Chinese 'Death Vans' for harvesting organs

Condemned prisoners in China will now be executed in specially constructed vans that are also used to harvest the convict's organs for profit. [Link]

Officials say the vehicles are a 'civilised alternative' to the traditional single shot to the head (used in 60 per cent of Chinese executions), ending the life of the condemned quickly, clinically and safely - proving that China 'promotes human rights now,' says Kang Zhongwen, designer of the 'death van'.

Once carried out in public parks, these executions -sometimes done in groups - have seen countless cases of prisoners failing to die instantly and writhing in agony on the ground before being finished off.

After the shooting, relatives are often presented with the bullet hacked from the condemned's body - and forced to pay the price of the ammunition.

They are, however, anxious to be seen to be moving away from violence against their own people, stressing that all judicial decisions have been taken out of the hands of vengeful local officials and must be ruled on from Beijing.

Before injections and bullets, the most chilling sentence was death by Ling Chi - death by a thousand cuts - which was abolished only in 1905.

The condemned man was strapped to a table and then, in what was also known as 'slow slicing', his eyes were gouged out.

Using a sharp knife, the executioner sliced at the condemned's body - chopping off the ears, fingers, nose and toes, before starting to cut off whole limbs.

The new mobile execution vans may, indeed, be more humane than this, but their main advantage in official eyes is financial.

According to undercover investigations by human rights' groups, the police, judiciary and doctors are all involved in making millions from China's huge trade in human body parts.

Inside each 'death van' there is a dedicated team of doctors to 'harvest' the organs of the deceased.

The organs are dispatched in ice boxes to hospitals in the sprawling cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, which have developed another specialist trade: selling the harvested organs.

At clinics all over China, these organs are transplanted into the ailing bodies of the wealthy - and thousands more who come as 'organ tourists' from neighbouring countries such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan.

A kidney transplant in China costs £5,000, but can rise to £30,000 if the patient is willing to pay more to obtain an organ quickly.

With more than 10,000 kidney transplants carried out each year, fewer than 300 come from voluntary donations.

Laws introduced in 2006 make it an offence to remove the organs of people against their will, and banned those under 18 from selling their organs.

'Organs can be extracted in a speedier and more effective way using these vans than if the prisoner is shot,' says Amnesty International.

A police official, who operates a 'multi-functional and nationwide, first-class, fixed execution ground' where prisoners are shot, confirmed to the Mail that it is always a race against time to save the organs of the executed - and that mobile death vans are better equipped for the job.

So the removal of organs must be completed at the execution ground within 15 minutes, then put in an ice box or preservation solution.'

For the Beijing regime, it is not a question of whether they should execute offenders, but how to do it most efficiently - and make the most money from it.