Review: Tokyo screening of the film ‘State Organs’

A screening of the film ‘State Organs’ was held at the Bunkyo Civic Centre on 26th March. The film was directed by Zhang Yusheng (Raymond Zhang), who spent around seven years filming and editing it to document the organ harvesting being carried out by the Chinese government on Falun Gong practitioners.

Naturally, it was impossible to film scenes of the secret surgeries, and since the actual victims are almost always killed, the film had to rely on witness testimonies and illustrative imagery. Nevertheless, thanks to the skill of the director and the gravity of the words of the witnesses, the film succeeds in exposing the Chinese government’s crimes.

The film opens with a former Chinese doctor, Zheng Zhi, who recounts the organ harvesting that he personally witnessed. He said in the summer of 1994, when he was an intern at a medical university, his superior ordered him to take part in a ‘secret military mission’. There, a young man was tied up and both of his kidneys were removed while he was still alive. Mr. Zheng was ordered to remove the man's eyes, but when he looked at the man's eyes, the man was still alive and moving. Having eye contact with the terrified eyes, he found himself unable to act and another doctor removed the eyes. Mr. Zheng says that he had never seen such a horrible sight.

In the film, various efforts are shown by overseas human rights activists and campaigners to provide evidence of organ harvesting in China. First, they pose as potential patients and call hospitals in China that perform transplants, and ask whether a liver transplant could be arranged. The typical response is that it can be done within one or two weeks. When they are asked if organs from Falun Gong practitioners are available on the grounds that such organs are reputed to be of high quality, one doctor responds affirmatively, saying “yes, we have them”, while another hints at the possibility. The film also quotes a testimony recounting how a Chinese doctor once stated that Falun Gong practitioners are political prisoners and that “their organs can be freely used”.

Huang Jiefu, Vice Minister of China's Ministry of Health, who also appears in the film, stated in 2012 that China would stop using organs from executed prisoners within two years. In a sense, this may be true—because the number of executed prisoners alone would be far from supporting the current rapid and large-scale organ transplants in China. The full-scale repression of Falun Gong began in 1999. As the film makes clear, Falun Gong practitioners initially had little to no political intention of opposing the Chinese government; rather, it was the government that unilaterally adopted a policy of severe repression. Looking at the timeline, in April 1999, approximately 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners and supporters gathered in Beijing to petition the government, demanding the release of practitioners who had been unjustly detained in Tianjin and other places. At that time, Falun Gong appealed without any intention of violating the law or challenging the government. Nevertheless, later that same year, the Chinese government — under the leadership of Jiang Zemin — established an organisation known as the 610 Office, and declared that Falun Gong was the biggest threat to the Chinese Communist Party, and launched an extensive and systematic persecution.

The central figures in the film are Zhang Yunhe (female) and Huang Xiong (male), who disappeared during this persecution, along with their families. Zhang Yunhe's father, He Qingfa, persistently petitions all the relevant departments, including the 610 Office, in a desperate attempt to save his daughter. Not only is he met with indifference, but at one point, he is even interrogated: “Are you a practitioner too?” Even for us living in Japan, his courage and determination come through clearly. Furthermore, the film also highlights the harsh reality that Falun Gong practitioners go missing. Most families are powerless to act because these disappearances are often the result of abductions by Chinese police.

Huang Wancheng, the older brother of Huang Xiong, recounts that his younger brother had managed to evade arrest and was planning to stage a protest similar to the TV signal hijacking depicted in the film “Eternal Spring (Changchun)”. The last message he received from his brother was a parcel containing his suit, dress shirts, credit cards, ID, and other personal belongings. If captured, Huang Xiong would not only have faced brutal torture, but—if his identity were known—his family would also have been endangered. So he must have sent everything to his brother with the intention of erasing them all. After saying that he thinks his younger brother left on a mission, he quotes the poem of the assassin Jing Ke from the Shiji: “The wind blows cold by the Yi River; the hero leaves, never to return.” It is one of the most poignant and emotionally powerful moments in the film.

In this film, the harvesting of organs from Falun Gong practitioners is, of course, driven by profit. But more importantly, the film emphasises that its primary purpose is what it calls a “Falun Gong genocide”: to force practitioners to renounce their beliefs through torture and fear—and to eliminate those who refuse. In this sense, it is a criminal policy that parallels the ethnic genocide being carried out in Tibet, in East Turkistan against the Uighurs and Southern Mongolia. This film strongly urges us that as long as the totalitarian regime of the Chinese Communist Party remains in power, the victims of genocide will continue to emerge, and these crimes will continue to be concealed.

Click here for the Japanese version.