According to a new book, the notorious practice of “harvesting” organs from Falun Gong and Uyghur prisoners of conscience has been extended to members of The Church of Almighty God.
During the Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom of 23-26 July 2018, attended at the State Department in Washington D.C, by the Foreign Ministers of 82 countries, both Falun Gong and Uyghur Muslims denounced the atrocious practice of “organ harvesting.” Organs to be sold for transplants are “harvested” from living prisoners of conscience. Other prisoners are killed for the main purpose to remove and sell the organs. These atrocities fuel the “transplant tourism” market to China and have repeatedly been censored by international organizations, including the United Nations.
The well-known NGO Human Rights Without Frontiers, based in Brussels, Belgium, has now published a book, Tortured to Death: The Persecution of The Church of Almighty God in China (Brussels: Human Rights Without Frontiers, 2018), documenting 21 cases of members of The Church of Almighty God, a Chinese Christian new religious movement, who died while in custody in highly suspicious circumstances.
The book also indicates that the practice of “organ harvesting” has been extended to prisoners of conscience of The Church of Almighty God. Zhang Ruixia (female, 1961-2014) was tortured to death in Linzhou, Henan. Relatives who saw her body before it was cremated testified that “her abdomen was dented, and there was a long sewed up scar on it,” normally a tell-tale sign that her internal organs had been removed.
Li Suansuan (female, 1966-2013, known under the alias of Li Aiping) died while in custody at the Shengli Police Station in Turpan city, Xinjiang, allegedly of a “heart attack.” Her younger brother testified that her “body was covered with purple bruises, with a long-sutured cut extending from the neck to the stomach, the brain, heart, liver, and lungs were removed before the cut was stitched up.”
Zhang Hongtao (female, 1957-2012) was arrested on December 6, 2012, in Xiaochuan Town, Cheng County, Gansu. The following day, the police claimed she had died of “sudden cerebral hemorrhage.” Her husband Dong declared that her skull had been opened and other suspicious signs were present in Zhang’s body. The police claimed this was just due to a routine autopsy, but at the same time paid to Zhang’s family a compensation of 100,000 RMB (almost $ 15,000) against their agreement not to insist on examining and retrieving Zhang’s body.