I survived China’s forced organ harvesting – I was injected by doctors and when I woke, part of my liver and lungs had been removed. If I had not escaped they would have killed me

The first known survivor of forced organ harvesting in China has revealed the horrific ordeal he endured at the hands of state-sanctioned surgeons. 

The nightmarish story of Cheng Pei Ming, a rural villager from China’s Shandong Province, is one of unimaginable suffering. 

Between 1999 and 2006, he faced relentless persecution for his religious and spiritual beliefs by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and endured several periods of detention during which he is believed to have been repeatedly tortured.

In one of the most chilling episodes of his captivity, Cheng was taken to a hospital where doctors pressured him into signing consent forms for surgery. 

When he refused, he was immediately injected with an unknown substance which knocked him out. 

He awoke with a massive incision down the left side of his chest, and scans have since confirmed that segments of Cheng’s liver and lung had been removed.

Medical examinations conducted in the US confirmed that segments 2 and 3 of Cheng’s left liver lobe and half of the left lower lobe of his lung were missing

Cheng awoke to find a huge incision down the side of his chest leaking fluid

Images of Cheng shackled to a hospital bed emerged on a website dedicated to publishing news on the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners

When he refused to sign surgery consent forms Cheng was immediately tackled by police officers and injected with a tranquilliser

The inception of China’s organ harvesting trade is not known but the practice gathered pace at the turn of the 21st century – coinciding with the persecution of Falun Gong – and has since become a booming industry.

Cheng’s nightmare began in 1999, when he was first detained by Chinese authorities  for practicing Falun Gong.

Rooted in Buddhist traditions, Falun Gong focuses on the improvement of mind and body through meditation and moral teachings. 

But the CCP views the practice as a threat to its authority and has been systematically persecuting its practitioners ever since 1999 when it launched a targeted campaign to crack down on the practice. 

For the next three years, Cheng found himself in and out of jail cells and besides suffering physical punishments was also subjected to frequent forced blood tests, but refused to abandon his beliefs and continued to practice Falun Gong. 

But his predicament worsened in 2002, when a court slapped Cheng with an eight-year sentence in Harbin Prison for advocating against the persecution of his fellow Falun Gong practitioners. 

His imprisonment was marked by severe torture and continued blood tests, a move which experts claim could only have one purpose – to evaluate the health of transplantable organs. 

But in July 2004, Cheng was transferred to Daqing Prison where his suffering only intensified, driving him to the point of suicide. 

After months of continued torture, Cheng swallowed a rusty nail and a razorblade, hoping to end his torment. He was forcibly taken to a hospital and told he needed to sign forms consenting to surgery to remove the items, but refused to do so. 

‘I have committed no crime and I will not sign. If I die, it will be because of your persecution,’ he said. 

Moments later, six guards piled on top of him and he was injected with an unknown fluid. 

Upon regaining consciousness three days later he found he was shackled to a bed and surrounded by tubes with IV drips piercing his veins. 

But there was one truly horrifying discovery – a 35cm incision down the left side of his chest that evidently had nothing to do with the sharp objects he ingested.

‘Six guards grabbed me and held me down and I was injected with something,’ Cheng said.

‘The next thing I remember is being in a hospital bed with tubes in my nose and I was going in and out of consciousness. There was a tube with bloody liquid coming from under the bandaging that was on my side.’

IV lines are seen snaking into Cheng’s body following his forced surgery in 2004

Cheng’s shackles are seen on his hospital bed hours after he was operated on in China

 

CT scans of Cheng’s body in November 2020 showed sections two and three of the left lobe of his liver were missing (ringed in red)

A 3D reconstruction of Cheng’s lung shows several irregularities and scarring

While Cheng lay in bed, photos depicting the aftermath of his forced surgery were taken and sent to Minghui.org – a website sharing information on Falun Gong that also publishes news about the persecution of its practitioners.

Cheng is clearly seen unconscious and chained to the bed in the images, which he suspects were taken by a shocked nurse or hospital worker.  

Subsequent medical examinations conducted in the US confirmed that segments 2 and 3 of Cheng’s left liver lobe and half of the left lower lobe of his lung were missing.

The removal of liver segments aligns with a technique developed in the 1990s for pediatric liver transplants, prompting experts to conclude Cheng was used as an unwilling organ donor – as well as highly unethical medical experimentation.

‘This is a case of surgical assault resulting in the theft of organ parts, as well as pain and suffering,’ said Professor Wendy Rogers, Chair of the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC)’s International Advisory Board. 

‘I do not know why the Chinese doctors removed parts of Mr Cheng’s liver and lungs, but I do know that he did not have a disease or illness requiring this surgery. The portion of liver removed is consistent with securing liver tissue suitable for transplantation into a child.

‘Mr. Cheng’s case illustrates the callous indifference to the human rights of prisoners of conscience in China… he was surgically assaulted as part of a wider pattern of persecution, incarceration and torture,’ she concluded. 

Having survived the forced surgery, Cheng was returned to Daqing Prison despite suffering evident side effects that included chronic fatigue and shortness of breath. There he was left to recuperate with no medical attention, languishing behind bars for another year and a half.

In March 2006, after initiating a hunger strike, Cheng was hospitalised again – but this time he claims he was told he’d have to undergo another unspecified surgery, even though he had not ingested any foreign objects.

Realising he was about to face another brutal surgery and almost certain death, he staged a daring escape.

Hours before his operation was due to be performed, he asked the guard monitoring his room overnight to take him to the toilet. 

Upon returning to the room, Cheng said the guard forgot to shackle him to the bedframe, and a short while later, fell asleep in his chair. 

Cheng seized the golden opportunity, sneaking out of the room before fleeing via the hospital’s internal fire stairs. 

He hailed a taxi from in front of the hospital, offering canned fruit that he had grabbed from his room as fare payment. The driver mercifully accepted and drove off into the night. 

‘When they took me to the hospital again and said I had to have another operation, I thought for sure they were going to kill me,’ Cheng later told officials in the US.  

CT scan shows scar tissue built up on the left side of Cheng’s lung

About half of Cheng’s lower left lung lobe is also missing

This 3D reconstruction of Cheng’s CT scan shows a considerable chunk missing from one of his lungs

That escape marked the beginning of a long journey to freedom that took Cheng across international borders and through countless challenges on a 14-year campaign to avoid the Chinese authorities. 

After nine years on the run in his native land, he managed to flee the country and settle in Thailand, where he spent another five years looking over his shoulder until he was eventually granted UN refugee status.

In July 2020, Cheng completed his bid for freedom when he landed safely in the United States.

He is now set to open up about his horrific experiences at the hands of the CCP at a conference in Washington that will be hosted by ETAC and attended by a slew of top officials. 

ETAC is a non-profit organisation made up of lawyers, academics, ethicists, medical professionals, researchers and human rights advocates dedicated to ending forced organ harvesting in China.

David Matas, an international human rights lawyer and ETAC Co-Founder, said Cheng is unique in that he represents just one of thousands of forced transplant victims in China – but lived and subsequently escaped to tell the tale. 

‘Mr. Cheng is, in one sense, a typical victim of China’s forced organ harvesting practices – a Falun Gong practitioner who had their organs stolen by the CCP. 

‘In another sense, he is unusual because he survived organ extraction and escaped both the Chinese authorities and China itself.

‘Like other Falun Gong practitioners, Mr. Cheng was never told he was going to be organ extracted. Nor was he told afterwards that he had been organ extracted. He found that out only after he fled China and was medically examined.

‘He illustrates a general phenomenon, the exception which proves the norm, the norm in this case being the gruesome reality of the mass killing of Falun Gong for their organs.’

The UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2021 declared it had received credible information that the Chinese state was facilitating forced organ harvesting

Demonstrators protest against the persecution of the practitioners of Falun Gong – also known as Falun Dafa

The China Tribunal, an independent People’s Tribunal chaired by renowned British barrister Sir Geoffrey Nice, concluded in 2020 that China’s forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience amounts to crimes against humanity

The date of inception of China’s organ harvesting trade is not known but the practice gathered pace at the turn of the 21st century – coinciding with the persecution of Falun Gong – and has since become a booming industry. 

Vital organs became readily available to those willing to pay for them within a matter of days, with some reports suggesting certain ’emergency’ body parts – particularly livers – could be sourced in under 24 hours.

Throughout the 2000s, state-run hospitals and hundreds of independent websites began advertising short wait times for transplant operations involving hearts, livers, kidneys and corneas as the business exploded. 

Over time, international observers began to speculate that China’s incredible organ supply simply could not have been sourced from a legal, voluntary donation process, and began to investigate.

It wasn’t long before tales of suffering began to leak, and the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2021 declared it had received credible information that the Chinese state was facilitating forced organ harvesting from a range of persecuted groups, in particular Falun Gong practitioners. 

The China Tribunal, an independent People’s Tribunal chaired by renowned British barrister Sir Geoffrey Nice, concluded in 2020 that China’s forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience amounts to crimes against humanity. 

The Tribunal estimated that as many as 60,000 to 100,000 organ transplants are carried out each year without consent, or from prisoners of conscience who die in captivity.

Now, momentum is building for international action against the organ harvesting programme. 

The US Senate is currently reviewing the Falun Gong Protection Act, which aims to impose sanctions on those responsible for forced organ harvesting and demand accountability from the Chinese government.

The act, introduced to the Senate by Floridian Senator Marco Rubio, passed in the House of Representatives with strong bi-partisan support. 

Beijing has repeatedly denied accusations by human rights researchers and scholars that it forcibly takes organs from prisoners of conscience and said it stopped using organs from executed prisoners in 2015. 

Responding to a request for comment following the China Tribunal’s findings, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in London said human organ donation must be ‘voluntary and without payment’.