The Killing of Innocents for their Organs F O R C E D O R G A N H A R V E S T I N G F R O M U Y G H U R S A N D O T H E R E T H N I C M I N O R I T I E S I N X I N J I A N G / E A S T T U R K E S T A N 2 0 2 1 B Y E T H A N G U T M A N N THE INTERNATIONAL COALITION TO END TRANSPLANT ABUSE IN CHINA [ETAC] Over the last year, several investigators have made tangible progress in investigating the forced harvesting of organs from Uyghurs,1 particularly in the area of logistics and scale of the operation.2 The purpose of this document is to provide an overview of that evidence and, in so doing, to acknowledge that the evidence is quite complex. For those who work at the coalface of forced organ harvesting, this complexity is unsurprising. This is essentially wartime research; our enemy, the perpetrator, is engaged in actively eliminating any evidentiary trail and using every public relations tool available—ignoring, displacing, ridiculing and threatening—to bury the issue on a global scale. This document may be useful to legislators and their staff, the victim diaspora, researchers and advocates as an overview of what we currently know about forced organ harvesting from the Uyghur and other ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang/East Turkestan region. The Uyghur investigation is moving from a document-driven to a witness-driven investigation. Solid analysis of leaked Chinese government documents on forced labour by German anthropologist Adrian Zenz has triggered a virulent response in Beijing.3 Assuming a similar pattern to previous cover-ups—the persecution of Falun Gong, forced organ harvesting and the origin and initial spread of COVID-19—leakers have already been eliminated, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will operate without documents going forward. Following the pattern of official Chinese transplant numbers, official Xinjiang census numbers that reveal collapsing Uyghur birthrates will be firewalled, withdrawn and replaced with new birth rates specifically designed to show modest growth. Subcontractors engaged in open bidding for Uyghur forced labourers—the sort of evidence collected by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute—will vanish from the internet. As internet research diminishes, direct witness accounts—following the pattern of the recent BBC investigation into the systematic sexual abuse in the re-education camps—can partially fill the gap.4 INTRODUCTION Intimations of the CCP’s current Uyghur strategy can be found in one of Ghulja’s hospitals the day after the Ghulja massacre in 1997. In the testimony of a Uyghur nurse, it began with a single key...5 Specifically, the hospital administration ordered a prominent ethnic Uyghur doctor to surrender his key to the hospital pharmacy. In the hours that followed, under the cover of bureaucratic pretext, other Uyghur medical staff also had to turn in their pharmacy keys. Given that Chinese armed police had shot hundreds of Uyghur protestors in central Ghulja the day before, the Uyghur staff gleaned that the Han Chinese medical administration had received a CCP directive to prevent Uyghur medical staff throughout the city from secretly giving medical treatment—including antibiotics and any other medical supplies commonly found in hospital pharmacies—to wounded Uyghur protestors. Overall, this interpretation was correct; however, this particular hospital specialised in obstetrics and gynaecology. The Han Chinese staff were planning a pharmacological operation, and the Uyghur staff would only be an impediment. Defined by the CCP as ‘ethnic minorities’, Uyghurs and Kazakhs were considered exempt from Beijing’s strict one-child policy for Han Chinese families, and it was common to have two-child families. Yet, the Uyghur families were monitored, and it was easy for medical staff to know whether a baby was the families’ first- or second-born. Over the next few days, the Chinese staff began giving ‘antibiotic’ injections to second-born Uyghur infants. Over several days, the injected newborn’s skin would take on a distinct blue appearance—this was the signal that the baby would die soon after. The Chinese staff gave the grieving parents all kinds of explanations. There was a defect. The injection was necessary. The child’s constitution was not strong enough. After a while, the explanations simply faded away, and none of the Uyghur staff asked about getting their keys back. 0 1 What struck the Uyghur nurse was how quickly it had all happened. One day, the hospital was a united team —Uyghurs and Han Chinese working, eating, complaining and laughing together. The next, the hospital had become a death factory. Even as the Uyghur staff cloaked themselves in silence, they felt alternately terrified and complicit. It was during this period that the nurse heard about the first Uyghur family who had secretly unwrapped their teenage son’s shroud; they had been given explicit instructions not to touch the corpse or unwrap it at all. They found their son’s familiar body—however, the torso was empty, stripped of vital organs. A female witness to exactly the same procedure—a young man’s body crudely stitched up—recently surfaced in Belgium.5 Yet, this is an old story. For the nurse, it began on Thursday, 6 February 1997. T h e r e a s o n t h a t I b r i n g u p h e r t e s t i m o n y , a n e n t i r e d e c a d e a f t e r t h e i n t e r v i e w , i s t h a t s o m e o f t h e t r e n d s i n a s i n g l e h o s p i t a l s e e m t o h a v e e m e r g e d f i n a l l y i n t h e m a s s p e r s e c u t i o n o f U y g h u r s t h a t b e g a n i n 2 0 1 5 a n d c o n t i n u e s t o t h e c u r r e n t d a y : t h e a t t a c k o n r e p r o d u c t i o n , t h e b e g i n n i n g o f o r g a n h a r v e s t i n g a n d , e v e n w i t h t h e f o r c e d q u a r a n t i n e a n d i m p l i c i t d e m o t i o n o f t h e U y g h u r m e d i c a l s t a f f , a h a s t i l y i m p r o v i s e d v e r s i o n o f f o r c e d l a b o u r . W h y s h o u l d w e c a r e a b o u t o l d s t o r i e s ? T h e U S S t a t e D e p a r t m e n t , u n d e r M i k e P o m p e o , d e c l a r e d i n J a n u a r y 2 0 2 1 t h a t B e i j i n g i s e n g a g e d i n g e n o c i d e . A n t o n y B l i n k e n , t h e n e w S e c r e t a r y o f S t a t e , m a d e i t c l e a r i n h i s S e n a t e c o n f i r m a t i o n h e a r i n g t h a t h e s e e s n o r e a s o n t o c h a n g e t h i s c h a r a c t e r i s a t i o n .7 Y e t , i t m i g h t a l s o b e a s k e d : i f g e n o c i d e i s p r e s e n t , d i d t h e g e n o c i d e b e g i n i n 2 0 2 1 ? O r i n 2 0 1 6 ? O r d o e s i t g o b a c k t o 1 9 9 7 ?8 A n y o n e w h o e v e n g l a n c e s a t t h e r e c e n t h i s t o r y o f X i n j i a n g / E a s t T u r k e s t a n w i l l b e s t r u c k b y t h e d i s c o n n e c t b e t w e e n t h e ‘ U y g h u r t h r e a t ’ a n d C C P a c t i o n s .9 F r o m t h e R e d A r m y ’ s n u c l e a r t e s t s i n L o p - N o r — a n d t h e w a v e o f U y g h u r c a n c e r s a n d b i r t h d e f e c t s t h a t f o l l o w e d — t o t h e R e d G u a r d s h e r d i n g p i g s i n t o t h e m o s q u e s , t h e l i n k t o U y g h u r t e r r o r i s m o r s e p a r a t i s m i s a n a f t e r t h o u g h t , a r a t i o n a l i s a t i o n f o r t h e f a c t t h a t X i n j i a n g h a s a l w a y s s e r v e d a s t h e C C P ’ s e x p e r i m e n t a l l a b o r a t o r y .