Category Archives: Article Type

What is the Evidence of ‘Forced Organ Harvesting’ in China?

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 7, July 2019

Skyscrapers are pictured side-by-side.

Tianjin First Center Hospital, left, and the Oriental Organ Transplant Center, right, seen in Tianjin, 2018. Data from official records about the hospital, and admissions by medical staff, suggest it performs thousands of transplants annually. Source: Wikimedia commons.

Matthew Robertson
Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation

On June 17 in London a “people’s tribunal” chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, prosecutor of Slobodan Milosevic at The Hague, issued a judgement stating that “forced organ harvesting” has taken place in China for over 20 years, and continues to this day. It concluded that practitioners of Falun Gong have been “probably the main” source of organ supply, adding that the violent persecution and medical testing of Uyghurs make it likely that they too are victims, or at least are highly vulnerable targets for organ harvesting now and in the future. The findings have been widely reported.

The tribunal has thus reaffirmed a long-standing allegation: that the Chinese security services and military, working with transplant surgeons in hospitals, use prisoners of conscience as a living organ bank — blood and tissue-typing them, entering their biometric data into databases, and killing them on demand (or removing their organs before they die, as some Chinese medical papers suggest, and as testified to by the Uyghur former surgeon Enver Tohti) for paying recipients. Transplant surgeries typically cost hundreds of thousands of yuan (or hundreds of thousands of dollars for tourists), and recipients then take immunosuppressants for the rest of their lives. Depending on the scale of the practice, this would make it a multi-billion dollar industry. Continue reading →

How to bring Russia into INF compliance — without triggering a war

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 3, March 2019  

Anna J. Davidson
Scholar and Researcher

A photograph depicts an army vehicle from close-up. An urban landscape appears in the background.

Russian S-400 air defence missile systems roll at Red Square during the Victory Day military parade in Moscow. Source: Dmitriy Fomin via Flickr

ABSTRACT   For all intents and purposes, the prevailing wisdom in both East and West suggests that the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is lost. On 4 March, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree officially terminating his country’s participation in the INF “until the United States of America rectifies its violations of the said Treaty or until it expires.” This action mirrors that by the United States in early February that accused Russia of violating the Treaty and instigated the six-month withdrawal process. Both of these steps follow five years of continuous effort by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to compel Russia’s compliance with the stipulations of the INF to no avail. As the August deadline approaches, the United States and Russia face three options: reach a mutual agreement on one another’s compliance to preserve the INF, draft a new arms control agreement, or allow the INF to expire and risk a renewed arms race as both countries continue developing their defense capabilities. Despite the wide acceptance of the latter, a potential incentive for Russia to return to INF compliance, and thus preserve the Treaty, exists in the Kremlin’s relationship with Ankara. As a NATO member state, Turkey finds itself in a unique position with the United States as an ally and Russia as a strategic partner. Turkey’s desire to purchase both the American Patriot and the Russian S-400 missile defense systems presents an opportunity to increase the value of Turkey’s partnership with Russia and decrease the significance of Russia’s need to develop missiles noncompliant with the INF. Turkey insists that it will proceed with the purchase of Russia’s S-400 systems regardless of Washington’s willingness (or lack thereof) to offer the American Patriot systems, as the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act currently obstructs the purchase of Russian S-400s by Turkey. Yet, Turkey and Russia are proceeding with the exchange while simultaneously deepening cooperation in the Syria crisis, particularly Idlib. If the United States and NATO leverage Turkey’s request for the Patriot systems and take advantage of Russia’s urge to sell its S-400s to Turkey, the opportunity for a renegotiation and recommitment to the INF Treaty remains within reach.  Continue reading →

China’s Technological and Strategic Innovations in the South China Sea

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 3, March 2019 

Publisher of the Journal of Political Risk

Anders Corr, PhD

This article is a slight revision of a talk given on March 13, 2019, in New York City.

Introduction

A navy ship is depicted in the open ocean.

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (Navy) (PLA(N) Luang II class guided-missile destroyer Xian (153) arrives at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam for Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC), 2016. Source: Picryl.

Thanks very much for the invitation to speak today, and to all the members of the audience. I want to thank my good friend US Navy Captain James Fanell, who was Director of Intelligence for the US Pacific Fleet. He is not here, but he has been a mentor on the issues I’m covering, and assisted with comments to this presentation.

The full presentation is a combination of material from a book I edited that was published last year by the U.S. Naval Institute Press with the title – Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the SCS, and my next book, on the strategy of brinkmanship.  This presentation, however, will focus on how China is innovating in the South China Sea on technological and strategic levels.

In a short year since the book was published, the South China Sea conflict has heated up. On March 4 and March 7, 2019, USPACOM, which is the Asian equivalent of CENTCOM and for which I used to work, sent nuclear-capable B-52 bombers over the SCS, including one flight revealed today. USPACOM also recently revealed that China’s military activity in the SCS rose over the past year. China occupied a sand bar near the Philippines island of Pagasa, in the Philippine exclusive economic zone, or EEZ, and Chinese boats purposefully rammed and sunk a Vietnamese fishing boat in the Paracel Islands of the north west SCS, islands that both China and Vietnam claim.

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Forty Dollars and a Trip to Paradise

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The First Green on Blue Attack of Operation Enduring Freedom, Afghanistan

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 8, August 2018 

Heath B. Hansen

U.S. Army

A man in photographed from the side hold a large rifle. He appears to be in a guard tower and is looking through the rifle's scope.

PFC Michael Sall in the only guard tower that existed on FOB Zurmat at the time of the green-on-blue attack. Pictured is an M-240B machine gun. PFC Sall was in the tower on November 9, 2005 during the attack but did not use this weapon, oriented away from the base, to shoot the attacker. He instead made a split second decision to use his smaller M-4 rifle to shoot from the other side of the tower, down and into the base at the ANA soldier. Paktia Province, Afghanistan, 2005. Photographer: Heath Hansen.

We entered the base between the HESCO barriers covered in concertina razor-wire, unprepared for a betrayal from one of our supposed allies. On November 9, 2005, as the convoy snaked its way into the safety of the base walls, I could see Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers watching us from the perimeter. They didn’t wave; they didn’t smile; they just stared. Since the United States invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, there had never been an instance of an Afghan soldier attacking Americans, known as a “green-on-blue attack.” But somehow I instinctively had little trust for them. We parked the Humvees and unloaded our equipment. I took off my helmet and body-armor, and set my weapon beside me.

The mission had been long and I was hungry. Before heading out for the operation, I had secured my favorite meal, and now it was time to relax and enjoy. “Hey, give me your jalapeño cheese. I’ll give you my peanut butter.” I told the guy next to me. “F*** you, I love jalapeño cheese.” My buddy was going to drive a hard bargain before relinquishing his cheese. “Bro, I always put cheese on my chicken-tetrazzini MRE. I’ll give you my M&M’s too.” He looked at my M&M’s and packet of peanut-butter for a moment. “F*** yeah, peanut-butter, M&M’s. Alright, cool. Here.” He threw the packet of cheese over. I was tired, uncomfortable, sore, and thousands of miles from home, but I was content. I got the “MENU 21 – CHICKEN TETRAZZINI” Meal Ready to Eat (MRE) and jalapeño cheese to top it off. It’s the little things in life that make you happy. The day was cold, but sunny, and in that moment, on that forward operating base (FOB) in Zurmat, Afghanistan, I had everything I wanted.

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