Man was ‘given an injection’ and ‘woke up to find his organs being harvested’

A man alleged that he was forcibly sedated and had parts of his liver and lung removed while imprisoned in what he claims was state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting by the Chinese Communist Party

A man imprisoned in a brutal Chinese prison recounted the horrific tale of how he was sedated and woke up to find his organs being ripped out of him, all because of his religious beliefs.

Cheng Pei Ming claims he was subjected to state sanctioned detention and forced organ harvesting between 1999 and 2006 by the Chinese Communist Party due to his practicing of Falun Gong, which was outlawed as an “evil cult” by China in 1999.

Cheng Pei Ming alleges said he was asked to sign a medical consent form, which he refused. Despite his objections, he claims he was then forcibly injected with a sedative.

When he woke up he discovered an incision running down his chest. He later learned that parts of his liver and lung had been removed while he was unconscious, according to the Diplomat.

Cheng told The Daily Mail: “Six guards grabbed me and held me down and I was injected with something. 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.”

Photographs of the aftermath, which Cheng believes were captured by a hospital employee, show him unconscious and shackled to the hospital bed.

These images have been circulated online, particularly on a Chinese website called Minghui.org, which shares information about the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. Cheng is a follower of this spiritual movement, which has deep roots in Buddhist ideology.

Medical professionals cannot definitively explain why his organs were taken, but Professor Wendy Rogers, Chair of the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC)’s International Advisory Board said that “he did not have a disease or illness requiring this surgery.”

The operation is similar to methods used in a 1990s procedure used to harvest liver tissue for paediatric transplants, which the professor verified.

She explained: “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.”

Cheng is said to have been very ill following the alleged forced operation, enduring chronic exhaustion and breathing difficulties, but was unable to receive further medical care as he supposedly remained detained for another 18 months.

In March 2006, he launched a hunger strike, then he was told he needed to undergo yet another mystery operation.

He realised this surgery may well be a death sentence, so Cheng decided to escape the facility in an act of reckless desperation.

He said: “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.”

Hours before his surgery he asked the guard checking his room to take him to the toilet. When he came back, the guard forgot to re-shackle him to the bedframe and luckily for Cheng, fell asleep in his chair.

Seizing his window of opportunity, Cheng fled and went through the building’s fire stairs. He hailed a taxi from in front of the hospital, offering canned fruit he had grabbed from his room as fare payment. Cheng was free.

He went into hiding in China for almost a decade before finding unofficial sanctuary in Thailand. It wasn’t until July 2020 he was able to reach the United States as an official United Nations refugee.

David Matas, an international human rights lawyer and ETAC Co-Founder, said Cheng represents thousands of victims – but he is unique in that he survived.

He said: “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 China Tribunal, an independent People’s Tribunal chaired by 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 illicit organ transplants are carried out each year. 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.

Beijing has repeatedly denied accusations 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 spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in London said human organ donation must be “voluntary and without payment.”