China ‘to triple number of Uyghur organ-harvesting centres’
Allegra Mendelson
Thu, July 3, 2025 at 1:00 AM EDT
7 min read
Falun Gong followers in London protesting against alleged organ harvesting in China - Michael Kemp/Alamy Stock Photo
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China is to triple the number of facilities it uses to forcibly harvest the organs of detained Uyghur people, it has been claimed.
Experts have raised the alarm after it emerged that the Xinjiang Health Commission, a branch of China’s national health authority, plans to open six new medical centres by 2030, bringing the total in the region to nine.
The expansion has heightened concerns over China’s treatment of Uyghur people, against whom the government already stands accused of genocide.
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Beijing has also been accused of forcibly harvesting the organs of prisoners from minority groups and, in some cases, selling them to wealthy recipients willing to pay the equivalent of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of pounds.
Beijing has been accused of forcibly harvesting the organs of prisoners from minority groups - Adrian Zenz/BBC
An international tribunal, conducted in the UK in 2019, found that as many as 100,000 organ transplants had been carried out in China annually – nearly three times the number that its government reported to the international register.
Sayragul Sauytbay, a Kazakh doctor who was previously detained in Xinjiang, has spoken publicly about camp-wide “health checks” where detainees had their blood tested and, depending on their results, were then sorted into groups.
She began to notice that those who were given a pink check mark would soon disappear, concluding it was because of “organ harvesting”.
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While the decision to build the new facilities was made in December last year, the plans have only recently been made public by End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC), an Australia-based human rights charity.
Targeting Uyghurs
The 2019 tribunal determined that the organs of marginalised detainees in China were being forcefully harvested, sometimes when the patients were still alive, to serve a transplant trade worth over $1 billion (£733 million).
While China has a voluntary organ donation scheme, Wendy Rogers, the chairman of ETAC’s advisory board, told The Telegraph that in many cases they were harvested forcefully, including from otherwise healthy prisoners against their will and who are slowly killed as their organs are removed.
Earlier this year, it was estimated that at least half a million Uyghurs were in prisons or detention centres. They have also faced decades of persecution by the Chinese government, including mass detention and forced sterilisation.
Given the history of abuse against the Uyghurs, of whom there are 10 million in Xinjiang, there is concern that the new transplant facilities will result in more forced organ harvesting among the population.
Xinjiang has a much smaller population and lower organ donation rate than other provinces in China, which makes the decision to expand facilities in the region suspicious.
The new centres would provide Xinjiang with nine organ transplant facilities for a population of only 26 million people. By contrast, Guizhou province has only three facilities for its much larger population of 39 million people.
Xinjiang’s official donation rate is also much lower than that of other parts of the country. It has only 0.69 donors per million people, compared to the national average of 4.6.
A group of women at a detention centre in Xinjiang - The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation/AFP via Getty Images
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“The concept of informed, voluntary consent is meaningless in Xinjiang’s carceral environment,” said David Matas, an international human rights lawyer who has previously investigated organ harvesting in China.
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“Given the systemic repression, any claim that donations are voluntary should be treated with the utmost scepticism.”
Even before the new facilities were announced, Xinjiang was known as a hub for organ transplants.
In the province’s capital Urumqi, its airport has green arrows on the ground – known as “Green Passage” lanes – to fast-track the transit of those transporting organs.
The new facilities, four of which will be built in Urumqi, will add to the types of transplants that can be carried out by increasing the province’s capacity to harvest hearts, kidneys, livers, small intestines and lungs.
Prof Rogers told The Telegraph that the new facilities would likely allow for the “donation” and implantation of organs to happen at the same place.
“It would be more cost-effective to bring the recipients to Xinjiang for their operations rather than send the organs out because it shortens the time in between taking the organ out of the person who’s killed and putting it into the recipient,” said Prof Rogers.
“If you have to fly a heart for six hours across China, it’s not going to be in such a good condition as a six-minute walk down the corridor.”
Wealthy recipients
The recipients are usually wealthy individuals who pay huge sums of money for organs that they would normally have to wait much longer for elsewhere.
Advertisement
According to the 2019 tribunal, individuals will pay tens of thousands of pounds to get on a waiting list, then the organ itself can cost another tens of thousands, plus separate fees charged by the doctor and anaesthetist.
One kidney transplant patient who spoke at the tribunal explained that he paid RMB350,000 (£35,600) for the organ, then RMB86,000 (£8,760) for the surgery, as well as RMB50,000 (£5,100) as a “bonus” to the doctor, which came to a total of RMB486,000 (£49,500). Kidneys are not even among the most expensive organs.
“The most valuable are the heart and the liver because you can’t live without a heart or with liver failure,” said Prof Rogers. “So these are the most expensive organs.”
Some of the transplants can cost as much as $100,000 (£72,000), she added.
The transplants can cost as much as $100,000 - Ng Han Guan/AP
Additional bribes are also given to blood banks and doctors to ensure recipients are given “high-quality” organs, sources told the tribunal.
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While some of the recipients are wealthy Chinese nationals, there is also an international market.
Prof Rogers said that there seemed to be a demand in the Middle East, and, every so often, there are advertisements in Arab-language media about travelling to China for an organ transplant.
Long-running industry
Earlier victims of China’s organ harvesting were practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual practice that is banned in China, though the tribunal said that Uyghurs had also been targeted.
Falun Gong followers were believed to be ideal donors because they do not smoke or drink and live relatively healthy lives. Prof Rogers noted that, as practising Muslims, most Uyghurs also do not drink.
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The tribunal found that, “beyond a reasonable doubt”, China had killed prisoners of conscience to extract their organs, which amounted to crimes against humanity.
Cheng Pei Ming, a Falun Gong practitioner, spoke to The Telegraph last year about how parts of his lung and liver were forcibly removed.
He explained that in 2004, he was dragged into a hospital against his will, where he was drugged. He woke up three days later, shackled to a bed, with an incision in his chest.
Earlier this year, a new Bill was introduced in the US Congress to combat organ harvesting in China, specifically from Uyghur and Falun Gong communities.
Advertisement
Congressman Chris Smith, who authored the Bill, said that the practice was “murder masquerading as medicine” and pushed forward the legislation, which would impose sanctions on anyone involved in the trade.
In 2015, China also said it would stop sourcing organs from executed prisoners. However, there is no sign that the actual law has been changed.
“Without meaningful oversight and accountability, this expansion risks becoming a front for continued crimes against humanity and genocide,” said Ramila Chanisheff, the president of the Australian Uyghur Tangritagh Women’s Association.
www.yahoo.com
Allegra Mendelson
Thu, July 3, 2025 at 1:00 AM EDT
7 min read
Falun Gong followers in London protesting against alleged organ harvesting in China - Michael Kemp/Alamy Stock Photo
More
China is to triple the number of facilities it uses to forcibly harvest the organs of detained Uyghur people, it has been claimed.
Experts have raised the alarm after it emerged that the Xinjiang Health Commission, a branch of China’s national health authority, plans to open six new medical centres by 2030, bringing the total in the region to nine.
The expansion has heightened concerns over China’s treatment of Uyghur people, against whom the government already stands accused of genocide.
Advertisement
Beijing has also been accused of forcibly harvesting the organs of prisoners from minority groups and, in some cases, selling them to wealthy recipients willing to pay the equivalent of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of pounds.
Beijing has been accused of forcibly harvesting the organs of prisoners from minority groups - Adrian Zenz/BBC
An international tribunal, conducted in the UK in 2019, found that as many as 100,000 organ transplants had been carried out in China annually – nearly three times the number that its government reported to the international register.
Sayragul Sauytbay, a Kazakh doctor who was previously detained in Xinjiang, has spoken publicly about camp-wide “health checks” where detainees had their blood tested and, depending on their results, were then sorted into groups.
She began to notice that those who were given a pink check mark would soon disappear, concluding it was because of “organ harvesting”.
Advertisement
While the decision to build the new facilities was made in December last year, the plans have only recently been made public by End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC), an Australia-based human rights charity.
Targeting Uyghurs
The 2019 tribunal determined that the organs of marginalised detainees in China were being forcefully harvested, sometimes when the patients were still alive, to serve a transplant trade worth over $1 billion (£733 million).
While China has a voluntary organ donation scheme, Wendy Rogers, the chairman of ETAC’s advisory board, told The Telegraph that in many cases they were harvested forcefully, including from otherwise healthy prisoners against their will and who are slowly killed as their organs are removed.
Earlier this year, it was estimated that at least half a million Uyghurs were in prisons or detention centres. They have also faced decades of persecution by the Chinese government, including mass detention and forced sterilisation.
Given the history of abuse against the Uyghurs, of whom there are 10 million in Xinjiang, there is concern that the new transplant facilities will result in more forced organ harvesting among the population.
Xinjiang has a much smaller population and lower organ donation rate than other provinces in China, which makes the decision to expand facilities in the region suspicious.
The new centres would provide Xinjiang with nine organ transplant facilities for a population of only 26 million people. By contrast, Guizhou province has only three facilities for its much larger population of 39 million people.
Xinjiang’s official donation rate is also much lower than that of other parts of the country. It has only 0.69 donors per million people, compared to the national average of 4.6.
A group of women at a detention centre in Xinjiang - The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation/AFP via Getty Images
More
“The concept of informed, voluntary consent is meaningless in Xinjiang’s carceral environment,” said David Matas, an international human rights lawyer who has previously investigated organ harvesting in China.
Advertisement
“Given the systemic repression, any claim that donations are voluntary should be treated with the utmost scepticism.”
Even before the new facilities were announced, Xinjiang was known as a hub for organ transplants.
In the province’s capital Urumqi, its airport has green arrows on the ground – known as “Green Passage” lanes – to fast-track the transit of those transporting organs.
The new facilities, four of which will be built in Urumqi, will add to the types of transplants that can be carried out by increasing the province’s capacity to harvest hearts, kidneys, livers, small intestines and lungs.
Prof Rogers told The Telegraph that the new facilities would likely allow for the “donation” and implantation of organs to happen at the same place.
“It would be more cost-effective to bring the recipients to Xinjiang for their operations rather than send the organs out because it shortens the time in between taking the organ out of the person who’s killed and putting it into the recipient,” said Prof Rogers.
“If you have to fly a heart for six hours across China, it’s not going to be in such a good condition as a six-minute walk down the corridor.”
Wealthy recipients
The recipients are usually wealthy individuals who pay huge sums of money for organs that they would normally have to wait much longer for elsewhere.
Advertisement
According to the 2019 tribunal, individuals will pay tens of thousands of pounds to get on a waiting list, then the organ itself can cost another tens of thousands, plus separate fees charged by the doctor and anaesthetist.
One kidney transplant patient who spoke at the tribunal explained that he paid RMB350,000 (£35,600) for the organ, then RMB86,000 (£8,760) for the surgery, as well as RMB50,000 (£5,100) as a “bonus” to the doctor, which came to a total of RMB486,000 (£49,500). Kidneys are not even among the most expensive organs.
“The most valuable are the heart and the liver because you can’t live without a heart or with liver failure,” said Prof Rogers. “So these are the most expensive organs.”
Some of the transplants can cost as much as $100,000 (£72,000), she added.
The transplants can cost as much as $100,000 - Ng Han Guan/AP
Additional bribes are also given to blood banks and doctors to ensure recipients are given “high-quality” organs, sources told the tribunal.
Advertisement
While some of the recipients are wealthy Chinese nationals, there is also an international market.
Prof Rogers said that there seemed to be a demand in the Middle East, and, every so often, there are advertisements in Arab-language media about travelling to China for an organ transplant.
Long-running industry
Earlier victims of China’s organ harvesting were practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual practice that is banned in China, though the tribunal said that Uyghurs had also been targeted.
Falun Gong followers were believed to be ideal donors because they do not smoke or drink and live relatively healthy lives. Prof Rogers noted that, as practising Muslims, most Uyghurs also do not drink.
Advertisement
The tribunal found that, “beyond a reasonable doubt”, China had killed prisoners of conscience to extract their organs, which amounted to crimes against humanity.
Cheng Pei Ming, a Falun Gong practitioner, spoke to The Telegraph last year about how parts of his lung and liver were forcibly removed.
He explained that in 2004, he was dragged into a hospital against his will, where he was drugged. He woke up three days later, shackled to a bed, with an incision in his chest.
Earlier this year, a new Bill was introduced in the US Congress to combat organ harvesting in China, specifically from Uyghur and Falun Gong communities.
Advertisement
Congressman Chris Smith, who authored the Bill, said that the practice was “murder masquerading as medicine” and pushed forward the legislation, which would impose sanctions on anyone involved in the trade.
In 2015, China also said it would stop sourcing organs from executed prisoners. However, there is no sign that the actual law has been changed.
“Without meaningful oversight and accountability, this expansion risks becoming a front for continued crimes against humanity and genocide,” said Ramila Chanisheff, the president of the Australian Uyghur Tangritagh Women’s Association.
China ‘to triple number of Uyghur organ-harvesting centres’
China is to triple the number of facilities it uses to forcibly harvest the organs of detained Uyghur people, it has been claimed.
