China: Genocide

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Thursday 25th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I declare that I am UK chair of Tribute to Life, which aims to promote ethical management of organ failure and transplantation across the Commonwealth.

We cannot unknow what we now know or ignore the information that has accumulated. My noble friend Lord Alton has opened our eyes. To ignore is to risk more lives, more groups and ultimately, potentially, our own safety. Thousands of Uighurs—an unknown number—are missing and their families do not know what has happened to them. There are heartbreaking scenes outside Chinese embassies abroad as people, in the most quiet and dignified way, demand to know where their relatives are, if they are being held or even whether they are dead.

On my way here I went past a small group of demonstrators who have been on Portland Place for years, drawing attention to the thousands who have disappeared in China. They are Falun Gong practitioners, but their fate is the same as that of the Uighurs—to be killed for their organs to supply a despicable trade in transplant tourism for profit. There are estimates that 1.5 million people have been murdered for their organs and that international organ sales run into billions of dollars every year. The recipients of organs in transplant tourism are led to believe that organs are donated. They need to know the truth, as cutting off demand is the only way to stem the flow of supply.

The verdict from Sir Geoffrey Nice QC’s “people’s tribunal” is that China is removing, without consent, the organs of prisoners it has executed in the camps. China says it stopped this abhorrent practice in 2015, so can China explain the evidence of widespread, exhaustive and expensive medical testing of Uighurs and others in hospital settings and in mobile buses? We know that the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, was so deeply concerned that he was moved to write to the WHO about this. Such tests include CT all-body scans, blood testing and the sort of tissue matching required for a systematic programme of killing to meet the demand for organs. China’s secretive medical service has no transparent voluntary organ donation programme, despite the valiant efforts of ethical transplant teams from the UK and internationally to try to provide some education.

One problem is the cultural tradition in China that bodies of the deceased are buried whole, but there have been no efforts to establish proper programmes of true donation. That is just not happening. China needs to tell the families and the world, where are the missing? What are these medical tests for? Why execute prisoners if these really are educational facilities? I understand that the same BBC investigative journalists behind the award-winning revelations of the rape and sexual torture of Uighur women in the Xinjiang camps have gathered unprecedented evidence of China’s organ harvesting among Uighur camp inmates. I welcome their efforts, which once again underline the importance of the World Service of the BBC and the grant in aid to the new BBC Russia and China investigation teams. I trust their evidence will be shared promptly with the world when it is ready. It is vital that what they know is shared and broadcast.

Many of us have been increasingly worried by reports seeping out of Myanmar, where the military regime seems to be supported by China and part of a chain of organ supply. It is possible—I can say nothing stronger—that the organs of people murdered by the regime in Myanmar are being imported to China, as China has an economic interest there. Young people are arrested at night and the next morning their corpses are found. The brutal military regime exposes all internal organs; their corpses show they have been split open as required to remove them. There even appears to be a fast-track channel at one of the airports for exporting human organs from Myanmar.

Sir Geoffrey Nice’s work is commendable. He has faced, and worked with his colleagues to expose, the most terrible practices. He has now established an independent tribunal specifically to examine the evidence of Uighur genocide; with great anticipation, we await the publication early next month of his preliminary findings. It would be good to hear from the Minister whether his officials were able to attend the proceedings and how he intends to engage with the tribunal’s findings, whatever they are. Do the Government recognise that silence is taken as condoning? Has there been any progress at the World Health Organization in examining the “incontrovertible evidence” of forced organ harvesting identified by the earlier tribunal? We cannot ignore this.