China’s real life Squid Game: Doctor issues urgent warning for Chinese surgeons to be banned

A world-renowned organ transplant doctor has issued an urgent warning for hospitals and universities around the globe to ban Chinese surgeons, fearing they are taking part in a real-life ‘Squid Game’.

Professor Russell Strong AC told Daily Mail Australia that many Chinese medical trainees take what they’ve learnt in the West and use it to harvest human organs back home in a terrifying ‘kill-to-order’ market that parallels a side plot in the smash hit South Korean Netflix horror series.  

The totalitarian state removes hearts, kidneys, livers and corneas from 100,000 dissidents and prisoners in secret every year, human rights groups claim – but the international community remains powerless to stop the slaughter.

The now retired 84-year-old first became aware of Beijing’s horrifying human rights abuses back in the late 1980s after setting up pioneering transplant program at Brisbane’s Princess Alexandra Hospital.  

Professor Strong had successfully performed Australia’s first-ever liver transplant in 1985 and was inundated with requests from ‘mainland Chinese trainees’. 

But with rumours swirling even back then that the Communist Party were using death row inmates and political dissidents as an organ bank, he decided to take action. 

China’s ‘kill-to-order’ market parallels a side plot in the smash hit South Korean Netflix horror series Squid Game where masked men carve out the organs of dead contestants

The thriller pits players (protagonist Seong Gi-Hun centre is pictured centre alongside two of his closest allies) against each other in contests fought to the death for a chance to win cash 

‘I refused to train them unless I had a signed document from their institution that they would not go back and use executed prisoners as organ donors,’ Prof Strong said.

‘I never received one response, so I refused to take them on.’

Although he went on to have a stellar career and was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia, a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George and awarded a knighthood in Malaysia, at the time his brave stance was met with hostility from some other medical professionals.

‘This wasn’t anything to do with race. When I was in Brisbane I trained many people from Malaysia, Japan, Europe and even the United States,’ he said. 

‘I also trained a lot of Chinese Australians as well as Chinese surgeons from Singapore and Hong Kong. 

‘I just thought using prisoners as organs donors was totally immoral.’

China first started slaughtering its own citizens for their organs as far back as the 1970s with the issue gaining international condemnation during the 1990s after Human Rights Watch blew the lid on its state-sponsored program targeting prisoners.

Now, according to the United Nations, China’s Communist Party primarily targets repressed minority groups including Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims and Christians. 

The terrifying industry is worth about $1billion every year and human rights groups estimate that between 60,000 to 100,000 people are killed annually. 

Despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary, Beijing continues to deny the existence of a forced organ trafficking system and have called the claims ‘fabricated’ and ‘defamatory’.

‘Hospitals and universities should stop receiving and training any surgeons from China, not just for transplants, any surgeons because the Chinese doctors know what is happening and they in a way are covering up all of this,’ Prof Strong said. 

‘I think the mainstream media has really failed to report the atrocities that are going on and have failed to connect the people of the free world with the victims of forced organ harvesting in China.’ 

China has claimed since 2015 that prisoners are no longer being used as organ banks. 

‘Our government already has regulations related to recovering organs from death row inmates,’ an official said in 2015. ‘Consent is not presumed consent – written consent from the prisoner himself or herself as well as his or her family [is needed].’ 

Dr Strong claims many Chinese medical trainees take what they’ve learnt in the West and use it to harvest human organs back home (stock image of doctor transporting an organ)

China removes hearts, kidneys, livers and corneas from 100,000 dissidents and prisoners in secret every year. Organ harvesting is a side plot in Netflix hit Squid Game (above)

Wendy Rogers, a professor of clinical ethics at Macquarie University in Sydney who helped write the guidelines for Australia’s ethical organ donations system in 2007, said universities have a major role to play in making sure they are not indirectly assisting the gruel and inhumane practice by participating in collaborative research projects with Chinese institutes who may use the data for nefarious purposes.

But at the moment Prof Rogers says it’s ‘nobody’s job to check’. 

‘Researchers in universities have a lot of independence to develop partnerships and collaborations and if those partnerships come with some money all the better from the university’s point of view,’ she said. 

‘So there hasn’t been a lot of scrutiny.’

Professor Strong warns that some institutions are putting profits above human rights.  

‘They pay high fees to study at our universities so everyone is scared to say something,’ he said.

‘It’s all to do with money. It’s money over human rights and the human rights abuses in China are outlandish. 

‘They’re perpetrating genocide on the Uyghur people and I think it’s time we woke up in this country and stop kowtowing to China.’          

Who are the Chinese Muslims?

Muslims are not a new presence in China. Most of China’s Muslim communities, including the Hui, Uighurs and Kazakhs, have lived in China for more than 1,000 years, according to fact tank Pew Research Center. 

The largest concentrations of Muslims today are in the western provinces of Xinjiang, Ningxia, Qinghai and Gansu. 

A substantial number of Muslims live in the cities of Beijing, Xi’an, Tianjin and Shanghai. 

Chinese Muslim men take part in gathering for the celebration of the Muslim holiday, Eid al-Adha, or the Muslim Feast of the Sacrifice, at the Niu Jie mosque in Beijing, China

They make up about two per cent of the 1.4 billion population in China. However, as the country is so populous, its Muslim population is expected to be the 19th largest in the world in 2030.

The Muslim population in China is projected to increase from 23.3 million in 2010 to nearly 30 million in 2030.

Those who grow up and live in places dominated by the Han Chinese have little knowledge about Islam – or religions in general – thus view it as a threat. 

Beijing’s policymakers are predominately Han. 

At the same time, radical Muslim Uighurs have killed hundreds in recent years, causing China to implement even more extreme measures to quash potential separatist movements.

Uighurs in particular have long been used to heavy-handed curbs on dress, religious practice and travel after a series of deadly riots in 2009 in Urumqi, according to the Financial Times.

Schoolchildren were banned from fasting during Ramadan and attending religious events while parents were banned from giving newborns Muslim names such as ‘Mohammed’ and ‘Jihad’. 

Certain symbols of Islam, such as beards and the veil, were also forbidden. Women with face-covering veils are sometimes not allowed on buses. Unauthorised pilgrimages to Mecca were also restricted.