Talk:Organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China

Quotation without attribution

The second sentence of the article currently reads:

According to the reports, political prisoners, mainly Falun Gong practitioners, are being executed "on demand" in order to provide organs to recipients.

If we're going to put "on demand" in quotation marks, shouldn't we cite the specific source from which we are quoting?

NPOV once more

Falun Gong is in the news again thanks to the New York Times' recent long-form article about Shen Yun, and once again I'm reminded of the questionable state of this article. There are, as I see it, three main problems here:

1. This article is totally reliant on three shaky sources, with almost everything else being circular references to these three. They are:

1. The Kilgour-Matas report, sponsored by Falun Gong itself. Kilgour's personal credibility in particular is very dubious, given his frequent contributions to the Epoch Times.
2. The "China Tribunal", which appears to have been composed of credible experts, but was sponsored and payed for by ETAC, which seems to be more or less a Falun Gong front group.
3. Ethan Gutmann, who has no apparent ties to FG, but is a researcher for the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a "generally unreliable" source per WP:RSPS. VOC is a de-facto organ of the US government (and a highly ideological one at that), which is engaged in geopolitical competition with China and has a strong interest in promoting narratives that serve this rivalry.

2. The problem for any rewrite of this article is that, so far as I can tell from an initial search of WorldCat, these three also seem to be the *only* really extensive (quasi-)scholarly research on the facts of this case, which are cited with varying levels of credulity or skepticism by all other sources. However, it appears that most mainstream, independent sources which have investigated these critically tend to take a stance that the facts are not settled on these allegations. Apart from the WaPo investigation already cited in the article, take this paragraph from a Times article published the day before yesterday:

Nicholas Bequelin, a senior fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center, who has documented the use of prisoner organs, and other leading experts on human rights in China say that there is no evidence of a systematic program to execute Falun Gong practitioners for their organs. Some practitioners, like other Chinese prisoners, may have had their organs removed if they were executed or had died in prison, he said.

I also found this sociology journal article  (unfortunately, it seems not to be open-access, nor available through the Wikipedia Library). The author, while not an expert on organ transplants, is an expert on FG, and examines the allegations themselves as a case study in rumors (it's very interesting, and I will incorporate a short summary into an appropriate section of this article some time in the future). While the article is not ultimately about evaluating the claims, it takes the stance that the above-mentioned partisan sources present real evidence worthy of consideration, and therefore can't be dismissed, but also that it's basically anyone's guess whether this stuff is in fact real.

3. Falun Gong has a documented history of manipulating Wikipedia articles related to themselves. Given the strategic and emotional importance of the organ question to FG and its adherents, this article has almost certainly been subject to un-disclosed WP:COI editing in violation of WP policy. It's baffling that this article is unprotected.

What next:

The most obvious action that needs to be taken here is one clearly prescribed by settled WP guidelines, which is to drastically reduce the reliance on the WP:GUNREL VOC foundation. I have already flagged and/or applied attributions to several mentions of this source as a stopgap measure. Currently, the WaPo article which shows up in the intro as the main dissenting source is followed by a VOC attribution that essentially implies that the former is bullshit. This effectively privileges a GUNREL over a GREL, which is clearly unacceptable.

The simplest approach would be to excise absolutely everything coming from VOC, which would be valid per WP:GUNREL. However, given that Junker appears to consider Gutmann somewhat legitimate, a more nuanced approach is probably warranted.

This article probably needs a move as well. I will make a separate topic for that. Nicknimh (talk) 23:15, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for voicing your concerns. I understand that the blog part of VOC is considered generally unreliable. But I think some of its scholarly reports deserve a case by case consideration, depending on the author’s expertise and credentials and how the report is viewed by other experts. VOC’s director of China studies Adrian Zenz is an internationally recognized expert in Uyghur issues. The two other research fellows in VOC’s China studies program are Ethan Gutmann and Matthew Robertson.

Robertson is the author of the 2020 VOC report titled "Organ Procurement and Extrajudicial Execution in China: A Review of the Evidence" that I cited earlier on this page. He coauthored several papers on China’s organ harvesting issues in major medical journals, such as this 2017 and this 2019 paper in BMJ Journal. He is the lead author of this 2019 BMC Medical Ethics paper on China’s organ donation data, which has been cited 35 times according to Google scholar; he is the lead author of this 2022 paper on China’s dead donor rule published in the prestigious American Journal of Transplantation, which has been cited 18 times in Google scholar. He testified before the U.S. Congress as an expert on China’s organ harvesting issue, such as this hearing and this hearing.

Robertson’s 2020 VOC report has been highly praised by Donald C. Clarke, a prominent scholar in Chinese law, calling the report “a genuine and admirable work of scholarship.” The report is also cited by a 2021 BMJ paper.

Even as a self-published source, Robertson’s 2020 VOC report should be treated as reliable,  as WP:SELFPUB reads: "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications."

Furthermore, the part that I cited from Robertson’s report to address the WaPo 2017 article is not only Robertson’s own opinion. He summarized a group of experts’ responses to WaPo’s editor. The original letters can be found here. The signers of the letters include experts and professors from NYU, Washington Univ. in St.Louis, Tel Aviv Univ., Univ. of Sydney, Western Sydney Univ., Univ. of Canterbury, Macquarie Univ., and Univ. of Warwick.

Regarding China Tribunal, I don’t think it is accurate to say it is paid by ETAC, as it states in the final judgment that “All members of the Tribunal, Counsel to the Tribunal, volunteer lawyers and the editor of this Judgment have worked entirely pro bono publico (for the public good) which for those unfamiliar with the term or practice means completely without financial return of any kind.”

China Tribunal further states that "there is a necessary and scrupulous separation between ETAC and the Tribunal": "ETAC manages some of the logistics for the Tribunal (such as arranging the public hearings in London) however ETAC is not, and will not be, privy to the Tribunal’s internal deliberations and consideration of the evidence save to the extent those deliberations are revealed in the Tribunal’s final public decision."

I am not sure if describing ETAC as a Falun Gong front org is accurate either. The footnote on page 10 of China Tribunal’s judgment reads: "We [ETAC] are not aligned with any political party, religious or spiritual group, government or any other national or international institution. Our members are from a range of backgrounds, belief systems, religions and ethnicities." "It is not an organisation of Falun Gong practitioners. None of its Advisory Board members is a Falun Gong practitioner. A minority of its committee members are practitioners."

Regarding Ethan Gutmann, based on his linkedin page, he joined VOC in 2019, which means that most of, if not all, his research work cited on this page was published before he joined VOC.

Regarding David Kilgour, based on the link you provided, I see that he only started contributing to the Epoch Times after 2010, which was after the Kilgour-Matas report was published (in 2007 first and turned into a book in 2009). He was a widely published author, a Senior Fellow to the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, and formerly Canada’s  Secretary of State (Asia-Pacific). We shouldn’t completely deny Kilgour’s credibility based on where he contributes, as he is knowledgeable and experienced on these topics based on his credentials.

Is there any evidence that “the Kilgour-Matas report was sponsored by Falun Gong itself?” Kilgour and Matas stated in their report:"We did our report as volunteers. We were not paid for our report by Falun Gong or anyone. Our report represents our own judgment. We have not acted on the instructions of Falun Gong or anyone else in coming to the conclusions we did."

For the quote from Bequelin, I would like to mention that Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center has received a $30 million donation ​ from the executive vice chairman of Alibaba, a company closely associated with the Chinese government. Should​n't we take Bequelin’s comment with a grain of salt too?

In June 2021, the Special Procedures of the United Nations Human Rights Council voiced concerns over having “received credible information that detainees from ethnic, linguistic or religious minorities may be forcibly subjected to blood tests and organ examinations such as ultrasound and x-rays, without their informed consent; while other prisoners are not required to undergo such examinations.” The press release stated that UN’s human rights experts “were extremely alarmed by reports of alleged ‘organ harvesting’ targeting minorities, including Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims and Christians, in detention in China.” The statement was signed by more than 10 UN special rapporteurs.

As for the new NYT article, although the source is considered generally reliable, the info they used in this particular one makes this piece’s neutrality questionable:

NYT apparently took at face value what the Chinese state said in 2015 about banning organ harvesting from executed prisoners. A prudent investigative journalist would have seen the 2019 paper by Robertson, et al., in BMC Medical Ethics, which stated that “voluntary system appears to operate alongside the continued use of nonvoluntary donors (most plausibly prisoners) who are misclassified as ‘voluntary.’” Furthermore, even NYT's own former reporter Didi Kirsten Tatlow had evidence of some Chinese transplant surgeons not knowing such government statement. She also had evidence that organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience was common knowledge among doctors in China. Unfortunately, NYT suppressed her from pursuing the investigation, according to her testimony to the China Tribunal.

One other reason to not rely too much on the NYT article is: WP:NEWSORG notes that "[s]cholarly sources and high-quality non-scholarly sources are generally better than news reports for academic topics" and "whether a specific news story is reliable for a fact or statement should be examined on a case-by-case basis". WP:LAUNDER states: "Generalist newspapers may be a reliable source for relatively straightforward news issues, such as whether or not a president has been elected-- but they are not usually a good source for a sophisticated, nuanced analysis of technical or scientific matters."

For this specific subject that involves medical and legal expertise, I’d say that since there’re already academic sources like the medical journals, we should not take for granted info related to this topic in the NYT piece. 23impartial (talk) 12:00, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Removing speculation

Under Evidence > Increase in nationwide organ transplants after 1999, the final sentence of the 4th paragraph currently reads

"Although it does not prove the allegations, the parallel between rapid growth in organ transplants and the mass imprisonment of Falun Gong practitioners is consistent with the hypothesis that Falun Gong practitioners in custody were having their organs harvested"

This should be removed as it is just speculation and not substantiated. ~tayanaru (talk) 16:15, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

I added a few sources and slightly revised that statement to match the sources, so that part should no longer be speculation. 23impartial (talk) 05:07, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

nice, I wasn't able to find anything. ~tayanaru (talk) 05:09, 9 October 2024 (UTC)