China's gruesome live organ harvest exposed in documentary

 April 8, 2015/updated, 2019 dd to shortlist

China's hospitals are harvesting the body parts of thousands of political prisoners and removing their vital organs while they are still alive, according to a harrowing documentary exposing the horrific state-sanctioned practice.

Doctors and medical students working in state-run civilian and military hospitals take up to 11,000 organs a year from donors under no anaesthetic to supply China's lucrative "organs on-demand" transplant program, say a network of invesitgators comprised of international researchers, doctors and human rights lawyers attempting to end the macabre abuses.

Human rigts lawyer David Matas has spoken out about organ harvesting in China.

The documentary, Human Harvest: China's Organ Trafficking, by Canadian filmmaker Leon Lee, followed these investigators for eight years as they worked to mobilise international condemnation of what they say is a booming billion-dollar organ harvesting industry for the benefit of wealthy paying organ recipients.

"When I cut through [the body] blood was still running ... this person was not dead," said one doctor of his first encounter with live organ harvesting as a medical student filmed by Lee.

The long-persecuted and banned religious Falun Gong have been identified as key targets of China's live organ harvesting program in a documentary.

"I took the liver and two kidneys. It took me 30 minutes," he said.

A former Chinese hospital worker and doctor's wife, whose identity was withheld, told Lee that her husband had removed the corneas of 2000 people while they were still alive. Afterwards the bodies were secretly incinerated.

China has the second highest rate of transplants in the world, with startlingly short wait times for transplant recipients of just two to three weeks.

But a recent Red Cross report found only 37 people nationwide were registered organ donors and harvesting organs from executed prisoners did not come close to accounting for the more than 10,000 transplant procedures performed every year.

Human Rights Lawyer and nobel peace prize nominee David Matas told Lee that living political prisoners make up for the shortfall, with the long-persecuted and banned religious group, the Falun Gong, key targets.

"Somebody's being killed for the organs," human rights lawyer David Matas says.

"There's no other way to explain what's happening."

Chinese officials have denied the allegations, claiming organ donors are volunteers. However, under China's president Xi Jinping, the government has vowed the program would we wound up by August this year, hanging the blame on former security chief Zhou Yongkang.

But Matas and his colleagues are pushing for the perpetrators to stand before the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

The film aired on SBS Dateline on Tuesday night.