Epoch Times reporters in Argentina interviewed Elvira Menduburu, a competitive transplant athlete. They discuss the Transplant Olympics, forced organ harvesting in China, and the Human Rights Torch Relay.
Epoch Times: When did the Transplant Olympics begin?
Elvira: For many years the Olympic Games has been held in different countries. Argentina started to participate in the Manchester games, in England, with 5 competitors, all of them heart transplant patients. From there on, in Argentina a national games was made for transplant recipients, so as to classify and prepare the competitors for the global event.
ET: Does the whole country participate?
EM: Yes, all around the country, from the south to the north. When we have the Argentine Games, we all get together, really having lived different experiences, different lives and problems; it's like when you go to the global games, you have life experiences about things that you share with many people from different countries.
ET: What is it that motivates you the most to participate in these transplant games?
EM: In my particular case, it's to spread a little more the message of donation and organ transplanting, above all in my city—Concordia, Entre Ríos—to have people more aware through the medium of sport, and in this way to reach more people. To show that there's life after life, that is to say, to transmit, through sport, a bit of hope to those who are on the waiting list [for organ transplants]. For that, and also because I like sport a lot in itself.
Different sporting events have been organised in the Republic of Argentina on the donation theme, to encourage donation and organ transplantation. A little while ago we were a week in Tucumán (a province), on a sporting trip. Now we are going to Thailand to the World Transplant Games, and on the way back we have the games in Mar del Plata (Argentine city), organised by the CUCAIBA, and in November, after the games in Mar del Plata, we have the games at Punta del Este.
ET: While you put a lot of effort into making people aware of donations, how do you see things on the other side of the world, in China, where they are forcibly and systematically extracting the organs from living Falun Gong practitioners?
EM: Yes, I have read about it, and I have thought very deeply about this issue, because it really goes against every kind of law ... Argentinians, like other countries—I know other countries do—condemn this type of action by certain governments, by people who persecute for political reasons, or that use prisoners, people who have their organs taken involuntarily to be "sold", because they are peddled to people with a lot of money.
That is murdering ... killing for some organs, that is to say, they remove the organs from a human being for other people who need them.'
ET: How, then, do you see the global journey of the Human Rights Torch Relay?
EM: I think it is a very good initiative and an initiative that we must all support. Because as transplant recipients and as human beings, we have to defend the rights of all human beings on this planet. We all have the right to life, but this denigrates the idea of transplantation, our laws are very clear on the issue of consent in transplants, and we sincerely deplore this kind of action of this political system, above all those countries that do this against peoples' will.
ET: You guys put together the theme of sport and the theme of organ donations. How do you feel, that the Olympics be justly realised in China, where this genocide is taking place?
EM: I think that for those who have a system of acting against people like this, imprisoning them and depriving them of freedom, it does not matter to them—they have such hypocrisy that it's the same as killing. That is to say, they give no value to life, for them it is the same whether the person is a prisoner or is doing sports, it's difficult to think about, because if I imagine it, I cannot imagine how murderous, how off-track you need to be to commit crimes of that nature.
After doing an interview we found out that Elvira actually won a silver medal in the 5000 metres in the transplant Olympics. Ten years ago he had a bone marrow transplant.
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