Mr. David Matas:

I thank the Chairman for inviting us. A comprehensive strategy against organ transplant abuse in China has two prongs: efforts to combat the abuse directly in China and to combat complicity abroad in the abuse in China. I have ten recommendations addressed to each prong.

In terms of efforts to combat abuse in China the foreign policy of Ireland should incorporate these features: organ transplant abuse in China should be condemned; the Irish Government should conduct an investigation into organ transplant abuse in China and international instances should be asked to conduct such an investigation, which request should be made to the Council of Europe, the European Union, the United Nations Human Rights Council and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, with China being asked to provide historical and present death penalty statistics; China should be asked to make publicly accessible its aggregate data from its four transplant registries for heart, liver, lung and kidney; China should be asked to allow independent outside investigators access to hospital patient and organ donor files; China should be asked to allow independent outside investigators access to hospital financial records and in particular, the amounts received from patients for organ transplants and the amounts spent on all pharmaceuticals related to transplantation; China should be asked to allow independent outside investigators to make unannounced visits to transplant hospitals and organ donation centres; China should be asked to allow access to its prisons by the International Committee of the Red Cross; China should be asked to stop the persecution of prisoners of conscience, including specifically Falun Gong, Tibetans, Uighurs and House Christians; and China should be asked to disqualify from the transplant profession any person involved in the persecution of Falun Gong or other prisoners of conscience.

The second prong is governmental policy and parliamentary legislation to avoid complicity in transplant abuse in China. Legislation combatting complicity in foreign organ transplant abuse should incorporate the following ten features. Extraterritorial criminal jurisdiction should be enacted to allow prosecution for participation in organ transplant abuse. The law should allow the courts to assume jurisdiction over any accused within the territory irrespective of the status of the accused in the territory, whether the accused is a citizen, permanent resident or visitor. A Council of Europe treaty currently commits state parties to enact extraterritorial criminal jurisdiction for nationals but it does not go beyond that to permanent residents or visitors.

Legislation should ban brokerage, advertising, soliciting, trafficking and trading in organ transplantation. Reporting of transplant tourism by health professionals to the health system should be compulsory. Aggregate data accumulated from the reporting of transplant tourism should be publicly accessible. Entry bans should be imposed on those who have been complicit in organ transplant abuse. The ban should encompass visitors, students and workers, as well as immigrants.

The Government should be mandated to maintain a list of those banned entry because of their participation in organ transplant abuse. An exception needs to be made to state immunity legislation to allow those acting in an official capacity to be sued civilly for organ transplant abuse. Both public and private health insurance systems should be prohibited from providing coverage for transplant tourism. This form of health service should be uninsurable. Professionals should be subject to disqualification, losing their professional licences for complicity in transplant tourism. Pharmaceutical companies should be prohibited from engaging in anti-rejection drug trials in China.

Those are my recommendations. I and other researchers have come to the conclusion we did that organ transplant abuse against prisoners of conscience, primarily Falun Gong, is happening and that no precautions were put in place to prevent it from happening. Regrettably, that is still largely so. I submit that Ireland needs to put those precautions in place.