Chinese Doctor Tells Of Organ Removals After Executions

By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 27, 2001; Page A01

A Chinese man seeking political asylum in the United States says that as a physician in China, he took part in removing corneas and harvesting skin from more than 100 executed prisoners, including one who had not yet died.

Wang Guoqi, a burn specialist, said in a written statement that he also saw other doctors remove vital organs from executed prisoners and that his hospital, the Tianjin Paramilitary Police General Brigade Hospital, sold those organs for enormous profits.

China executes more prisoners a year than any other nation, and some patients from the United States and other Western countries travel there for organ transplants.

Although China's practice of harvesting body parts after executions has been widely alleged, Wang's asylum petition offers a rare, eyewitness account from someone who was involved in a large number of cases. The House International Relations Committee has invited him to testify today.

Wang, 38, came to the United States on April 30 with a tourist group and stayed on rather than returning to China as scheduled May 14. He later made contact with Harry Wu, a Chinese American who spent 19 years in prison in China for political offenses.

Wu heads the Laogai Foundation, a nonprofit organization campaigning against the collecting of organs from Chinese prisoners. He said that he went to great lengths to verify Wang's identity and that both he and congressional staff members found the doctor's statements "highly credible."

Wang's detailed statements, provided to The Washington Post by Wu's foundation, include the dates and places of executions, the names of doctors involved in organ removals and graphic descriptions of the medical procedures.

According to his statement, the police hospital often was notified in advance of multiple executions, usually around the Chinese New Year or the government's "strike hard" campaigns against crime. Wang said security officials were paid $37 a corpse to tip off the hospital about executions. Kidneys later were sold to wealthy or high-ranking people for more than $15,000 each, he said.

Wang said he worked at execution grounds and crematoriums, wearing plain clothes rather than a police uniform. In many cases, he said, prisoners were shot, then immediately placed in ambulances, where their kidneys were extracted within two minutes of death.

Afterward, he and other doctors went to crematoriums and, in a small room next to the cremation furnaces, carved skin from the arms, legs, chest and back of each corpse. The skin was stored in saline solution at low temperatures to use later on burn victims. He said he also extracted corneas and other tissue.

"After all extractable tissues and organs were taken, what remained was an ugly heap of muscles, the blood vessels still bleeding, or all viscera exposed," he said. "Then the corpse was handed to the workers at the crematorium."

Wang said his conscience has been "tortured" since an October 1995 incident in Hebei Province, where he and other doctors arrived for the execution of a man sentenced to death for robbery and murder. Before the execution, Wang administered an injection of heparin to prevent blood clotting. A policeman told the prisoner it was a tranquilizer.

An executioner then shot the prisoner, but the bullet did not immediately kill him, and he lay on the ground convulsing, Wang said. Nevertheless, the doctors were ordered to take him to the ambulance, where urologists extracted his kidneys and left the scene with the county staff and executioner. Wang and other burn surgeons remained inside the ambulance to harvest the skin. Then they threw the half-dead prisoner in a plastic bag on a flatbed truck and left, he said.

"Whatever impact I have made in the lives of burn victims and transplant patients does not excuse the unethical and immoral manner of extracting organs," Wang wrote.

He added that hospital authorities criticized him after he asked to be transferred to different work. The hospital demanded he write a self-criticism and promise not to expose its organ extraction and sale practices. In his application for political asylum, he said he fears persecution if he returns to China.

Wang said he obtained a passport under a false name for about $550 and joined a tour group to the United States. The group visited Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Universal Studios and Disneyland. He said there were 15 people in the group and, to the best of his knowledge, none of them returned to China as scheduled.

According to the Laogai Foundation, there were 1,769 executions and 3,167 kidney transplants in China in 1998. Wu noted that a 1984 Chinese regulation bars organ removal from condemned criminals unless they, or their families, volunteer their bodies for medical use. But he said that, in practice, prisoners and their families are not consulted and the process is rife with corruption.

In its annual report on human rights this year, the State Department said that "credible reports have alleged that organs from some executed prisoners were removed, sold, and transplanted." Chinese officials "have confirmed that executed prisoners are among the sources of organs for transplants but maintain that consent is required from prisoners or their relatives before organs are removed," the report added.

Staff writer Lena Sun contributed to this report.