Xinjiang refers to the northwest of China where the Uyghur people, Muslims with Turkic roots, have lived for thousands of years. The procedure refers to Chinese transplant surgeons surgically extracting Uyghur organs while their hearts are still beating, average age, 28 years old.
From 2015 on, the WHO and the Transplantation Society asserted this was fiction. China of a different time. Then came the medical testing of any Uyghur above the age of 12. Ten million blood and DNA tests. And the camps filled the desert
Ethan Gutmann told the story of Falun Gong organ harvesting with intelligence and heart in his acclaimed book The Slaughter. His searing reporting drew death threats-and helped bring down Taipei's mayor, Dr. Ko Wen-Je for complicity in Beijing's organ harvesting operations.
Gutmann's way forward was clear. Refugees were crossing the Kazakh border, fleeing China in a vivid display of human endurance. But Beijing had changed the rules. Throughout Central Asia, human rights investigators were now considered spies. The Chinese press explicitly identified Gutmann as a new "Cold Warrior."
Gutmann mustered a 4x4 with no GPS tracker, his foster daughter, skis, a paper map, and a compass. They drove from Germany to the Kazakh border where they were searched and biometrically photographed. Then, from the standpoint of electronic surveillance, the duo vanished into thin air.
Gutmann re-emerged in London with startling new evidence from the Xinjiang concentration camps. Beijing was murdering tens of thousands of young people for their organs every year. Foreign organ tourists were purchasing them to order. A young woman's organs were valued at $900,000.
This is the account of how Gutmann did it. He brings the story of Beijing's organ harvesting juggernaut, and its Western medical apologists, to conclusion - and points to an unconventional way forward. The Xinjiang Procedure sets a new standard in narrative non-fiction.
