(Minghui.org) The 14^th Congress of Middle East Society for Organ Transplantation (MESOT) held a four-day event on September 10, 2014 at the WOW Hotel in Istanbul, Turkey. Mr. David Matas, a well-known Canadian human rights lawyer, gave a speech at the conference on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)'s live organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners. His speech drew the attention and concern of conference attendees, many of whom expressed indignant condemnation of the CCP's atrocities.

Mr. David Matas gives a speech at the conference.

One main topic of the congress was ethics and organ sharing. More than one hundred organ transplant specialists and scholars from Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Egypt, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, United States and Germany attended the discussion.

Exposure of the CCP's Live Organ Harvesting

On the afternoon of the opening day of the congress, Mr. Matas' speech, “Transplant Tourism from the Middle East,” featured evidence on the CCP's live organ harvesting crimes. This included an online advertisement from Tianjin Number One Hospital openly seeking organ transplantation patients with guarantees of short wait times. He also presented evidence indicating that there was large-scale illegal organ harvesting from involuntary donors, mainly Falun Gong practitioners, in China.

Falun Gong is a practice originating from China. Its principles are Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. Nearly 100 million people began practicing it within a few years after Mr. Li Hongzhi, its founder, made it public in 1992. Mr. Matas explained, “By 1999, Falun Gong practitioners were, according to Chinese government surveys, more numerous than the membership of the Communist Party. At that point, out of fear of losing its ideological supremacy and jealous of its popularity, the CCP banned Falun Gong.” Countless practitioners were arrested and subjected to torture. Many of them went missing while in police custody. “David Kilgour and I concluded that many of the disappeared were killed for their organs.”

Mr. Matas continued, “Many Falun Gong practitioners also reported that they routinely underwent blood testing and organ examination while in detention in China, while other detainees did not.” Matas pointed out that such blood tests and organ examination could not have been for the health of Falun Gong practitioners, since they have been repeatedly subjected to torture for their belief, but that these tests would have been necessary for organ transplant.

“The great number of transplant operations and the extremely short waiting times for transplants in China are another damning piece of evidence,” stated Mr. Matas.“Everywhere else in the world, waiting times are months and years. Short waiting times for a deceased donor transplant means that someone is being killed for that transplant. There is no explanation for the transplant numbers but the sourcing from Falun Gong.”

Chairman of the MESOT Condemns Unethical Organ Transplantation

Prof. Dr. Mehmet Haberal, Chairman of the MESOT and Principal of Baskent University, Turkey, said to reporters when asked about his view on the CCP's live organ harvesting, “Organ transplantation is for saving life. Wherever in the world, I object to the act of unethical organ transplantation. In addition, I believe that my colleagues in this conference share the same view as me.”

Under the support from the conference organizers, Falun Gong practitioners distributed informational materials on the CCP's live organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners to the more than one hundred specialists and scholars participating in the conference.