Courtesy | Jan Jekielek
Investigative reporter Jan Jekielek has spread awareness of China’s practice of harvesting the organs of minority religious groups for its elite party members.
Jekielek, who spoke at Hillsdale this month, recently published “Killed to Order,” a book detailing whistleblower reports about the practice and his personal journey of resisting and exposing this communist practice. This book brings to light one of the most astonishing human rights violations of the 21st century.
In the book, Jekielek details how the Chinese Communist Party is obsessed with the idea of longevity and has been researching how to expand the human lifespan since the 1970s. The CCP has personally affirmed that their primary method to lengthen lifespan is via organ transplants.
“Chinese Deputy Cultural Minister Gao Zhanxiang said in his obituary that he had changed so many body parts ‘many components are not his own anymore,’” Jekielek noted.
Jekielek also cited a hot mic moment when Chinese President Xi Jinping affirmed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s comments on organ transplants being the key to immortality.
Facing a shortage of organs available for donation worldwide, China’s solution is to use persecuted religious minorities, most notably members of the banned traditionalist spiritual movement Falun Gong.
When Falun Gong grew to a following of 70–100 million people in the 1990s, its rapid growth aroused the ire of the CCP.
“The Chinese Communist Party had singled out Falun Gong practitioners for persecution precisely because they viewed them as a threat to the Party’s control over the individual — the ultimate goal in any communist system,” Jekielek writes. “While it was not created in opposition to the Party, everything about Falun Gong is anathema to the Marxist system. Falun Gong speaks to China’s deep traditional culture — the very culture the CCP seeks to destroy. Falun Gong connects with ancient Buddhist and Daoist spirituality, and aligns with traditional Judeo-Christian values, while the CCP is deeply atheistic and allows for no higher authority than the Party itself.”
The CCP has labelled Falun Gong followers religious fanatics. Falun Gong members have been transferred to China’s Dabei Prison and Masanjia forced labor camp. Stripped of their human rights, these people have become a prime target for organ harvesting, Jekielek claims.
“Its practitioners meditate daily, don’t smoke or drink, and aspire to have a peaceful mindset — healthy lifestyle habits that researchers suggest have made their organs ideal for the organ transplant trade,” Jekielek stated.
To support his contention about China’s persecution and exploitation of Falun Gong, Jekielek cites numerous whistleblower reports.
“Whistleblowers first sounded the alarm over systematic forced organ harvesting in 2006,” Jekielek writes. “One of them, a medical staff member in a northeastern Chinese hospital, told The Epoch Times that her neurosurgeon ex-husband removed corneas from detained Falun Gong practitioners and that the remains went straight to the incinerator for cremation.”
This whistleblower, whom Jekielek called Annie, told reporters her ex-husband confided to her that he would harvest the major internal organs and even the skin of Falun Gong practitioners while they were still alive.
Though there are few survivors of China’s organ harvesting program, Jekielek cites the story of Chen Pei Ming, the first known survivor of China’s organ harvesting. Ming was forced to go through surgery against his will, and managed to flee through the hospital’s fire escape when his guards fell asleep.
Independent reports have verified this human rights violation in China.
“Sir Geoffery Nice, KC, confirmed in 2019 that forced organ harvesting had been occurring across China under the state’s watch, with Falun Gong practitioners ‘used as a source, probably the principal source of organs,’” Jekielek writes.
Jekielek joined a group of human rights advocates from the United States, Poland, Australia, and Israel that convened on May 9, 2006, at Auschwitz. There, they drafted an appeal of the world forum to raise awareness of this genocide happening in China, prompting an international inquiry on the country’s organ harvesting.
Today, Jekielek works as a senior reporter at the Epoch Times, a news organization founded by members of Falun Gong, and is dedicated to raising awareness about the oppressive, inhuman practices in Communist China.
The stuff of “Killed to Order” might seem fantastical if it appeared in the pages of a dystopian novel. But real life is stranger than fiction. Our worship of health and longevity generates new horrors by the year. Read Jekielek’s novel to remember the human toll of this greed.
Blake Schaper is a freshman is a studying the liberal arts.
