Mr. Ethan Gutmann:

I thank the committee for inviting me to participate in this profoundly important hearing. Beginning in 2006, I began conducting comprehensive interviews with medical professionals, Chinese law enforcement personnel and more than 50 refugees from the Laogai system, that is, black jails, labour camps, detention centres, mental hospitals and so forth, to piece together my research on how mass harvesting from prisoners of conscience evolved in China. Most of my research is available and I am happy to supply references.

I will provide a short timeline. The organ harvesting of prisoners began in the 1980s. In 1994, we have evidence that the first live organ harvests were performed on the execution grounds at Xinjiang in north-west China. Following the Ghulja massacre in 1997, we have evidence that the first political prisoners, specifically ethnically Muslim Uighur activists, were harvested on behalf of high-ranking Chinese cadres. In 1999, Chinese state security launched its largest action of scale since the Cultural Revolution, namely, the eradication of Falun Gong. By 2001, Chinese military hospitals were unambiguously targeting select Falun Gong prisoners for organ harvesting. By 2005, overall transplant numbers and the refugees with whom I have spoken suggest that the number of Falun Gong being harvested increased dramatically. In early 2006, the Epoch Times, basically a newspaper largely comprising Falun Gong practitioners, revealed the first charges of organ harvesting of Falun Gong. This was followed that summer by the distribution of the Kilgour-Matas report. In 2012, Wang Lijun attempted to defect at the US consulate in Chengdu. Two weeks later, information surfaced that he had overseen thousands of organ transplants while his boss, Bo Xilai, ran the shop in Liaoning province.

For some, Bo Xilai was the heir apparent for China.

Six weeks after the crisis started, the Chinese state declared an end to organ harvesting in death row prisoners - not prisoners of conscience - over a five year timeframe. No mention was made of prisoners of conscience and that issue was scrupulously avoided. More importantly, any attempt at third-party verification of this phasing out was rejected. I cannot supply a death count for house Christians, although we know they were examined for their organs. I also cannot supply a number for the Uighurs or the Tibetans, busloads of whom were taken in for unusual medical examinations while in detention. I estimate that 65,000 Falun Gong were murdered for their organs from 2000 to 2008.

What does this have to do with Ireland? China is the organ repository of last resort and in spite of Ireland's sterling human rights record, it is not an exception. People come from all over the world to pick up these organs. My policy recommendation is simple enough. In Australia, the New South Wales legislature is currently discussing the criminalisation of organ tourism; although it is not stated in the Bill, if a person goes to China and comes back with a new organ, that person will be incarcerated. Until the Chinese authorities provide full accounting of what I consider to be a crime against humanity, that is precisely the model I believe Ireland should follow.