Meet the former MP who's campaigned for decades to escalate tensions with China
Former Canadian Member of Parliament David Kilgour.
Written by: Daniel Xie
Disclaimer: This article links to articles from far-right websites such as the Epoch Times
On April 20, 2021, far-right Falun Gong owned website Epoch Times reported that the Senate Committee on human rights had unanimously passed Bill S-204, a bill that would outlaw Canadians from entering the black market for organ harvesting overseas. The Epoch Times report notes that David Kilgour, former member of Parliament for Edmonton-Beaumont from 2004-2006 and senior fellow to the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights was present during Senate hearings on the bill. Kilgour was previously the MP for Edmonton Southeast from 1988-2004 and MP for Edmonton-Strathcona before that from 1979-1988. He was at the committee hearing to target China as a leading seller of organs in the black market that the Canadian government should take action against.
During the Senate hearings, Kilgour singled out China as the only country in the world involved in forcibly taking every single organ from persecuted groups such as the Falun Gong. Said processes involve, according to Kilgour, taking every single body part that could be used for recipients; a process that proves to be fatal to the donor. Kilgour falsely claims that this affects the black market because organ harvesting brokers operating in the black market would, seeing the number of organs in China being prepared for recipients, arrange to take patients to China for an organ transplant for a considerable sum of money.
Many of these claims made by Kilgour regarding organ harvesting, as discussed further below, have been consistently called into question by other independent analysis, whom have questioned the logistics needed by China to actually carry out mass organ harvesting the scale as described by Kilgour. Other areas of concern called out by independent analysis note the fact that all of these charges of organ harvesting were expressed solely by the Falun Gong cult.
Kilgour expresses disappointment in his testimony that Canada is not taking a confrontational approach towards China with regards to the Chinese government supposedly enabling organ harvesting in China, noting that 10 other countries have laws dealing with organ trafficking. However, he expresses hope that Bill S-204 will be able to put a dent in global organ trafficking organizations and bring China to account for it’s supposed complicity in the global organ trade.
This was not the first time this year that David Kilgour sought to have Canada intensify pressure on the Chinese government to confirm to the demands of the weakening American-led global order.
This February, Kilgour wrote an editorial on Ottawa Citizen calling on new foreign minister Marc Garneau to take a hard line against the rising influence of China on the global stage. According to Kilgour, Canadians favor a foreign policy of “Canadian values” such as “respect for human dignity”, and are consequently concerned about the rising power of China on the world stage.
Kilgour cites polls painting 9/10 Canadians having a distrust towards China’s government as proof of concern of Canadians for the perceived threat of China’s continued ascent onto the world stage. He believes that Canada should play a role in a global coalition to confront China on trade, international security and human rights by various means such as:
Securing the freedom of detained Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor through fermenting a deal under which Huawei Technologies Ltd. would plead guilty to some charges, and proceedings would be withdrawn against Meng and another prosecuted individual in exchange for the safe return of the two Michaels. In reality, Wanzhou’s arrest violated her rights in the Canadian Charter of rights and freedoms, and was primarily issued in compliance with an US-issued arrest warrant targeting Huawei’s defiance of illegal US sanctions against Iran.
Ending the off-loading of manufacturing jobs to China
Responding harshly to supposed human rights violations being carried out in Xinjiang against the Uyghur population via “Magnitsky” legislation. Resulting in the imposition of targeted financial and visa sanctions on officials Beijing.
Responding harshly to alleged cases of organ harvesting being carried out against the Tibetans, Uyghurs, and the Falun Gong cult
In pushing for Canada to “confront China on the world stage”, David Kilgour proposes a dangerous set of ideas further worsening Canadian tensions with China as the Second Cold War goes into full swing.
David Kilgour’s anti-China stances as Member of Parliament
As a Member of Parliament for 27 years, David Kilgour has spent his last years in Parliament, and much of his time afterwards, pushing Canada to take a confrontational stance on China. Initially, Kilgour would use his power and authority as a member of Parliament to pressure China into addressing supposed human rights violations carried out in Tibet and against Falun Gong members. This being done at the start of the 21st century in a delusional attempt to fully incorporate China into the US-led unipolar world order and to pressure it to adapt western sociopolitical values.
Before his association with Falun Gong, Kilgour used the issue of Tibetan independence as a wedge to push for a confrontational foreign policy on China. When the Dalai Lama visited Parliament hill between April 23 to May 4 2004, David Kilgour promoted the visit on his website and used that occasion to call for a hard stance on supposed human rights violations in Tibet on the basis that so-called “human rights” is the cornerstone of Canadian foreign policy.
On December 2, 2004, Kilgour chaired the Subcommittee on Human Rights and International Development of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade along with Ed Broadbent and Stockwell Day, which called on Canada to use it’s then-friendly relations with China to pressure china to “respect human rights” in Tibet.
A year later, in 2005, Kilgour used Standing Order 31 to express disappointment in the Canadian government for not having taken a harder line on China, and in 2008, Kilgour would call for a boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympic games over the issue of Tibet.
Kilgour’s association with Falun Gong would begin via his propagation of the claims that Falun Gong has been targets of a massive organ harvesting campaign by the Chinese government, and that said campaign is continuing to this day despite all Chinese assurances that any organ harvesting from prisoners has stopped. These allegations came out in 2007 with the Kilgour-Matas report, which was itself commissioned by the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong in China.
The report alleges that many of those targeted by China’s organ harvesting program were not criminals, but rather Falun Gong practitioners persecuted for their beliefs. While the initial report states that it could not prove nor disprove the allegations of organ harvesting of Falun Gong members, the report claims that of the organ harvesting carried out by the Chinese government, 41,500 cases of organ harvesting cannot be explained as simply being harvested from executed criminals.
It tries to tries to cast doubt on counter-narratives to their position through drawing on various supposedly credible eyewitness testimonies of organ harvesting to justify their assertion of China seemingly carrying out mass organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners: said assertion being used to call for a confrontational human-rights based approach to Canada’s diplomatic dealings with China.
The revised version of the Kilgour-Matas report, published in 2009 in a book called Bloody Harvest and further revised in 2016, would be written with even less ambiguity and more seeming certainty on supposed instances of Organ Harvesting. In the 2016 version , Kilgour and Matas allege that Falun Gong practitioners and many other “prisoners of conscience” (supposedly totalling around 80% of the organs being harvested) are being harvested en masse in 146 hospitals and many unapproved clinics. These organs are then sold to the highest bidder in hospitals with five-star services, swimming pools, sky gardens and award-winning architecture as part of an institutionalized system used to make money from the organ trade; a trade which Matas claims to be a very lucrative enterprise.
The Reality of Organ Harvesting in China casts doubt on the Kilgour-Matas report
The allegations that organ harvesting continue to this day have been consistently called into question. When the Kilgour-Matas report came out in 2007, it was criticized by a Congressional Research Service report by Thomas Lum. The CRS report stated that the Kilgour-Matas report relied primarily on logical inference over independent testimony, with much of the key evidence being seen of questionable validity.
Glen McGregor of the Ottawa Citizen questioned the logistical plausibility of a massive organ harvesting operation after making his own visit to the sites where organ harvesting may have occurred, and concludes that there is a chance that the allegations of organ harvesting may well be conjecture based on unsubstantiated accounts.
Even individuals believing that Falun Gong was facing disproportionate persecution in China, such as University of Montreal history professor David Ownby, believed allegations of organ harvesting and concentration camp conditions by the Falun Gong to have been overblown by the cult.
A 2007 Australian Refugee Review Tribunal analysis of the claims found that while it is possible from other observations that the Chinese government may be conducting organ harvesting of political prisoners, no conclusive evidence has been made that could totally prove Kilgour and Matas’ report.
Recent policies taken by the Chinese government with regards to the organ harvesting of prisoners also casts doubt on the continued existence of an cohesive system of organ harvesting directed towards Falun Gong alleged in the 2007 and 2016 reports by Kilgour and Matas. The current organ donor system, specifically introduced by China in 2010, is a voluntary system rather than a system built off of coercion, and the Chinese government banned the use of prisoners for organ harvesting programs in 2015. These changes in the system of organ harvesting were ignored by Kilgour and Matas, with the former to this day maintaining his beliefs that China is carrying out organ harvesting of political prisoners and minorities living in China.
China’s efforts at reforming their organ harvesting program were praised in 2017 by major international health organizations such as World Health Organization (WHO), the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences (PAS), The Transplantation Society (TTS) and the Declaration of Istanbul Custodian Group (DICG). These organizations stated in a letter to former Chinese Vice Health Minister Huang Jiefu that China's reform of its organ donation and transplantation program is "ethically proper”.
According to the testimony of Campbell Fraser, an international organ trafficking researcher from Australia, much of the allegations regarding organ harvesting were in fact trumped-up allegations from Falun Gong and its international supporters in seeking to demonize China While Fraser initially believed in the rumors surrounding organ harvesting in China, his own research soon led him to critique these claims being pushed by Kilgour and the Falun Gong cult, as unsubstantiated attacks being deployed for the purpose of smearing the Chinese government.
The logistics needed to maintain the mass organ harvesting operation Kilgour and Matas alleges to exist has also been into question, as are the political motivations behind the attacks on China on the claims of organ harvesting.
According to Jeremy Chapman, an Australian transplant surgeon and a former president of the Transplantation Society, the assertions 2016 edition of Bloody Harvest were "pure imagination piled upon political intent." Chapman, as reported by the Globe and Mail, expressed concerns on the veracity of Kilgour and Matas’ claims on the basis that that China does not have the manpower and logistics to maintain the operations it was accused of carrying out, noting that China does not have sufficient transplant surgeons to carry out the scale of operations described in Bloody Harvest and that Pharma companies in China have been providing nowhere near enough medication for this number. In addition, Chapman notes that the report was heavily politicized, stating that the sources of the documents Kilgour and Matas used as proof all came from Falun Gong, indicating strong bias towards their narrative.
Previous research by the Grayzone into the persistent rumors of organ harvesting has also further exposed the political motivations for the spread of claims of organ harvesting. Namely the assertion also shared by Chapman that Falun Gong has sought to use the rumors of organ harvesting to turn global opinion against China by way of various front groups.
Chapman’s expose into the “China Tribunal” and the “International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China”(ETAC), two of the sources for these unsubstantiated claims, reveal both groups to be Falun Gong front groups. This could be seen by the fact that many figures such as executive director Susie Hughes and New Zealand national manager Margo MacVicar are tied to the far-right Epoch Times news network. The network has been previously examined on this site to have been an outlet spreading far-right and pro-Trump conspiracy theories in their coverage of American and Chinese politics.
For their part, the China Tribunal, which has been a major outlet pushing forward the claims that cohesive organ harvesting in China never stopped at all, relies heavily on information from ETAC and only ETAC in order to push forward the idea that organ harvesting was going on in China, while recording in their observations of any doctors dissenting from their sensationalist claims to be “pro PRC”.
Kilgour’s Further ties with Falun Gong
Kilgour’s ties to Falun Gong go further than simply pushing forward trumped-up claims of organ harvesting from Falun Gong affiliated organizations. Kilgour has attended many events hosted by the Falun Gong linked Shen Yun Performing arts, which he dubbed to be “better than ever” in 2018. As noted by insider, the purpose of Shen Yun performances was to demonstrate the evils of China's communist party and its beliefs. The performance of Shen Yun is fervently anti-atheist, anti-evolution, anti-Mao Zedong, and anti-Marxist. Shen Yun also highlights specific examples of China's communist party persecuting Falun Gong, such as the alleged organ harvesting techniques that Kilgour spreads claims about.
Apart from being a consistent guest in Falun-Gong hosted Shen Yun performances, Kilgour has promoted many of Falun Gong’s platforms in the past. On his website, Kilgour has shared various pieces of news from the far-right sensationalist China Uncensored and participated in China Uncensored’s podcast to discuss alleged human rights violations from China.
As previously examined, the “China Uncensored” Youtube Channel engages in unsubstantiated and trumped-up Sinophobic allegations that China controls the world through its influence in various transnational organizations, and is engaged in aggressive posturing against the US and its allies in the Asia-Pacific region.
In addition, Kilgour wrote multiple articles for the far-right conspiratorial news outlet Epoch Times, which is owned by the Falun Gong cult, calling on harsher action to be taken by the international community against China on the Chinese government’s reaction to Hong Kong and supposed Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong members. Not only does Kilgour use the Epoch Times to spread anti-China narratives, he has also used the Epoch times to write articles pushing regime change narratives and pro-war narratives targeting other governments opposed by the US and Canada. For instance, he wrote an article on the Epoch times endorsing Guaido’s coup against Maduro in Venezuela, as well as an article calling for sanctions against Russia over Ukraine.
Even more recently, a browse through David Kilgour’s website shows that Kilgour has been promoting-using the “CCP virus” heading-conspiracy laden articles and blog posts. He has been inferring that rather than mishandling of the Pandemic by western leaders, the reason that the Pandemic is out of control is because of the WHO supposedly being under the thumb of the Chinese government. He has also shared articles such as a New York times article throwing doubt on the origins of the Coronavirus through claims that the Chinese government is deliberately hiding data from the WHO.
Kilgour’s Rhetoric and actions as part of a dangerous push for Cold War with China
David Kilgour, whether holding political office or not, has proven himself to be a major figure cheerleading for more direct confrontation with China in an age of worsening relations with China as the Second Cold War takes shape. This Sinophobic behavior is indicated by both: his present and past actions of using trumped-up charges of human rights abuses regarding China’s policies in Tibet, and debunked claims of China’s organ harvesting of political prisoners and minority groups.
These charges have been fully scrutinized by closer examination of the errors and omissions in the Kilgour-Matas report, the policy reforms taken by China in addressing organ harvesting, and the fact that all of the accusations were relayed through the far right Falun Gong cult rather than; a cult that Kilgour works closely with to this day.
Canada-China relations continue to deteriorate in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and growing Sinophobia, and calls for the overthrow of the Chinese government are entertained outright by anti-Chinese press in Canada and the US. Canadians concerned about the drive to a Cold War and potentially open war with China must oppose the dangerous push of anti-China hawks such as David Kilgour, for the Trudeau government to further intensify their current anti-China foreign policy direction.
Daniel Xie is a firm anti-imperialist, who writes about the need for an independent Canadian foreign policy. He serves as the Associate Editor of The Canada Files.
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