{"id":10221,"date":"2019-10-05T09:14:36","date_gmt":"2019-10-05T05:44:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/?p=10221"},"modified":"2021-01-21T19:28:19","modified_gmt":"2021-01-21T15:58:19","slug":"advocate-on-behalf-of-two-cults","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/posts\/10221","title":{"rendered":"Advocate on behalf of two cults"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reports on China \u2018organ harvesting\u2019 derive from front groups of far-right cult Falun Gong<\/strong>
\nA wave of corporate media reports on Chinese organ harvesting rely without acknowledgement on front groups connected to the far-right Falun Gong cult, whose followers believe \u201cTrump was sent by heaven to destroy the Communist Party.\u201d
\nWestern corporate media outlets have gone wild with claims that the Chinese state is \u201charvesting\u201d the organs of ethnic minorities and political opposition figures. But an investigation by The Grayzone has found that these allegations originate from front groups run by the far-right opposition cult Falun Gong.
\nFalun Gong, whose devotees can often be seen clad in yellow and performing coordinated qi gong routines in crowded city centers, runs an ultra-conservative, staunchly pro-Donald Trump media network that has been compared to Alex Jones\u2019 Infowars.<\/p>\n\n

According to a former member of the fringe religious group, Falun Gong believes that an apocalyptic judgement day is soon approaching and \u201cthat Trump was sent by heaven to destroy the [Chinese] Communist Party.\u201d
\nIn order to understand, then, how heavily politicized rumors from an obscure far-right cult found their way into the headlines, it is essential to trace the roots of the story through an elaborate network of front groups.
\nIn June 2019, a London-based organization called the China Tribunal published a report claiming that the Chinese government has been systematically executing and harvesting the organs of members of Falun Gong, a leading force of opposition to Beijing in the diaspora.
\nThe China Tribunal describes itself as an \u201cindependent tribunal into forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in China.\u201d Most Western journalists took the organization at its word.
\nUp to and after it published the report, the China Tribunal received scattered coverage from various mainstream media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and The Guardian. In September, the coverage ramped up considerably after the China Tribunal presented its case to the UN Human Rights Council, with major outlets like The Independent and Reuters joining in.
\nOne thing all this reporting has in common is that it assumes the China Tribunal is truly \u201cindependent.\u201d On its website, the China Tribunal says that it was \u201cinitiated by the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC), an international not for profit organisation, with headquarters in Australia and National Committees in the UK, USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what is ETAC, really?<\/strong>
\nOn ETAC\u2019s website, one finds a \u201cmanagement\u201d page with a list of people, devoid of any information except their names, photographs, and positions in the organization. The executive director and co-founder is Susie Hughes; Margo MacVicar is named as the New Zealand national manager; Rebecca James is the UK national manager for outreach, and so on.
\nWhere do these figures come from, and what brought them together? The website has no bios. But follow the names, and it soon becomes apparent that there is another connection apart from ETAC \u2014 the Epoch Times.
\nA far-right anti-China propaganda network run by a cult
\nThe Epoch Times, which uses the slogan \u201cTruth and Tradition,\u201d has marketed itself as just another conservative, pro-Trump media outlet.
\nBut NBC News published a major expos\u00e9 in August revealing it to be the media arm of the opposition cult Falun Gong. The report details the bizarre workings of the Falun Gong organization, showing how the Epoch Times is carving a place for itself in American right-wing media.
\nNBC News found that the Falun Gong website spent more than $1.5 million on roughly 11,000 pro-Trump advertisements on Facebook in just six months, \u201cmore than any organization outside of the Trump campaign itself, and more than most Democratic presidential candidates have spent on their own campaigns.\u201d
\nAnd while the NBC reporters, Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Collins, cautiously refer to Falun Gong as a \u201cspiritual community,\u201d the behavior they document very easily fits into the popular definition of \u201ccult.\u201d (It\u2019s okay, Zadrozny and Collins, you can say it \u2014 say it with me: \u201cFalun Gong is a cult.\u201d Now doesn\u2019t that feel better?)
\nA quick look at Falun Gong\u2019s official emblem, posted on its website, should raise some eyebrows: it features an ancient swastika symbol. Falun Gong reassures skeptics on the web page, \u201cSome people say: \u2018This symbol looks like Hitler\u2019s stuff.\u2019 Let me tell you that this symbol itself does not connote any concepts of class.\u201d
\nSo where do the ETAC managers fit in with Falun Gong? Susie Hughes has photographer credits on several Epoch Times articles (her name seems to have been scrubbed, the photos merely credited to \u201cThe Epoch Times,\u201d but the credit still shows up on Google searches at the time of writing). Margo MacVicar has numerous articles gushing about Shen Yun, Falun Gong\u2019s traveling dance show. Rebecca \u201cBecky\u201d James shows up organizing a Falun Gong art exhibition in Bristol and sharing vegan drink recipes.
\nETAC\u2019s UK national manager for initiatives, Andy Moody, is credited by Epoch Times as a reporter for its sibling NTD, or New Tang Dynasty Television, Falun Gong\u2019s TV arm. (Concerned Canadians have noted that the cult\u2019s propaganda network has received millions of their tax dollars worth of disproportionate funding.)
\nETAC\u2019s UK communications coordinator Victoria Ledwidge appears in another Epoch Times article, coming to greet Shen Yun performers in London and, of course, acclaiming the \u201camazing\u201d performance.
\nAs one goes down the list of ETAC management, these Falun Gong connections spring up for almost everyone. ETAC is very clearly a Falun Gong front group.
\nNeither ETAC nor China Tribunal discloses these connections, but it hardly takes an intrepid investigative journalist to find them. So why was this level of basic research a step too far for, say, Owen Bowcott at the Guardian, who does little more than transmit ETAC\u2019s talking points?<\/p>\n

In fact, Falun Gong itself is actively spreading this \u201corgan harvesting\u201d rumor in major North American cities. The Grayzone\u2019s Ben Norton saw some of the cult\u2019s activists standing in central Toronto next to a giant banner titled \u201cStop Forced Live Organ Harvesting in China.\u201d
\nThey handed out pamphlets to passers-by declaring that the \u201cChinese Communist Regime Is Slaughtering Innocents\u201d (using a painting as supposed evidence), while preaching about the \u201cgreat health benefits\u201d of Falun Gong.
\nThe far-right cult is clearly using these rumors to proselytize and recruit new supporters.<\/p>\n

\u2018Research\u2019 overseen by a cult that sidelines real doctors<\/strong>
\nTurning to the China Tribunal\u2019s report itself, it is apparent that, despite the authors\u2019 claim to \u201chave maintained distance and separation from ETAC in order to ensure their independence,\u201d they rely heavily on information curated for them by ETAC.
\nThe introduction, after describing ETAC as \u201ca not-for-profit coalition of lawyers, medical professionals and others\u201d, goes on to state that \u201cETAC\u2019s main interest has been the alleged suffering of practitioners of \u2018Falun Gong\u2019, a group performing meditative exercises and pursuing Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance, but regarded by the People\u2019s Republic of China (PRC) since 1999 as an \u2018anti-humanitarian, anti-society and anti-science cult\u2019.\u201d
\nIt is understandable that critics might hesitate to take the PRC\u2019s characterization of Falun Gong at face value. But it is easy to make a fair evaluation of the group\u2019s true character simply by perusing their own publications, where one will learn, for instance, that modern science was invented by aliens as part of a scheme to take over human bodies; or that feminism, environmentalism, and homosexuality are part of Satan\u2019s plan to make us into communists; or that race-mixing severs our connection to the gods.
\nWhat Falun Gong means exactly when it preaches the timeless values of \u201ctruthfulness, compassion, and forbearance\u201d is beyond this article\u2019s scope. I leave it to the reader to judge how the above doctrines correspond to them.
\nThe report summary goes on to state: \u201cEvidence was submitted by ETAC for the first hearing, amplified by further evidence following the first and second evidence hearings.\u201d So despite framing their investigation as separate and independent of ETAC, the authors admit that they began with evidence fed to them by ETAC.
\nTheir reliance on ETAC is further highlighted later when several doctors are named who expressed skepticism about the Falun Gong organ harvesting narrative. These doctors are listed as \u201cdoctors speaking favourably of the PRC.\u201d
\nThe report then states:<\/strong>
\n\u201cAll of these doctors were invited by the Tribunal to participate in the Tribunal\u2019s proceedings. Their participation would have greatly assisted the Tribunal in its work; they all declined the invitations. Further, although each did contribute in person to a recent report by an Australian Government Committee their contributions have been subject to review by ETAC that reveals that they produced no hard evidence to support what they said and could be criticised for their methodology or their experience in transplant surgery.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, the China Tribunal didn\u2019t see any need to consider their testimony, because ETAC had already looked at it and declared it to be bogus.
\nOne of these doctors, Francis Delmonico, was contacted by the science journal Nature for its article on the China Tribunal\u2019s report \u2014 a rare case of a dissenting opinion being registered, however grudgingly.
\nDelmonico was asked specifically for his opinion on a research paper cited by the China Tribunal, which was published on the scientific archive, SocArXiv, by Matthew Robinson \u2013 a research fellow of the famously impartial Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation:
\n\u201cBut Francis Delmonico, a surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, says that although there is evidence that organs were taken from prisoners in the past \u2014 which he condemns \u2014 he is not convinced by the SocArXiv evidence because it is not direct. Delmonico is chair of the World Health Organization\u2019s Task Force on Donation and Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues and has been supporting organ-donation reform in China for more than a decade, although he made his comments to Nature in a personal capacity.\u201d
\nLobbyists for an anti-Iran cult go to bat for an anti-China one
\nThe China Tribunal\u2019s report is not the first alleging that the Chinese government is murdering Falun Gong prisoners en masse to harvest their organs. It relies heavily on an earlier document, known as the Kilgour-Matas report, which was initially released in 2006 and updated several times since then, with the title \u201cBloody Harvest.\u201d
\nThis previous report was commissioned by the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong in China. Unlike ETAC, CIPFG plainly states that it is a Falun Gong organization.
\nMore interesting connections arise when probing the backgrounds of the co-authors of the report, David Kilgour and David Matas.
\nDavid Matas is the senior legal counsel for B\u2019nai Brith Canada, a right-wing pro-Israel lobby that works hard to tar any critique of the occupation of Palestine as anti-semitism. He was also a member of the Canadian government\u2019s now-defunct Rights and Democracy board, in which capacity he lobbied on behalf of the Iranian opposition cult Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), as part of an effort to remove the MEK from the Canadian and US lists of terrorist organizations \u2014 an effort that was eventually successful.<\/strong>
\nThe Rights and Democracy board\u2019s chairman, Aurel Braun, was also a strident MEK advocate, who promoted the cult as a replacement for Iran\u2019s present government. Rights and Democracy eventually dissolved due in part to Braun\u2019s and Matas\u2019 relentless attacks on another board member for supposed contacts with Hezbollah and Hamas.<\/p>\n

The MEK emerged in 1960s Iran, promoting a strange mixture of Marxism and Shia Islam, and supported the 1979 Revolution until the Mullahs turned against it. MeK leadership then fled to Europe, from which they launched a series of terrorist bombings. They simultaneously maintained a presence in Iraq, where they enjoyed Saddam Hussein\u2019s patronage, massacred Kurds on his behalf, and even fought with his troops against their own country.<\/p>\n

The MEK promote themselves, to anyone who will listen, as the Iranian opposition and the best democratic alternative to the present government \u2014 and politicians and think tanks seeking regime change in Iran readily indulge them, despite wide reports of their cult-like behavior.
\nIn August 2019 Canada\u2019s National Observer published a report about Canadian politicians who love the MEK. Prominently featured in the article is the other co-author of \u201cBloody Harvest,\u201d David Kilgour, a former MP who is co-chair for \u201cCanadian Friends of a Democratic Iran\u201d and has been doing PR for the MEK for years.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So both authors of \u201cBloody Harvest\u201d advocate on behalf of, not one, but two cults that also happen to be darlings of regime-change enthusiasts in and around Western governments. (The latest edition of \u201cBloody Harvest\u201d includes a third co-author, Ethan Gutmann, who, notably, has been affiliated with the Gulf monarchy-funded Brookings Institution and the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies.)
\nHow does one unwind from all this hard shill work? David Kilgour makes a point of seeing Shen Yun\u2019s dance performances year after year and effusing about it again and again and again to the Epoch Times.
\nA few reporters notice Falun Gong\u2019s seamy side
\nIn March, Jia Tolentino published her impressions of Shen Yun in the New Yorker. Like the aforementioned NBC piece on the Epoch Times, Tolentino \u2018s article shows that more and more people are noticing that there is something very odd about Falun Gong.
\nFrom the \u201cbaroque and surreal\u201d Shen Yun dance-propaganda show, which bills itself as a last bastion of genuine Chinese culture, she moves to consider some other very troubling aspects of the Falun Gong organization, such as their penchant for resisting journalistic inquiry and harassing critics.
\nTolentino also mentions a 2017 Washington Post investigation by Simon Denyer, which, while hardly a pro-PRC puff piece, casts serious doubt on the claims of the Kilgour-Matas report on organ harvesting.
\nDenyer may be the only journalist in the mainstream US press who conducted an independent investigation on organ harvesting in China and seriously questions Falun Gong\u2019s organ harvesting narrative. Naturally, Ethan Gutmann felt compelled to run a rebuttal to Denyer\u2019s report on ETAC\u2019s website \u2014 and one can only imagine the kinds of emails and phone calls Denyer has been getting since he dared to publish that piece.
\nFor most of the Western corporate media, the \u201cBloody Harvest\u201d horror story is too ghoulishly titillating to subject to serious scrutiny, especially when the \u201cYellow Peril\u201d-style villain is an increasingly powerful state threatening the old hegemonies.
\nAdditional reporting by The Grayzone\u2019s Ben Norton<\/strong><\/em>
\nRyan McCarthy, thegrayzone.com
\nRyan McCarthy is a US-based writer and activist<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reports on China \u2018organ harvesting\u2019 derive from front groups of far-right cult Falun Gong A wave of corporate media reports on Chinese organ harvesting rely without acknowledgement on front groups…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7019,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[52,642,20],"module":[81],"ctype":[17],"blog":[109],"class_list":["post-10221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mujahedin-khalq-proxy-force","tag-mujahedin-khalq-destructive-cult","tag-paid-advocacy-for-mko","tag-third-view-mek","module-article","ctype-story","blog-western-bloggers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10221"},{"taxonomy":"module","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/module?post=10221"},{"taxonomy":"ctype","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctype?post=10221"},{"taxonomy":"blog","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog?post=10221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}