On June 17, an independent tribunal which has been investigating "forced organ harvesting" from Chinese prisoners, including Falun Gong practitioners and Uighur Muslims, published its final judgment.
The China Tribunal concluded that "forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale, [and] the tribunal has had no evidence that the significant infrastructure associated with China’s transplantation industry has been dismantled and absent a satisfactory explanation as to the source of readily available organs concludes that forced organ harvesting continues till today."
Central to the tribunal's findings were estimates of the actual number of transplants taking place—far higher than official statistics, implausibly short waiting times and first-hand testimony from former detainees. Some of the organ extractions were said to have been conducted on live victims who were killed during their procedures.
The final judgment confirmed an interim statement from late last year that "the tribunal’s members are certain—unanimously, and sure beyond a reasonable doubt—that in China forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience has been practiced for a substantial period of time involving a very substantial number of victims." Separate reports have suggested the market for such organs in China to be worth billions of dollars.
The tribunal's chair Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, who made his name by prosecuting Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic, said that "there is no evidence of the practice [of prisoner organ harvesting] having been stopped and the tribunal is satisfied that it is continuing."