Man Who Survived Removal of Part of Liver, Lung in Chinese Prison Speaks Out

Man Who Survived Removal of Part of Liver, Lung in Chinese Prison Speaks Out

WASHINGTON—A man who had part of his liver forcibly removed in communist China has stepped forward after escaping the country, drawing attention to Beijing’s mass killing-for-profit scheme known as forced organ harvesting.

Cheng Peiming, a Falun Gong practitioner turning 59 this month, in an Aug. 9 press event recalled six prison guards pinning him down in a Chinese hospital to administer anesthesia against his will while being held in a prison in northeastern China over his faith.

That day was Nov. 16, 2004. When he woke up three days later, he said, his right foot was shackled to a hospital bed. He had one arm receiving intravenous therapy and tubes on his feet, chest, and through his nose.

He began coughing non-stop and felt pain and numbness around his left rib.

Only after escaping to the United States in 2020 and taking a series of medical tests did he confirm his worst fears: part of his liver was gone, along with a portion of his lung. During his speech, he took off his shirt and revealed an approximately 14-inch-long scar around the left side of his chest.

To this day, his left arm and ribs ache on a rainy day or when he’s tired, he said.

At the event, the organizers shared three assessments from medical transplant doctors who said the missing organ parts from Cheng can only be a result of forced organ removal.

Cheng Peiming, a Falun Gong practitioner who had his organs forcibly removed in China, speaks during a press conference in Washington on Aug. 9, 2024.

Cheng, mostly expressionless, at one point squeezed his eyes hard as tears fell.

“I’m just incredibly lucky to have survived,” he told The Epoch Times.

There’s a deeper significance to this beyond his personal survival: he is living proof of a wider pattern of state-sanctioned persecution and abuse.

“Most of the time people are dead, they can’t talk,” Robert Destro, a former assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor, who facilitated his rescue, told The Epoch Times.

Falun Gong, a meditation practice centered on three values—truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance—has long faced threats of forced organ harvesting as part of the Chinese regime’s all-out campaign to eliminate the faith.

The evidence of the systematic abuse first emerged two years after Cheng’s forced surgery, in 2006, with whistleblowers approaching The Epoch Times with accounts of the killing of detained Falun Gong practitioners taking place in secretive Chinese facilities.

Cheng Peiming, a Falun Gong practitioner who had his organs forcibly removed in China, shows his scar after a press conference in Washington on Aug. 9, 2024. 
As witnesses have continually come forward, concern over the issue has steadily grown, with the United States calling on China to open its doors to international scrutiny, and the House passing a bill called the Falun Gong Protection Act, which the Senate has also introduced, to curb the abuse.

It’s unclear why Cheng’s abusers only partially removed his organs and let him survive in 2004.

Wendy Rogers, advisory board chair of the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China, noted that such liver tissue could be used on a child patient, while David Matas, a human rights lawyer who has done extensive investigative research on the subject, suggests the hospital could be experimenting or training doctors for the craft—the initial step of a hospital “getting into the business” for massive profits, he told The Epoch Times.

The place of the incision is also unusual: instead of an abdominal cut typical in an organ transplant surgery, the doctors opted to make a cut between his ribs. The organizers of the press event noted such a move, while not common, allowed wider access to organs in both the chest and abdomen.

Regardless, the organizers and human rights advocates said the forced surgical procedures and lack of clarity around it all speaks to the brutality of the regime, and the need for an open and transparent investigation.

“Ultimately, the onus does not fall on Cheng to say what happened to him. The onus falls on the government of China,” Matas said at the event.

David Matas, an award-winning Canadian human rights lawyer and a member of the Order of Canada and board of directors of the Toronto-based International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, speaks during a press conference in Washington on Aug. 9, 2024.

Cheng was serving an eight-year-jail term for his faith at the Daqing Prison in Heilongjiang Province’s capital, Harbin, at the time of the nonconsensual surgery.

He suffered shortness of breath over the following two years. In Feburary 2006, he began a hunger strike in protest of a new round of torture inflicted upon him, according to reports on Minghui.org, a website dedicated to tracking persecution accounts first hand. The prison administered intravenous drips and took him to Daqing Longnan Hospital on March 2, shackling him to a bedpost.

Weak, and watched by prison guards, Cheng heard guards talking to his sister, who had come to see him, Cheng told The Epoch Times. The guard claimed, falsely, that Cheng had ingested a knife blade and required a high-risk surgery. Later, a white-clad doctor came and pressed on his chest and abdomen, declaring they’d perform the surgery the next day.

Cheng thought that that would have been the end of him. But an opportunity availed itself. In the early hours of next morning, the two exhausted guards monitoring him fell asleep before putting shackles on him. He was then able to flee through a fire escape.

That was only days before Cheng read about the forced organ harvesting issue on Minghui.org. He “trembled all over” at the thought of what could have happened to him, he said during the interview. He dared not to take off his clothes to sleep for the next two months, just in case he had to flee.

Robert Destro, former assistant secretary of state for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, speaks during a press conference in Washington on Aug. 9, 2024. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

Chinese police put out a bounty of 50,000 yuan, about $6,500 at the time, to hunt Cheng down. He lived in hiding until eventually escaping to Thailand in 2015.

Multiple human rights advocates also shared statements of support for Cheng.

Katrina Lantos Swett, president of the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice, commended Cheng’s courage to speak out. She said her organization had spoken to Cheng previously and she found his account “deeply disturbing.”

“They offer further evidence of the egregious human rights abuse happening in China in the form of forced organ harvesting,” she said. “This outrageous violation of fundamental rights continues despite the Chinese government’s claims to the contrary.”

Eric Patterson, the head of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, similarly said the case highlights the “urgent need to address medical atrocities carried out by the Chinese Communist Party.”

At the event, Cheng said he wasn’t speaking just for himself, but for the many who are still at risk of abuse in China.

He said that while detained, Cheng and several other fellow Falun Gong practitioners made each other a promise: whoever among them made it out alive would tell the world what happened there.

 

California, China sign climate deal after Trump's Paris exit

MATTHEW BROWN, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS  06.06.2017

BEIJING — With President Donald Trump pulling the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord, China and California signed an agreement Tuesday to work together on reducing emissions, as the state's governor warned that "disaster still looms" without urgent action.

Gov. Jerry Brown told The Associated Press at an international clean energy conference in Beijing that Trump's decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris agreement will ultimately prove only a temporary setback.

For now, he said, China, European countries and individual U.S. states will fill the gap left by the federal government's move to abdicate leadership on the issue.

"Nobody can stay on the sidelines. We can't afford any dropouts in the tremendous human challenge to make the transition to a sustainable future," Brown said. "Disaster still looms and we've got to make the turn."

Brown later held a closed-door meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, during which the two pledged to expand trade between California and China with an emphasis on so-called green technologies that could help address climate change, Brown said. Trump's announcement last week that he wants to pull out of the Paris accord did not come up, according to the governor.

"Xi spoke in very positive terms," Brown told reporters after the meeting. "I don't think there's any desire to get into verbal battles with President Trump."

Trump's decision drew heavy criticism within the U.S. and internationally, including in China, which swiftly recommitted itself to the agreement forged with the administration of former U.S. President Barack Obama. Trump argued that the Paris agreement favours emerging economies such as China's and India's at the expense of U.S. workers.

Tuesday's agreement between California and China's Ministry of Science and Technology effectively sidestepped Trump's move, bringing about alignment on an issue of rising global importance between the world's second-largest economy — China — and California, whose economy is the largest of any U.S. state and the sixth largest in the world.

Brown signed similar collaboration agreements over the past several days with leaders in two Chinese provinces, Jiangsu and Sichuan.

Like the Paris accord, the deals are all nonbinding. They call for investments in low-carbon energy sources, co-operation on climate research and the commercialization of cleaner technologies. The agreements do not establish new emission reduction goals.

The U.S. has long been a major player in the clean energy arena, driving innovations in electric cars, renewable power and other sectors of the industry. California, with some of the strictest climate controls in the nation, has been at the forefront of the sector.

China in recent years overtook the U.S. as the world leader in renewable power development. But it has also struggled to integrate its sprawling wind and solar facilities into an electricity grid still dominated by coal-fueled power plants.

At the same time, Chinese leaders face growing public pressure at home to reduce the health-damaging smog that blankets many urban areas.

China is by far the world's largest user of coal, which accounts for almost two-thirds of its energy use and has made it the No. 1 emitter of climate-changing greenhouse gases.

Communist Party leaders pledged that greenhouse gas emissions will peak no later than 2030 under the Paris pact, and start to fall after then. They have cancelled the planned construction of more than 100 new coal-fired power plants and plan to invest at least $360 billion in green-energy projects by the end of the decade. The nation's consumption of coal fell in 2016 for a third consecutive year, but rebounded slightly in 2017.

It could meet its 2030 target a decade early.

Trump Energy Secretary Rick Perry also is attending this week's energy meeting in Beijing. Observers say delegates from other countries will be listening closely to the former Texas governor to gauge how Trump administration policies will shape global energy trends.

During a Tuesday forum devoted to capturing carbon dioxide emitted from coal plants and other large industrial sources, Perry said his agency was pursuing an "all of the above" strategy that includes research intended to spur innovation for coal, nuclear, renewables and other fuels. He left the event without taking questions.

Perry is from a state that is known for its oil production but that has also had significant renewables development. Texas has some of the largest wind farms in the country and a fast-expanding solar sector.

Such U.S. advances in renewables won't simply disappear under Trump, said David Sandalow, a former undersecretary of energy in the Obama administration now at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy. Too many companies and states are heavily invested in the sector for that to happen, he said.

But a lack of government support for clean energy will cost the U.S. jobs, Sandalow added, with cuts to research programs that Trump has proposed being a sign of what's to come.

"It's backward looking and it's going to hurt the U.S.," he said. "The contrast with what's happening in China could not be more stark."

Interviewed Tuesday morning on American cable channel MSNBC, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt touted U.S. emissions reductions over past years and said that despite withdrawing from the Paris accord, the Trump administration would continue to engage others, particularly developing nations, on the effort.

"We have a strong, strong approach to reducing emissions. We have nothing to be apologetic about," Pruitt said. "America is not going to be disengaged, we are going to maintain engagement."

Trump is a strong advocate of boosting U.S. fossil fuel industries, in particular coal mining. Cheap natural gas and tighter pollution restrictions toppled coal from its dominant position in the U.S. power sector during Obama's tenure. Experts say it's unlikely to regain that position anytime soon, regardless of what Trump does.

Without mentioning Trump by name, Brown told attendees at a forum on electric vehicles that "there are still people in powerful places who are resisting reality."

Later, when asked by the AP what could prompt the U.S. to return to the forefront of climate change efforts, Brown replied, "Science, facts, the world, the marketplace."

Cuba's sovereignty exists in name only when in reality is controlled by China, Listen up Canada

Cuba's sovereignty exists in name only when in reality is controlled by China, Listen up Canada
 Fri June 9, 2023

Cuba has agreed to allow China to build a spying facility on the island that could allow the Chinese to eavesdrop on electronic communications across the southeastern US, two sources familiar with the intelligence told CNN.

The US learned about the plan in the last several weeks, the first source said, and it is unclear whether China has already begun building the surveillance facility.

The second source familiar with the intelligence says it suggests that a deal has been struck in principle but there hasn’t been any movement on building the facility

It would not be the first time China has attempted to spy on the US’ electronic communications, known as signals intelligence. A suspected Chinese spy balloon that transited the US in February was capable of gathering signals intelligence and is believed to have transmitted back to Beijing in near-real time, sources told CNN at the time.

In that case, the US took steps to protect sensitive sites and censor intelligence signals before shooting down the balloon. But it is unclear what the US can do to stop the construction of a Chinese spying facility in Cuba.

“This report is not accurate,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said in a statement on Thursday afternoon. “We have had real concerns about China’s relationship with Cuba, and we have been concerned since day one of the Administration about China’s activities in our hemisphere and around the world. We are closely monitoring it and taking steps to counter it. We remain confident that we are able to meet all our security commitments at home and in the region.”

Kirby initially told the Journal on Thursday morning that he “cannot speak to this specific report,” but that US officials are “well aware of—and have spoken many times to—the People’s Republic of China’s efforts to invest in infrastructure around the world that may have military purposes, including in this hemisphere.”

Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio denied the reports.

At a press conference in Havana on Thursday, he called them “totally untrue” and “slanders.”

“Slanders like these have been fabricated frequently by US officials,” he said, alleging that the reported spy base was being used to legitimize US sanctions on Cuba.

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“Fallacies promoted with the malicious intention to justify the unprecedented reinforcement of the economic blockade, destabilization and the aggression against Cuba and deceive public opinion in the United States and around the world,” de Cossio added. 

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Friday avoided directly answering a question about reports on alleged plans to open a spy base in Cuba, saying it was “not aware” of the situation, while accusing the US of spying itself and of “spreading rumors.”

“The United States should reflect on itself and stop interfering in Cuba’s internal affairs under the banner of freedom, democracy and human rights,” spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a regular briefing.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on the new intelligence about the facility.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, a Democrat, and Vice Chairman Marco Rubio, a Republican, released a statement expressing concern about the reports.

We are deeply disturbed by reports that Havana and Beijing are working together to target the United States and our people. The United States must respond to China’s ongoing and brazen attacks on our nation’s security. We must be clear that it would be unacceptable for China to establish an intelligence facility within 100 miles of Florida and the United States, in an area also populated with key military installations and extensive maritime traffic. We urge the Biden administration to take steps to prevent this serious threat to our national security and sovereignty,” Rubio and Warner said.

The CIA declined to comment. CNN has reached out to the Chinese and Cuban embassies in Washington, DC.

The first source familiar with the intelligence noted that while an eavesdropping base on Cuba would be concerning, China has already established footholds inside the US – namely, secret police stations that the Biden administration has begun to crack down on.

The US also conducts spying missions near China, using reconnaissance aircraft that routinely engage in electronic eavesdropping. One of those US planes was recently intercepted by a Chinese fighter jet, in what the US described as a dangerous and unprofessional maneuver.

But the revelation about the potential Chinese outpost in Cuba comes as US-China relations have reached a low point, following the spy balloon incident and several aggressive maneuvers by Chinese aircraft and ships against US assets in the South China Sea.

The US has been trying to mend the relationship, and dispatched CIA Director Bill Burns to Beijing last month for talks with Chinese officials. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is also expected to visit China in the coming weeks.

But last week, China’s defense chief refused a meeting request by US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and warned the US to stop operating near Chinese waters and airspace.

“The best way to prevent this from happening is that military vessels and aircraft not come close to our waters and airspace,” Chinese defense minister Li Shangfu said in Singapore last week, referring to recent close calls between Chinese and US planes and ships. “Watch out for your own territorial waters and airspace, then there will not be any problems.”

The Biden administration has done little to try to improve relations with Cuba and has only resumed limited bilateral conversations on matters like migration. Following rapprochement efforts under the Obama administration, relations plummeted due to the so-called “Havana Syndrome” illness that impacted US diplomats posted in the Cuban capital and the Trump administration’s decision – during the final days of that administration – to re-list Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Cuba stresses China’s role in the economy

September 4, 2024

HAVANA, Cuba, (ACN) – Cuba ratified last Wednesday the effective role of China as a strategic economic partner in the island’s Social and Economic Development Program till 2030.

Tania Aguilar, vice-president of the Cuban Chamber of Commerce said that the Chinese participation in Cuban economy is of top priority, while new initiatives to set up more bilateral associations are in the works in key local sectors.

The official made her statements at the opening of a China-Cuba business forum in Havana attended by a large delegation from Shanghai Pudong.

Aguilar said encouraging the participation of Chinese capital in Cuba plus bilateral cooperation in the economic and commercial areas will help develop project to the benefit of the two countries.

The sectors represented at the forum included food, drinks, construction, tourism, culture, energy logistics and many others.

The Chinese counterpart is exploring possible trade and investment opportunities to boost bilateral commercial relations.lc.

Meanwhile, US organization act of solidarity with Cuba delivered approximately 800 tons of wheat flour donated to Cuba by the US organization The People’s Forum, and according to Manolo de los Santos, its executive director, many hands from all over the world offered solidarity help to achieve it.

The young friend of the Island, based in New York, denounced the genocide that constitutes the blockade of the US government against Cuba, and gave as an example that for this donation they talked to 14 different companies in the US and none dared to sell that flour, they had to look for others as far away as Turkey, when it is only 90 miles away from Cuba, he said.

That is genocide, it is an act of war and we as neighbor of the Cuban people want to affirm our position of peace, our position that we believe in the shared humanity of our countries, and we say to Joe Biden, who has months left in the White House, that it is time to remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, and to begin the process of lifting the blockade against the Cuban people, Santos affirmed.

He explained that this campaign was made possible in large part by the donation of thousands of people in the United States, some donated one dollar, others donated thousands, but with the conviction to carry out another type of policy in favor of relations between Cuba and the United States, he assured and acknowledged the Martin Luther King Memorial Center, for the support and the relationship of many years of work and cooperation.

Manolo de los Santos added that this is the end of the project that arose more than four months ago, but they are committed to continue accompanying the Cuban people, and wondered once again about the reality of the blockade. The 800 tons of wheat flour will be destined for the western provinces of Pinar del Rio, Artemisa, Mayaquebe, Havana and Matanzas, as explained to the press by Anaira Cabrera Martinez, general director of industrial policy of the Ministry of Food Industry (Minal by its Spanish acronym).

Javier Francisco Aguiar, vice minister of Minal, thanked the US organization and the Let Cuba Live project for the donation of wheat flour, and said that it is not a symbolic act, it is real and tangible and influences the daily production of bread, 800 tons of flour are needed for the production of daily bread for the population in the country and also guarantee the health centers, children’s day care centers and other social sectors.

New Cuban radar site near US military base to aid China spying – report
CSIS calls site near Guantánamo a ‘powerful tool’ that will be able to monitor air and maritime activity of US military

Tue 2 Jul 2024 

Satellite images appear to show that Cuba is building a new radar site to be capable of spying on the US’s nearby Guantánamo Bay naval base, in the latest upgrade to the country’s surveillance capabilities linked to China.

The base, under construction since 2021 but previously not publicly reported, is east of the city of Santiago de Cuba near the El Salao neighborhood, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said in a report published on Monday and later referenced by the Wall Street Journal.

Cuban vice foreign minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio denied that Cuba was harboring Chinese military interests on the island.

“[The] Wall Street Journal persists in launching an intimidation campaign related to #Cuba. Without citing a verifiable source or showing evidence, it seeks to scare the public with tales about Chinese military bases that do not exist and no one has seen, including the US embassy in Cuba,” de Cossio said on social media.

Cuba’s proximity to the US and its southern military bases makes it a good location for China, Washington’s top strategic rival, to seek to collect signals intelligence. The CSIS called the new site a “powerful tool” that once operational will be able to monitor air and maritime activity of the US military.

The facility, known as a circularly disposed antenna array with a diameter of approximately 130-200 meters, could be able to track signals as far as 3,000-8,000 nautical miles (3,452-9,206 miles) away, the CSIS said.

“Access to such an outpost would provide China with a highly strategic vantage point near Naval Station Guantanamo Bay,” it said, referring to the key US military base 45 miles (73km) east of Santiago, Cuba’s second largest city.

Such arrays were used heavily during the cold war, but Russia and the US have since decommissioned most of their sites in favor of more advanced technology, the CSIS said. However, the thinktank said China has been actively building new such arrays, including on reef outposts in the South China Sea.

Last year, Biden administration officials said Beijing has been spying from Cuba for years and made a push to upgrade its intelligence collection capabilities there beginning in 2019, allegations that both Beijing and Havana have denied.

State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel declined to comment on the report, but told a briefing on Tuesday that the US was “closely monitoring” China’s presence in Cuba.

“We know that the PRC [People’s Republic of China] is going to keep trying to enhance its presence in Cuba and the United States is going to keep working to disrupt it,” Patel said without giving details.

The White House national security council and the US defense department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

China’s embassy in Washington said the US had repeatedly “hyped up” the idea of China’s spying and surveillance from Cuba.

“Such claims are nothing but slander,” embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu said.

The CSIS also said satellite images from March 2024 show Cuba’s largest active signals intelligence site at Bejucal, located in the hills near Havana and linked to Chinese intelligence activity for years, has undergone “major updates” in the past decade, calling it a “clear indication of an evolving mission set”.

“Collecting data on activities like military exercises, missile tests, rocket launches and submarine maneuvers would allow China to develop a more sophisticated picture of US military practices,” the CSIS said.

It said certain radar systems installed in Cuba in recent years are in range to monitor rocket launches from Cape Canaveral and Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center, a likely interest for China as it seeks to catch up to US space launch technology.

US Analytical Institute: radars in Cuba monitor the US military in the interests of the PRC 

Bejucal, Cuba

The construction of a new radar is in full swing in Cuba, which will be spying on the nearby US naval base at Guantanamo Bay. . The construction of the observation site is confirmed by satellite images.

CSIS says the American military base using radar to carry out the interests of China. Construction of the base east of the city of Santiago de Cuba, near the El Salao region, began in 2021, the US think tank said in a report.

As a side note it is important to be aware that the largest Chinese population nearest to the US is Cuba since the 70's.