the 1-3 million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims detained in reeducation camps. By not taking a stronger stand on all of China’s human rights abuse, but instead focusing on just the two Canadians of the millions harmed by China, Canada undermines its own moral authority, and with it, any advocacy for the human rights of the two Canadians.

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China’s Concentration Camps Are A Test For The International Community

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 5, May 2019 

Barbed wire sky. Source: Darigold Bokeh via Flickr.

Nijat Turghun
Stockholm University

It’s now no secret that in East Turkistan, the oppression has reached a the boiling point.  Since China’s occupation in 1949, an entire people are going through an unimaginably cruel process, in which Uyghurs and other groups are being pared from their original identity. Their culture, language, values, tradition and religion have been regarded as a poisonous barrier for China’s new project: the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). To fulfill the final mission China set up of concentration camps in East Turkistan, where people are being tortured, indoctrinated, abused and brainwashed again and  again because they barely belong to what Beijing considers risky groups, including simple communities of faith or people with family abroad. People outside the camps are not free, and every 100 meters people must be checked by Chinese policemen. Video cameras on the street continuously report one’s movement and at home people are obliged to welcome Han Chinese guests who have been sent by the Chinese government for ‘’good intention’’. They impose themselves into Uyghur homes, where they eat and live together with Uyghur families. If any religious or other “risky” things or behaviors are discovered they will be placed in concentration camps.

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