Ethan Gutmann | |
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Born | Chicago, Illinois, U.S. | 13 September 1958
Occupation | Investigative writer |
Nationality |
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Education | Columbia University (BA, MIA) |
Subject | China human rights |
Website | |
ethan-gutmann |
Ethan Gutmann (born September 13, 1958) is an American writer, researcher, author, and a senior research fellow in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation [1] [2] whose work has investigated surveillance and organ harvesting in China. [3]
Gutmann was born in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Wallingford, Vermont. He has lived in Mexico and Israel.
Gutmann graduated from Cranbrook Boys' School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and earned a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of International Affairs at Columbia University. [4] [5]
Gutmann's writing on China includes two books, Losing the New China: A Story of American Commerce, Desire and Betrayal and The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ Harvesting, and China's Secret Solution to Its Dissident Problem. [6] He also co-authored an extensive report on China's annual transplant volume, Bloody Harvest/The Slaughter: An Update. [7]
Gutmann has testified before the U.S. Congress, [8] [9] the European Parliament, and the United Nations. [6]
He is a co-founder of the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC) [10] and is a China Studies research fellow at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. [1]
In 2011, two lawsuits citing Gutmann's work were filed in U.S. federal courts against Cisco Systems, alleging that its technology enabled the government of China to monitor, capture, and kill Chinese adherents of the Falun Gong new religious movement. Evidence of Cisco's activities in China had become public in Gutmann's book Losing the New China: A Story of American Commerce, Desire and Betrayal. [11] In 2014, the federal district court in San Jose dismissed the case, saying the plaintiffs failed to prove that Cisco was aware of its products being used for oppression. [12]
From 2006, Gutmann wrote articles about organ harvesting. [13] [14] [15] In 2012, "State Organs: Transplant Abuse in China", was published with essays from six medical professionals, David Matas and Gutmann. [16] [17] [18] [19]
Gutmann wrote that he interviewed over 100 witnesses including Falun Gong survivors, doctors, policemen, and camp administrators. [20] He estimated that 65,000 Falun Gong practitioners were killed for their organs from 2000 to 2008, [6] [21] [20] and that between 450,000 and 1 million Falun Gong practitioners were detained at any given time. [22] [23] [24] [25] Gutmann told the Toronto Star in 2014 that in total "the number of casualties is close to 100,000". [6] While widely accepted by Congress, [26] Gutmann's numbers were disputed by the Washington Post , which relied on methods assuming accurate reporting of drug production and use in China. [27]
Gutmann was one of the key interviewees in Human Harvest, a 2014 Peabody Award winning documentary on organ harvesting in China, as well as the PBS documentary Hard to Believe (2015). [28]
In August 2014, Gutmann wrote The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ Harvesting, and China's Secret Solution to Its Dissident Problem, [25] which described China's organ transplant business and its connection with internment camps and killing fields for arrested dissidents, especially the adherents of Falun Gong. The new book, which took seven years, was based on interviews with top-ranking police officials, former prisoners of conscience and Chinese doctors who killed prisoners on the operating table. Gutmann interviewed dissidents including of Falun Gong, Tibetans, Uyghurs and House Christians. [21]
In 2016, Gutmann, David Kilgour, and David Matas authored an updated investigative report on China's organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience. [29] The 700-page report contained information on transplant statistics sourced to Chinese hospitals' publications and other Chinese primary sources. [29] [30] [31] [32] [33]
Gutmann has said that China is organ harvesting from Uyghurs in its prison camps in the Xinjiang region. In November 2020, Gutmann told Radio Free Asia that a hospital in Aksu, China, [34] allowing local officials to streamline the organ harvesting process and provide a steady stream of harvested organs from Uyghurs. [1] Gutmann told Haaretz that individuals detained in the Xinjiang internment camps "are being murdered and their organs harvested", that at least 25,000 Uyghurs are killed in Xinjiang for their organs each year, that crematoria have been built throughout the province to dispose of victims' bodies, and that China has created “fast lanes” for the movement of human organs in local airports. [1] In Congressional testimony, Gutmann estimated that 2.5 to 5 percent of Uyghur detainees have been selected for organ harvesting in the camps. [35] The estimate was used by Congressman Chris Smith in support of the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2023. [36]
During the 2014 Taipei City mayoral election there was controversy about what Gutmann's book, The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ Harvesting, and China's Secret Solution to Its Dissident Problem, published in August 2014, said about mayoral candidate Ko Wen-je, particularly that Ko had acted as an intermediary between mainland Chinese transplant hospitals and his Taiwanese patients. Gutmann stated he had not said that Ko was involved in the organ trade and that he might have been misinterpreted. [37] On 27 November, Gutmann released a legal response with lawyer Clive Ansley, stating that "no English-speaking reader to date has understood for one moment that Dr. Ko was acting as an organ broker" and "Mr. Gutmann believes, and we think his book demonstrates, that Dr. Ko has acted honourably". [38]
On 29 November, Ko won the election. A full explanation, including the actual email correspondence where Ko signed off on the story for publication, was provided by Gutmann in December. [39] [40] [41]
In the 2018 Taipei City mayoral election, there was a controversy regarding Gutmann's book and his statement in 2014. In a news conference in Taipei on 2 October 2018, Gutmann was asked if he had changed his mind about Ko, in which he answered “yes”. [42] Gutmann showed a group photograph of Ko attending a conference on Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation training in China and said Ko had told him he knew about organ harvesting of Falun Gong members in 2005, but Gutmann had discovered that the conference took place only three months before he interviewed Ko. “Dr. Ko did not say explicitly what he did in the mainland,” Gutmann said, adding that Ko did not tell him whether he was making money or arranging for patients to receive organ transplants in China. During the news conference, Gutmann was asked if said he thought Ko was a liar. He replied “yes”, was sued by Ko and was subpoenaed on 5 October 2018. [43]
Before the publication of the book, Gutmann sent a letter to Ke Wenzhe to confirm that it was correct. Ke Wenzhe replied "The story seems OK" and "I can take responsibility for what I say". As a result of this disclosure the Taipei District Prosecutor's Office announced on 27 August 2020 that it would not prosecute due to insufficient charges. [44] [45] [46] Ko Wenzhe then stated about Gutmann "You have come to Taiwan, so how come you have no intention of committing any crime?" [47] [48]
In 2012 Gutmann stated, "There is a long-standing taboo in the journalism community about Falun Gong, about this issue [organ harvesting]. To touch this issue is the Third Rail of journalism. If you touch it—if you are in Beijing, if you are based in China—you will not be given access to top leaders anymore." [9] [49]
In 2021 Gutmann stated, “A woman gave a confidential interview where she described a health check in her camp followed by three women disappearing in the middle of the night over the next week. To rule out sexual slavery, I explained that I was going to ask her an impolite question: ‘were these women beautiful? Were they sexually attractive?’ She responded, ‘It is not nice to say this, but, no, they were not.’ ‘How would you describe them, then? Did they have anything in common?’ ‘They were healthy’, she replied.” [50] [51] [52] [53] [54]
Jay Nordlinger, a senior editor of National Review, wrote that Gutmann's 2004 book Losing the New China: A Story of American Commerce, Desire and Betrayal "was about the sordid relationship between the American business community and the Chinese Communist Party. Our businessmen accommodate themselves to the Communist Party, and turn a blind eye to persecution." Sometimes they even assist the persecution, as when Cisco and other technology companies devised special ways to monitor and arrest Falun Gong practitioners". [21]
Nordlinger called Gutmann's 2014 book The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ Harvesting, and China's Secret Solution to Its Dissident Problem "another atom bomb". [21]
Gutmann appeared in Transmission 6–10 (2009), [55] Red Reign: The Bloody Harvest of China's Prisoners (2013), [56] Human Harvest (2014) and Hard to Believe (2015) [57]
Gutmann's first book Losing the New China won the "Spirit of Tiananmen" award from the Visual Artists Guild, [58] was listed as one of The New York Sun's "Books of the Year" [59] and won the "Chan's Journalism Award". [58] In 2017, Gutmann was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, according to articles in Haaretz and The Journal.ie. [60] [61]
Falun Gong or Falun Dafa is a new religious movement. Falun Gong was founded by its leader Li Hongzhi in China in the early 1990s. Falun Gong has its global headquarters in Dragon Springs, a 173-hectare (427-acre) compound in Deerpark, New York, United States, near the residence of Li Hongzhi.
Human rights in China are periodically reviewed by international bodies, such as human rights treaty bodies and the United Nations Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC), their supporters, and other proponents claim that existing policies and enforcement measures are sufficient to guard against human rights abuses. However, other countries, international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) including Human Rights in China and Amnesty International, and citizens, lawyers, and dissidents inside the country, state that the authorities in mainland China regularly sanction or organize such abuses.
David William Kilgour was a Canadian human rights activist, author, lawyer, and politician. He was also a Senior Fellow to the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.
Freedom of religion in China may be referring to the following entities separated by the Taiwan Strait:
Murder for body parts also known as medicine murder refers to the killing of a human being in order to excise body parts to use as medicine or purposes in witchcraft. Medicine murder is viewed as the obtaining of an item or items from a corpse to be used in traditional medicine. The practice occurs primarily in sub-equatorial Africa.
Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice and system of beliefs that combines the practice of meditation with the moral philosophy articulated by its leader and founder, Li Hongzhi. It emerged on the public radar in the Spring of 1992 in the northeastern Chinese city of Changchun, and was classified as a system of qigong identifying with the Buddhist tradition. Li claimed to have both supernatural powers like the ability to prevent illness, as well having eternal youth and promised that others can attain supernatural powers and eternal youth by following his teachings. Falun Gong initially enjoyed official sanction and support from Chinese government agencies, and the practice grew quickly on account of the simplicity of its exercise movements, impact on health, the absence of fees or formal membership, and moral and philosophical teachings.
Falun Gong, a new religious movement that combines meditation with the moral philosophy articulated by founder Li Hongzhi, first began spreading widely in China in 1992. Li's first lectures outside mainland China took place in Paris in 1995. At the invitation of the Chinese ambassador to France, he lectured on his teachings and practice methods to the embassy staff and others. From that time on, Li gave lectures in other major cities in Europe, Asia, Oceania, and North America. He has resided permanently in the United States since 1998. Falun Gong is now practiced in some 70 countries worldwide, and the teachings have been translated to over 40 languages. The international Falun Gong community is estimated to number in the hundreds of thousands, though participation estimates are imprecise on account of a lack of formal membership.
Dr. Wang Wenyi is a pathologist who once worked as a journalist for The Epoch Times. She is known for having confronted Jiang Zemin, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2001, and protested for the forced organ harvesting in China with General Secretary Hu Jintao on 20 April 2006 in White House. According to press reports, she was protesting against Communist China's human rights abuse especially the organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners.
The Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong in China (CIPFG) is an international non-governmental organization established in the United States on April 5, 2006, by the Falun Dafa Association. The organization also has offices in Canada.
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David Matas is the senior legal counsel of B'nai Brith Canada who currently resides in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He has maintained a private practice in refugee, immigration, and human rights law since 1979, and has published various books and manuscripts.
The Kilgour–Matas report is a 2006/2007 investigative report into allegations of live organ harvesting in China conducted by Canadian MP David Kilgour and human rights lawyer David Matas. The report was requested by the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (CIPFG) after allegations emerged that Falun Gong practitioners were secretly having their organs removed against their will at Sujiatun Thrombosis Hospital. The report, based on circumstantial evidence, concluded that "there has been, and continues today to be, large-scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners." China has consistently denied the allegations.
The persecution of Falun Gong is the campaign initiated in 1999 by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to eliminate the spiritual practice of Falun Gong in China, maintaining a doctrine of state atheism. It is characterized by a multifaceted propaganda campaign, a program of enforced ideological conversion and re-education and reportedly a variety of extralegal coercive measures such as arbitrary arrests, forced labor and physical torture, sometimes resulting in death.
Edward McMillan-Scott is a British politician. He was a pro-EU Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Yorkshire and the Humber constituency from 1984 until 2014. He was the last and one of the longest-serving UK Vice-Presidents of the European Parliament 2004–2014, holding its Human Rights and Democracy portfolio throughout. After losing his seat as an MEP he became active in campaigning against Brexit and coordinates the largest pro EU forum in the UK.
Organ theft is the act of taking a person's organs for transplantation or sale on the black market, without their explicit consent through means of being an organ donor or other forms of consent. Most cases of organ theft involve coercion, occurrences in wartime, or thefts within hospital settings. Organ theft is a commonly used trope in speculative fiction.
Free China: The Courage to Believe is a 2012 documentary film about the persecution of Falun Gong, starring Jennifer Zeng and Dr. Charles Lee.
Ko Wen-je is a Taiwanese politician and physician who served as the mayor of Taipei from 2014 to 2022. He has been the chairman of the Taiwan People's Party (TPP) since founding it in 2019.
Allegations of forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners and other political prisoners in China have raised concern within the international community. According to a report by former lawmaker David Kilgour, human rights lawyer David Matas and journalist Ethan Gutmann of the US government–affiliated Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, political prisoners, mainly Falun Gong practitioners, are being executed "on demand" in order to provide organs for transplant to recipients. Reports have said that organ harvesting has been used to advance the Chinese Communist Party's persecution of Falun Gong and because of the financial incentives available to the institutions and individuals involved in the trade. A report by The Washington Post has disputed some of the allegations, saying that China does not import sufficient quantities of immunosuppressant drugs, used by transplant recipients, to carry out such quantities of organ harvesting. However, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation alleged that the Post's article made an “elementary statistical error” and omitted unofficial pharmacy data in Chinese hospitals.
Antireligious campaigns in China are a series of policies and practices taken as part of the Chinese Communist Party's official promotion of state atheism, coupled with its persecution of people with spiritual or religious beliefs, in the People's Republic of China. Antireligious campaigns were launched in 1949, after the Chinese Communist Revolution, and they continue to be waged against Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, and members of other religious communities in China.
The China Tribunal was a non-governmental tribunal to inquire into forced organ harvesting in China. It was headquartered in London. The chair of the China Tribunal was Sir Geoffrey Nice KC, who had also been lead prosecutor at the trial of Slobodan Milošević in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Its other members were Professor of Paediatric Cardiothoracic Surgery at University College London Martin Elliott, Malaysian lawyer Andrew Khoo, Iranian lawyer, Shadi Sadr, US lawyer Ragina Paulose, businessman Nick Vetch and historian Arthur Waldron. All members of the Tribunal provided their time pro bono publico. The Judgment states: "All members of the Tribunal, Counsel to the Tribunal, volunteer lawyers and the editor of this Judgment have worked entirely pro bono publico which for those unfamiliar with the term or practice means completely without financial return of any kind."