Habeas corpus

From testimony given in June 2001 by Wang Guoqi, formerly a doctor at a Chinese People's Liberation Army hospital, to the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights of the U.S. House of Representatives. China has executed more than 5,000 people in the last year, more than all other countries combined, often for crimes such as tax evasion. Organs are routinely harvested from executed prisoners, and revenues from transplants are estimated to earn Chinese hospitals tens of millions of dollars annually. Dr. Wang, who works as a sushi chef in New Jersey, has applied for political asylum in the United States.

My name is Wang Guoqi and I am a thirty-eight-year-old physician from the People's Republic of China. I received advanced degrees in surgery and human-tissue studies and consequently became a specialist in the burn unit at the Paramilitary Police Tianjin General Brigade Hospital. My work required me to remove skin and corneas from the corpses of over one hundred executed prisoners and, on a couple of occasions, victims of intentionally botched executions.

My involvement in harvesting skin from prisoners began while performing research on cadavers at the Surgeons Advanced Studies School, in Beijing's 304th Hospital. In order to secure a corpse from the execution grounds, security officers and court units were given "red envelopes" with cash amounting to anywhere between 200 [$24] and 500 RMB [$60] per corpse. Then, after the execution, the body would be rushed to the autopsy room, rather than the crematorium, and we would extract skin, kidneys, livers, bones, and corneas for research and experimental purposes. The skin was subsequently sold to burn victims for 10 RMB [$1.20] per square centimeter.

Acquiring skin from executed prisoners usually took place around major holidays or during the government's Strike Hard campaigns, when prisoners were executed in groups. Section Chief Xing would notify us of upcoming executions. We would put an order in for the number of corpses we wanted to dissect, and I would give him 300 RMB [$36] per cadaver. The money exchange took place at the Higher People's Court, and no receipts or evidence of the transaction would be exchanged.

Once notified of an execution, our section would prepare all necessary equipment and arrive at the Beicang Crematorium in plain clothes with all official license plates on our vehicles replaced with civilian ones.

We had to work quickly in the crematorium, and ten to twenty minutes was generally enough to remove all skin from a corpse. Whatever remained was passed over to the crematorium workers. Between five and eight times a year, the hospital sent a number of teams to execution sites to harvest skin. Each team could process up to four corpses. Because this system allowed us to treat so many burn victims, our department became the most reputable and profitable department in Tianjin.

Huge profits prompted our hospital to urge other departments to design similar programs. The urology department thus began its program of kidney-transplant surgeries. The complexity of the surgery called for a price of 120-150,000 RMB [$14,500-18,000] per kidney.

With such high prices, only wealthy or high-ranking people were able to buy the kidneys. If they had the money, the first step was to find a donor-recipient match. In the first case of kidney transplantation, in August 1990, I accompanied the urology surgeon to the prison to collect blood samples from four death-row prisoners. The policeman escorting us told the prisoners that we were there to check their health conditions; the prisoners did not know the purpose of their blood samples or that their organs might be up for sale.

Once a donor was confirmed, our hospital held a joint meeting with the urology department, the burn department, and operating-room personnel. We made plans to prepare the recipient for the coming kidney and discussed issues of transportation and personnel. Two days before an execution, we received final confirmation from the court. The morning of the execution, the condemned prisoner received a heparin shot to prevent blood clotting and ease the organ-extraction process.

At the execution site, a colleague and I were responsible for carrying the stretcher. Once the handcuffed and leg-ironed prisoner had been shot, a bailiff removed the leg irons. We had fifteen seconds to bring the body to the waiting ambulance. Inside the ambulance, the best urology surgeons removed both kidneys and then rushed back to the waiting recipient at the hospital. Meanwhile, our burn-surgery department waited for the execution of the following three prisoners and followed their corpses to the crematorium, where we removed skin in a small room next to the furnaces. Since our director had business ties with the Tianjin Ophthalmologic Hospital, he instructed us to extract the corneas as well.

Although I performed this procedure nearly a hundred times in the following years, one incident in October 1995 has tortured my conscience to no end. We were sent to Hebei Province to extract kidneys and skin. We arrived one day before the execution of a man sentenced to death for robbery and the murder of a witness. Before the execution, I administered a shot of heparin to the prisoner to prevent blood clotting. A policeman told him it was a tranquilizer to prevent unnecessary suffering during the execution. The criminal responded by giving thanks to the government.

At the site, the execution commander gave the order, "Go!" and the prisoner was shot to the ground. Either because the executioner was nervous, aimed poorly, or intentionally misfired to keep the organs intact, the prisoner had not yet died but instead lay convulsing on the ground. We were ordered to take him to the ambulance anyway, where urologists extracted his kidneys quickly and precisely. When they finished, the prisoner was still breathing and his heart continued to beat. The execution commander asked if they might fire a second shot to finish him off, to which the county court staff replied, "Save that shot. With both kidneys out, there is no way he can survive." The urologists rushed back to the hospital with the kidneys, the staff and executioner left the scene, and eventually the paramilitary policemen disappeared as well. The burn surgeons remained inside the ambulance to harvest the skin. We could hear people outside the ambulance, and fearing the victim's family might force their way inside, we left our job half-done, and the half-dead corpse was thrown in a plastic bag onto the flatbed of the crematorium truck. As we left in the ambulance, we were pelted by stones from behind.

Since this incident, I have had horrible recurring nightmares. I have participated in a practice that serves the regime's political and economic goals far more than it benefits the patients. I have worked at execution sites over a dozen times, and I have taken the skin from over one hundred prisoners in crematoriums. Whatever impact I have had on the lives of burn victims and transplant patients does not excuse the unethical and immoral manner of extracting organs.

I resolved to quit the organ business, and my wife supported my decision. I submitted a written request for reassignment to another job. This request was flatly denied on the grounds that no other job matched my skills. I began to refuse to take part in outings to execution sites and crematoriums. I was forced to submit a pledge that I would never expose their practices of procuring organs and the process by which the organs and skin were preserved and sold for huge profits. They threatened me with severe consequences and began to train my replacement. The day I left China in the spring of 2000 they were still harvesting organs from execution sites.

I hereby expose all these terrible things to the light in the hope that this will help to put an end to this evil practice.

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