Western corporate media outlets have gone wild with claims that the Chinese state is "harvesting" the organs of ethnic minorities and political opposition figures. But an investigation by The Grayzone has found that these allegations originate from front groups run by the far-right opposition cult Falun Gong.
Falun Gong, whose devotees can often be seen clad in yellow and performing coordinated qi gong routines in crowded city centers, runs an ultra-conservative, staunchly pro-Donald Trump media network that has been compared to Alex Jones' Infowars.
According to a former member of the fringe religious group, Falun Gong believes that an apocalyptic judgement day is soon approaching and "that Trump was sent by heaven to destroy the [Chinese] Communist Party."
In order to understand, then, how heavily politicized rumors from an obscure far-right cult found their way into the headlines, it is essential to trace the roots of the story through an elaborate network of front groups.
In June 2019, a London-based organization called the China Tribunal published a report claiming that the Chinese government has been systematically executing and harvesting the organs of members of Falun Gong, a leading force of opposition to Beijing in the diaspora.
The China Tribunal describes itself as an "independent tribunal into forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in China." Most Western journalists took the organization at its word.
Up to and after it published the report, the China Tribunal received scattered coverage from various mainstream media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and The Guardian. In September, the coverage ramped up considerably after the China Tribunal presented its case to the UN Human Rights Council, with major outlets like The Independent and Reuters joining in.
One thing all this reporting has in common is that it assumes the China Tribunal is truly "independent." On its website, the China Tribunal says that it was "initiated by the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC), an international not for profit organisation, with headquarters in Australia and National Committees in the UK, USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia."
So what is ETAC, really?
On ETAC's website, one finds a "management" page with a list of people, devoid of any information except their names, photographs, and positions in the organization. The executive director and co-founder is Susie Hughes; Margo MacVicar is named as the New Zealand national manager; Rebecca James is the UK national manager for outreach, and so on.
Where do these figures come from, and what brought them together? The website has no bios. But follow the names, and it soon becomes apparent that there is another connection apart from ETAC — the Epoch Times.
A far-right anti-China propaganda network run by a cult
The Epoch Times, which uses the slogan "Truth and Tradition," has marketed itself as just another conservative, pro-Trump media outlet.
But NBC News published a major exposé in August revealing it to be the media arm of the opposition cult Falun Gong. The report details the bizarre workings of the Falun Gong organization, showing how the Epoch Times is carving a place for itself in American right-wing media.
NBC News found that the Falun Gong website spent more than $1.5 million on roughly 11,000 pro-Trump advertisements on Facebook in just six months, "more than any organization outside of the Trump campaign itself, and more than most Democratic presidential candidates have spent on their own campaigns."
And while the NBC reporters, Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Collins, cautiously refer to Falun Gong as a "spiritual community," the behavior they document very easily fits into the popular definition of "cult." (It's okay, Zadrozny and Collins, you can say it — say it with me: "Falun Gong is a cult." Now doesn't that feel better?)
A quick look at Falun Gong's official emblem, posted on its website, should raise some eyebrows: it features an ancient swastika symbol. Falun Gong reassures skeptics on the web page, "Some people say: 'This symbol looks like Hitler's stuff.' Let me tell you that this symbol itself does not connote any concepts of class."
So where do the ETAC managers fit in with Falun Gong? Susie Hughes has photographer credits on several Epoch Times articles (her name seems to have been scrubbed, the photos merely credited to "The Epoch Times," but the credit still shows up on Google searches at the time of writing). Margo MacVicar has numerous articles gushing about Shen Yun, Falun Gong's traveling dance show. Rebecca "Becky" James shows up organizing a Falun Gong art exhibition in Bristol and sharing vegan drink recipes.
ETAC's UK national manager for initiatives, Andy Moody, is credited by Epoch Times as a reporter for its sibling NTD, or New Tang Dynasty Television, Falun Gong's TV arm. (Concerned Canadians have noted that the cult's propaganda network has received millions of their tax dollars worth of disproportionate funding.)
ETAC's UK communications coordinator Victoria Ledwidge appears in another Epoch Times article, coming to greet Shen Yun performers in London and, of course, acclaiming the "amazing" performance.
As one goes down the list of ETAC management, these Falun Gong connections spring up for almost everyone. ETAC is very clearly a Falun Gong front group.
Neither ETAC nor China Tribunal discloses these connections, but it hardly takes an intrepid investigative journalist to find them. So why was this level of basic research a step too far for, say, Owen Bowcott at the Guardian, who does little more than transmit ETAC's talking points?
In fact, Falun Gong itself is actively spreading this "organ harvesting" rumor in major North American cities. The Grayzone's Ben Norton saw some of the cult's activists standing in central Toronto next to a giant banner titled "Stop Forced Live Organ Harvesting in China."
They handed out pamphlets to passers-by declaring that the "Chinese Communist Regime Is Slaughtering Innocents" (using a painting as supposed evidence), while preaching about the "great health benefits" of Falun Gong.
'Research' overseen by a cult that sidelines real doctors
Turning to the China Tribunal's report itself, it is apparent that, despite the authors' claim to "have maintained distance and separation from ETAC in order to ensure their independence," they rely heavily on information curated for them by ETAC.
The introduction, after describing ETAC as "a not-for-profit coalition of lawyers, medical professionals and others", goes on to state that "ETAC's main interest has been the alleged suffering of practitioners of 'Falun Gong', a group performing meditative exercises and pursuing Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance, but regarded by the People's Republic of China (PRC) since 1999 as an 'anti-humanitarian, anti-society and anti-science cult'."
It is understandable that critics might hesitate to take the PRC's characterization of Falun Gong at face value. But it is easy to make a fair evaluation of the group's true character simply by perusing their own publications, where one will learn, for instance, that modern science was invented by aliens as part of a scheme to take over human bodies; or that feminism, environmentalism, and homosexuality are part of Satan's plan to make us into communists; or that race-mixing severs our connection to the gods.
What Falun Gong means exactly when it preaches the timeless values of "truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance" is beyond this article's scope. I leave it to the reader to judge how the above doctrines correspond to them.
The report summary goes on to state: "Evidence was submitted by ETAC for the first hearing, amplified by further evidence following the first and second evidence hearings." So despite framing their investigation as separate and independent of ETAC, the authors admit that they began with evidence fed to them by ETAC.
Their reliance on ETAC is further highlighted later when several doctors are named who expressed skepticism about the Falun Gong organ harvesting narrative. These doctors are listed as "doctors speaking favourably of the PRC."
The report then states:
"All of these doctors were invited by the Tribunal to participate in the Tribunal's proceedings. Their participation would have greatly assisted the Tribunal in its work; they all declined the invitations. Further, although each did contribute in person to a recent report by an Australian Government Committee their contributions have been subject to review by ETAC that reveals that they produced no hard evidence to support what they said and could be criticised for their methodology or their experience in transplant surgery."In other words, the China Tribunal didn't see any need to consider their testimony, because ETAC had already looked at it and declared it to be bogus.
One of these doctors, Francis Delmonico, was contacted by the science journal Nature for its article on the China Tribunal's report — a rare case of a dissenting opinion being registered, however grudgingly.
Delmonico was asked specifically for his opinion on a research paper cited by the China Tribunal, which was published on the scientific archive, SocArXiv, by Matthew Robinson - a research fellow of the famously impartial Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation:
"But Francis Delmonico, a surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, says that although there is evidence that organs were taken from prisoners in the past — which he condemns — he is not convinced by the SocArXiv evidence because it is not direct. Delmonico is chair of the World Health Organization's Task Force on Donation and Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues and has been supporting organ-donation reform in China for more than a decade, although he made his comments to Nature in a personal capacity."
Lobbyists for an anti-Iran cult go to bat for an anti-China one
The China Tribunal's report is not the first alleging that the Chinese government is murdering Falun Gong prisoners en masse to harvest their organs. It relies heavily on an earlier document, known as the Kilgour-Matas report, which was initially released in 2006 and updated several times since then, with the title "Bloody Harvest."
This previous report was commissioned by the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong in China. Unlike ETAC, CIPFG plainly states that it is a Falun Gong organization.
More interesting connections arise when probing the backgrounds of the co-authors of the report, David Kilgour and David Matas.
David Matas is the senior legal counsel for B'nai Brith Canada, a right-wing pro-Israel lobby that works hard to tar any critique of the occupation of Palestine as anti-semitism. He was also a member of the Canadian government's now-defunct Rights and Democracy board, in which capacity he lobbied on behalf of the Iranian opposition cult Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), as part of an effort to remove the MEK from the Canadian and US lists of terrorist organizations — an effort that was eventually successful.
The Rights and Democracy board's chairman, Aurel Braun, was also a strident MEK advocate, who promoted the cult as a replacement for Iran's present government. Rights and Democracy eventually dissolved due in part to Braun's and Matas' relentless attacks on another board member for supposed contacts with Hezbollah and Hamas.
The MEK emerged in 1960s Iran, promoting a strange mixture of Marxism and Shia Islam, and supported the 1979 Revolution until the Mullahs turned against it. MeK leadership then fled to Europe, from which they launched a series of terrorist bombings. They simultaneously maintained a presence in Iraq, where they enjoyed Saddam Hussein's patronage, massacred Kurds on his behalf, and even fought with his troops against their own country.
The MEK promote themselves, to anyone who will listen, as the Iranian opposition and the best democratic alternative to the present government — and politicians and think tanks seeking regime change in Iran readily indulge them, despite wide reports of their cult-like behavior.
Comment: Rather worryingly, the MEK have the ear of John Bolton, who aligns with them in the quest to destroy Iran. It was a relief when Trump fired him.
In August 2019 Canada's National Observer published a report about Canadian politicians who love the MEK. Prominently featured in the article is the other co-author of "Bloody Harvest," David Kilgour, a former MP who is co-chair for "Canadian Friends of a Democratic Iran" and has been doing PR for the MEK for years.
So both authors of "Bloody Harvest" advocate on behalf of, not one, but two cults that also happen to be darlings of regime-change enthusiasts in and around Western governments. (The latest edition of "Bloody Harvest" includes a third co-author, Ethan Gutmann, who, notably, has been affiliated with the Gulf monarchy-funded Brookings Institution and the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies.)
How does one unwind from all this hard shill work? David Kilgour makes a point of seeing Shen Yun's dance performances year after year and effusing about it again and again and again to the Epoch Times.
A few reporters notice Falun Gong's seamy side
In March, Jia Tolentino published her impressions of Shen Yun in the New Yorker. Like the aforementioned NBC piece on the Epoch Times, Tolentino 's article shows that more and more people are noticing that there is something very odd about Falun Gong.
From the "baroque and surreal" Shen Yun dance-propaganda show, which bills itself as a last bastion of genuine Chinese culture, she moves to consider some other very troubling aspects of the Falun Gong organization, such as their penchant for resisting journalistic inquiry and harassing critics.
Tolentino also mentions a 2017 Washington Post investigation by Simon Denyer, which, while hardly a pro-PRC puff piece, casts serious doubt on the claims of the Kilgour-Matas report on organ harvesting.
Denyer may be the only journalist in the mainstream US press who conducted an independent investigation on organ harvesting in China and seriously questions Falun Gong's organ harvesting narrative. Naturally, Ethan Gutmann felt compelled to run a rebuttal to Denyer's report on ETAC's website — and one can only imagine the kinds of emails and phone calls Denyer has been getting since he dared to publish that piece.
For most of the Western corporate media, the "Bloody Harvest" horror story is too ghoulishly titillating to subject to serious scrutiny, especially when the "Yellow Peril"-style villain is an increasingly powerful state threatening the old hegemonies.
Ryan McCarthy is a US-based writer and activist
Additional reporting by The Grayzone's Ben Norton
Reader Comments
My elevator pitch analysis:
Combine Catholic guilt with Scientology and you get Falun Dafa. The perfect cult for authoritarian addicted masses of Asian descent.
When you get deep enough into the weeds, the diligent student learns that a 'Falun' is an energetic spirit being, actually shaped like a swastika, (I'm not kidding), which if you are self-prostrating and earnest enough in your miserable practice, can be surgically/energetically affixed to your head. And then you become a super-being of some sort.
Creepy. As. Hell.
All of that being said...
I wouldn't trust the Chinese Socialist system further than I could throw it. A casual reading of the history of failed communist empires past indicates that if the Chinese are NOT organ harvesting, then they are doing Socialism wrong.
Another case of both ends against the middle.
is pure propaganda which you've internalized. I'm always struck by how people manage to question everything but that particular trope . As if the only time you were ever told the truth was about the evils/failures of communism. You can't trust TPTB on anything but that ....
Neither did Andrew Lobaczewski's seminal work, which examined on a granular scale the forces under which Socialist Utopian dream states ultimately and catastrophically fail, appear to have any of the hallmarks of propaganda. Quite the opposite.
Maybe you need to re-examine your sources?
The reality of the gulags was that the vast majority of people served their sentences and were released back to society to resume their lives and jobs. People died because of the harsh conditions, just as people die in American prisons from harsh conditions. The number of deaths was wildly overstated in the West to demonize the Russians, with thanks to ideologues such as Solzhenitsyn. It was just a more sophisticated time, than for example the anti-NK crap you see about Kim firing anti-tank missiles at bible-holding porn star girlfriends. The soviet archives were opened in the 1990's, but who read them and who interpreted the facts to Americans? There is a whole emerging academic field in Russia, despite the best efforts of Yeltsin-era professors, of students re-examining Soviet times and trying to reclaim their history from the clutches of western liberals and neocons who have distorted it in bad-faith.
I also think that I have a right to say all of this, as I earned a masters degree in Political Economics at Moscow State Institute of Foreign Relations. studying under professors, politicians and spies who are largely pro-democracy themselves.
I can't comment on Lobachevsky's work, but perhaps you might try reading something at least neutral, rather than explicitly anti-communist works, amplified and promoted in the West.
I can suggest Moshe Lewin for a more balanced view of the USSR.
I have settled on a couple of questions/observations which stand out in mind:
1. In the West, we have seen the progressive corruption of the University system, where socialism is tightly intertwined with and favored by distinctly and objectively anti-human, anti-science forces. This appears to be a global problem, not isolated to the concerns of any single nation. How likely is it that Russia might be experiencing a similar condition? (As well.., what years were you studying?)
2. You mentioned that you were studying under spies. That's an extraordinarily peculiar thing to recognize for a number of reasons. It implies that state manipulation is involved in education, that people are not what they appear, truth and intent are questionable, among other issues. Were these Soviet era spies who might have an interest in misrepresenting a past they took part in? Are they present day active spies with god-knows-what agenda? The idea of government secret agents teaching in university is wholly disturbing to say the least.
Personally, I found Solzhenitsyn's writing credible and compelling, clearly a mammoth undertaking requiring a level of passion which cannot be easily summoned by dictate. His descriptions line up tightly with the psychology of psychopathy as we understand it, and the books were accompanied by *extensive* footnotes and references. I am finding it hard to entertain the possibility of dismissing his work out of hand based on your comments.
Bertolt Brecht, Dean 'Red Elvis' Reed, Kim Philby, Lee Harvey Oswald.
Somewhat motley traffic. LOL.
1. I do not believe that it is socialism which is corrupting education in America. I believe it is capitalism which has allowed a coterie of military, corporations, and special interests groups all lead by a handful of elites to colonize every aspect of American life and drive it to whatever bizarre agendas they have. What you are calling socialism is in fact western (neo)liberalism masquerading. Socialism/marxism etc and liberalism are not at all the same, though they are purposefully conflated in the US to prevent left-leaning Americans from deviating from capitalist orthodoxy. Today the word socialism is being purposefully associated with extreme nutty fringe liberals, especially in right wing publications, who are amplified by all sides of oligarch controlled media. This is 100% deliberate, much of it radiating out of Israel (of course this is old hat going back decades) as part of the larger psyop that is Trump.
Russia does not have this issue because Russia is still fairly socially conservative since the USSR. Russian culture is honest and direct and their capitalism is crude in the sense that it is still fairly immature. Russian people are not culturally primed for the sort of decadent 24/7 media burlesque of lies you find in the West. Russia is also still about 40% communist in politics and mindset, with a slightly larger majority apathetic or just pro-establishment. A tiny minuscule fraction are western style liberals, and hatred and distrust of them is almost universal.
2. I went to the Institute of Foreign Relations, many professors were diplomats. All diplomats are spies anywhere in the world. One of my professors was the "infamous" Bezrukov, who was a spy busted in the US in a famous sleeper cell. It wasn't nearly as exciting as you would imagine. Most of these were old guys just teaching boring classes on some topic as part of their golden parachute, most of it practical and largely apolitical. You'd probably find my full take on Russia's most elitist university rather amusing and surprising.
What I am saying about Solzhenitsyn is that he bored a major grudge against the USSR. His family was very rich and lost their property and status and he took his talent and used it as a weapon against the system. People on a crusade will justify their positions, even with copious sources. Look at any political academic document coming from the US if you want to see heavily sourced BS. One of the things that made Solzhenitsyn so popular was the volume and intellect in his book. A weighty tome indeed, but heavily embellished with the way Solzhenitsyn imagined it should be not how it actually was. He was rewarded with a captive audience in the US and a Nobel Prize if I am not mistaken. Warcriminals Obama and Kissinger both got peace prizes, for what that is worth.
One needs to mention the latter (Oswald) comes back, continues to work for military intelligence as before, and gets involved in the Kennedy assassination. Makes perfect sense to me.
But what do I know, I might have suffered severe brain damage from watching too much Dean Read songs and Dean Reed cowboy movies duing my youth ...
(Probably a bit more like the 'Red' Cliff Richard, in actuality, LOL)....[Link]
intellectuals in 1918; let's kill the bourgeois and the Kulaks and the Poles and the Gypsoes. Intellectuals 2018; it wasn't us and even if it was, it wasn't all that bad
Just like Katyn never happened.
Nice try, but a resounding no is in order.
But then he started to mess with the wrong woman, and soon found an untimely and mysterious death ...
Not sure what this has to do with organ-harvesting practices in China.
People in The U.K. and U.S. are pretty oblivious to Eastern Bloc pop cultural jollies.
I only know some of it, but that's 'cause I like going into YouTube and mining people's ancient record collections.
Sorry 'bout that. LOL.
I would guess, in this case, the reason is probably combined with national pride and guilt. -Remembering that all the people who managed and worked in the camps were allowed to walk free without consequence afterwards and continue living this day with the legacy of having incarcerated and murdered millions of people for the most base and unfair reasons. -They would likely would feel comfortable painting a picture quite at odds with reality. The academic narrative you've absorbed was almost certainly seeded by thought influencers who probably did their share of testicle crushing back in the day. The sentences you indicate were for political wrong-think, for the crime of competence, the crime of being in the wrong racial or social out-group, and for being envied by neighbors. Those people should not have been imprisoned at all, should not have been serving sentences and should not have been dying of harsh conditions, and wouldn't have been but for the evils of Socialism. There is no reasonable comparison to be made with the American justice system, flawed as it is, which exists to deal with actual criminals, (theft, violence, murder, etc.). The Socialist weasel argument is to falsely conflate success in business with theft, violence and murder. His family was destroyed by the communists and he was thrown into a gulag without having done anything wrong. That sounds like a perfectly legitimate grudge to hold. His sources included reams of testimonies from fellow prisoners, who were also angry at being incarcerated by an evil system.
Saying Solzhenitsyn should be ignored because he had a legitimate reason to criticize the system is discordant logic.
That's my assessment. Make of it what you will.
The advertised youth organisation was banned in Western Germany, probably too similar to the Hitler Youth ...
And the "stanky cambozola" comparison seems appropriate - having a little taster is fine, but the second bite starts to get annoying. I am not into Eastern Bloc nostalgia at all, in difference to many acquaintances from my youth.
They all have those tunes that kind of suggest 'a-sun-rising-o'er-the-hilltop'. A bit like the badge on your vid. LOL.
"And the "stanky cambozola" comparison seems appropriate - having a little taster is fine, but the second bite starts to get annoying. I am not into Eastern Bloc nostalgia at all."
I'm into interesting string arrangements. Don't particular mind where or whence they come from, nor supposed 'acceptable taste' factor....[Link]
[Link]
Sharing some truth, or countering what one genuinely sees as a dangerous direction for humanity can be considered humanitarian work.
Are these people actually imprisoned? Organs actually harvested? I have not seen it with my own eyes so I don't know. Word is that this group is exceptionally healthy and so their organs might be considered premium. One can understand that they might not be desirable citizens.
I happen to think that the Epoch Times puts out good investigative article which are not at all complimentary to the democrat party and that's why they have been labeled "far right." That's the dog whistle to all humanities activist graduates, antifa types. Almost like a Greenbaum type program.
Humm ?? Now I know who was doing that harvesting of body parts ??
And rumours about Palestinians being killed for organ harvesting, their face smashed to pieces, and some additional tissue and body fluid harvested. The latter is placed around bombs used for attacks on civilian targets (busses, restaurants), and "proves" it was "them". This way, the war and the harvest can continue until the last one is gone.
You might compare this New York based sect to an Old Peoples Home where the inmates donate their life savings in return for board and lodging in their final years. Its useful but hardly relevant to anything political.
From all that I've seen and heard over the past few years there seems little doubt that the organ harvesting of prisoners whether from Falun Gong or other sources, is a reality. Since FG practitioners are generally exceptionally healthy, it seems reasonable that their body bits would be highly desirable.
Dunno if they're right or not, but a lot of 'spiral enthusiasts' (they do exist) have it that energetic phenomena in general are 'spirally'.
I made a compilation. Some of it is salient, some of it is less so....[Link]