Executed prisoners are the source of most organ transplants in China, and the donors sometimes are still alive when their organs are removed, a human rights group says.
Executions appear to be scheduled according to transplant needs, Human Rights Watch-Asia said in a report scheduled for release Monday. It said prisoners' consent is rarely sought or is coerced in the last few hours before death.In some cases, kidneys have been removed from prisoners the night before their executions, and some executions have been deliberately botched to keep the bodies alive longer and improve chances of organ transplant success, the rights group said.
In other cases, medical personnel attend the execution and swiftly remove the organs after death is announced, it said.
The number of executions in China is a state secret. But Human Rights Watch-Asia said "tens of thousands" of people have been put to death since 1983, when the number of death sentences began to grow under a series of anti-crime crackdowns.
Corruption and drug-trafficking are among crimes punishable by death.
A secret Communist Party directive in 1983 said some anti-government actions were punishable by death, Human Rights Watch-Asia said. But it noted that no executions of dissidents have been reported in the past 15 years.
The group cited government documents, medical journal articles and statements by doctors and others as evidence that executed prisoners are the source of most organs used in transplants in China.
Chinese government offices were closed Sunday, and a telephone call for comment was not answered.
The government long denied that executed prisoners were used as a source of organs, the report said. But it said that in 1993, China told the U.N. Committee Against Torture that organs occasionally were removed with prisoner consent.
Human Rights Watch-Asia said Chinese trials often are unfair - including coerced confessions and the growing use of torture in the 1980s - leading to a high risk innocent people are executed and become organ donors.
The group urged China to ban the use of prisoners' organs and said foreign governments should bar their citizens from getting organ transplants in China and should stop cooperating in Chinese transplant research.
It also urged China to abolish the death penalty.
Executions in China are usually by a bullet to the back of the head.
Human Rights Watch-Asia said families either are not informed about the organ donation or are threatened with large bills for the prisoner's food, other expenses and even the cost of the bullet if they refuse consent.
Kidneys and corneas are the "overwhelming majority" of transplants in China, the report said. Other organs are transplanted, but the success rates are low.
An estimated 1,400 to 1,700 kidneys from executed prisoners were used in transplant operations in 1992, and the number probably has increased since then, the rights group said.
No statistics are available on who receives prisoners' organs. Most are probably mainland Chinese citizens, but the surgery is also widely available for foreign or ethnic Chinese citizens of other countries, the report said.