I was once a graduate student at the Second Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University, the largest hospital in Heilongjiang Province, which is well known for its heart transplants in China and which also offers kidney and liver transplants.
Like many other hospitals in China, the organs for the transplants in the Second Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University are basically from prisoners. Doctors in the department and my classmates all knew this.
One day a patient in our department needed an organ transplant, we were notified by the hospital’s medical administration department that a “condemned criminal” with a matching organ would be available the next day. So, led by our teacher, I personally went through an experience that would be hard to forget for the rest of my life.
I used to think that it is not wrong to take organs from a “deserved criminal” to save a life. However my experience that day made me realize the truth behind organ transplants in China and what it really means. One important factor is that when the organ was taken from the prisoner, he was still alive!
The organ extraction and the execution of the prisoner were all conducted in the Second Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University. On that day, by the time we got there, officials from the medical administration department and many doctors from other departments, including the ophthalmology department, the general surgery department, the urological department and the department of orthopedics were already there. They seemed to be carefree and quite used to what was going to happen. They were all waiting for the arrival of the “prisoner.”
At about 9 to 10 a.m., a few police vehicles drove up. We all went into the inner room where the organ extraction was to take place. The prisoner was executed right in the outer room. Out of curiosity, I peeked through the window separating the two rooms. The prisoner was quite young. Without any special procedure, the prisoner knelt in front of a sand heap piled at a corner of the room, and an equally young police officer took out a gun and shot him in the head.
After hearing the gun shot, the doctors in the inner room rushed outside as if they'd heard a signal and carried the prisoner into the inner room. Others wearing disposable surgery clothes began to bustle about. We were the first to take organs, but I was shocked to discover that during our operation, the prisoner was still alive. The gunshot had not quite hit his brainstem.
During the procedure of the organ extraction, a whistling sound came from his throat! My blood ran cold, but those “doctors” taking the organ turned a deaf ear to it. I cannot express how I felt in words! Doctors are supposed to cure diseases and save people. The medical profession is supposed to be lofty and the morality of doctors is supposed to be noble, but they were actually killing a person in the name of saving another. In the meantime, the police officers, who are supposed to serve the people, were smoking cigarettes outside the room and happily chatting away with the officials from the administrative department.
My brain went numb. The needed organ was taken quickly and skillfully. A group of “doctors” left satisfactorily; then doctors from other departments began to pile on. They busied themselves on the patient’s eyes, belly, scrotum, hip joint and so on.
The wheezing sound from the patient’s throat gradually faded. In an instant, all the doctors disappeared from the room with only the prisoner’s broken body and a person to carry the body remaining. The body was going to be transferred to the crematorium to be cremated immediately. His relatives knew nothing about this whole procedure. I heard that they would be notified only after all was over.
Reading about the exceedingly horrible persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in Sujiatun, Shenyang City recently and associating it with my own experience, I keenly realized that in a communist society, the Communist Party has already converted people into its tools and murderers.
The author’s name is withheld in order to avoid any reprisals from the Chinese Communist Party.
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