Human rights lawyer David Matas has reportedly been barred from Russia for co-authoring a report on allegations of organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners. The report was later classified as “extremist literature” by Russian authorities. From The Canadian Press:
The report said practitioners were arrested and asked to renounce the practice in writing. It said those who refused, even after torture, disappeared by the hundreds of thousands into Chinese gulags, a network of re-education through labour camps, which essentially became a source for organ donor banks.
The document by Mr. Matas and former Edmonton MP David Kilgour, also active in human rights issues, was apparently labelled extremist literature in Russia ….
A court in Krasnodar, Russia, banned the report in August 2008. The ban was based on a court-chosen expert opinion that the report, “can create for the readers a negative image of China, its social and political system, representatives of authorities, medical workers, military, etc.”
Kilgour and Matas’ 2006 report is available online. See also the cases of an imprisoned Indonesian broadcaster with Falun Gong connections, and 13 US academics barred from China for co-authoring a 2004 book on Xinjiang, via CDT.
