A high-profile Canadian team seeking to probe allegations of organ harvesting in Chinese labour camps and hospitals has run up against a disobliging Chinese embassy in Ottawa.
Nearly two weeks after former Secretary of State David Kilgour and lawyer David Matas requested a meeting with the Chinese ambassador to discuss the terms of a China trip, the team has received no reply, Matas said in an interview with The Epoch Times on Tuesday. The request was sent on June 2.
In early May, Kilgour and Matas launched an investigation into reports that the communist regime was harvesting organs from living Falun Gong practitioners detained in labour camps and hospitals, fueling a lucrative organ trade in China, and killing the victims in the process.
Conducting an onsite, independent investigation was part of their plan.
Matas says he and Kilgour requested the meeting to discuss the conditions required for a proper investigation.
"There's no point in just having a kind of show tour where they decide who we see and who we talk to," he said. "There needs to be a form of accessibility which is why we want to talk to the ambassador or whoever he appoints in his place."
Three weeks after the first reports of organ harvesting against Falun Gong practitioners surfaced in early March at a hospital in northeast China, a spokesperson for the Chinese regime invited foreign media to the facility to investigate.
In April, staff from the U.S. embassy in Beijing were given a tour of the hospital by Chinese authorities and said they could find no evidence of the organ harvesting, though they remained concerned about the reports.
After that, a source in the Chinese military confided in The Epoch Times that the practice of harvesting organs from detained practitioners was actually nationwide, and that a push was on to eliminate evidence following the initial media reports.
In taped conversations with Epoch Times reporters posing as interested organ recipients, doctors and hospital staff at facilities across the country admitted having "Falun Gong" organs, but said the supply would not last.
Matas and Kilgour want the freedom to visit facilities and meet witnesses on their own accord.
"We would be looking to go to places without it being announced in advance; we'd be looking to speak to people that we want to speak to without it being approved by the government in advance and certainly without the government being present," Matas said.
"There's a number of requirements like that, that once we're there we would in fact be free to investigate; not just presented with evidence that the government of China has itself assembled."
But if the team cannot get access to China, the investigation will continue.
"We'll just carry on with our report regardless," says Matas. "Going to China would be helpful but it is not essential, we can do this report without it and we will if necessary."
Matas told a press conference in early May that the team would also rely on interviews with witnesses who are now outside of China, as well as phone interviews with sources in China.
Others have encountered troubles in trying to meet witnesses in China.
Edward McMillan-Scott, Vice-President of the European Parliament and founder of the EU's Democracy and Human Rights initiative, made a three-day trip to China beginning on May 21 with the intention of investigating the organ harvesting reports.
McMillan-Scott interviewed Falun Gong practitioners who had been detained in labour camps and detention centres, including 36-year-old Cao Dong who testified that he'd seen the corpse of a fellow practitioner killed by authorities and that holes existed where his organs had been removed.
Cao Dong, male, has been missing since the interview, while McMillan-Scott says police have raided his apartment and interrogated his roommate for five days.
"I have demanded an urgent meeting with the Chinese ambassador to the EU," McMillan-Scott wrote in a letter published in a U.K. newspaper. "If people in Beijing think this is the way to prepare for the Olympics they have made the wrong call."
Matas says a report on his team's investigation could be ready by the end of June, but the date would be pushed back if the team is allowed an investigation in China.
More on China Organ Harvesting stories.
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