(cache) Laogai Research Foundation (laogai.org)

Earlier today, New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced that he had reached a settlement with Premier Exhibitions regarding its popular exhibit, "BODIES...The Exhibition", which is currently being hosted at New York City's South Street Seaport. The Attorney General's investigation has confirmed that the bodies on display in this exhibit were licensed through Dalian Hoffen Bio Technique Company Limited in Dalian ("DHBTC"), China, which acquired the "unclaimed" bodies from the Chinese Bureau of Police. Premier has consistently denied that any of the bodies had belonged to Chinese prisoners who had been executed, but they have not yet given any alternative explanation as to how they came to be unclaimed. It remains the belief of the Laogai Research Foundation that some of the bodies licensed to Premier did indeed belong to executed Chinese prisoners.

The practice of donating organs or human remains is extremely uncommon in China. That is why since the 1980's, China has been harvesting the organs of executed prisoners for use in medical transplantations. In 2006, China's Vice Minister of Health, Huang Jiefu, publicly acknowledged that most of the organs used in China's increasingly large number of medical transplantations (second now only to the U.S.) come from executed prisoners. It is not difficult to imagine that the exploitation of prisoners in China, who are forced to provide the State with free labor as well as their organs, could now have expanded to include the sale of bodies to the suppliers of these exhibits. An ABC News "20/20" investigation which aired in February provided evidence of this illicit body trade when they tracked down a broker who claimed to have bought bodies from the police in China and sold them to DHBTC. He even provided pictures of some of the blood stained corpses, hands still bound, which he saw during his first such transaction.

The Laogai Research Foundation welcomes the settlement reached by Attorney General Cuomo and his staff with Premier Exhibitions. As the Foundation understands it, this settlement will require Premier, in any of its New York exhibits which display the bodies it has already acquired,to disclose that it cannot confirm that the bodies did not belong to executed Chinese prisoners. This will end its utterly negligent reliance on the assurances of its Chinese suppliers to tell its customers otherwise. Moreover, it will not be able to display any bodies obtained after the settlement in New York without providing documentation of the source of each body, its cause of death, and consent for its use in the display. It is the hope of the Foundation that this requirement will compel Premier to refrain from acquiring bodies from China in the future. The Foundation encourages law enforcement authorities in other states to take similar actions as well.

Still, regardless of the source of the "unclaimed" bodies in Premier's exhibits, it is clear that they were not donated and no consent was given. To exploit the bodies of deceased persons in such a manner for a profit, if not legally prohibited, is highly unethical. As such, the Laogai Research Foundation calls upon Premier Exhibitions to stop displaying any bodies acquired from China, including those which are already in its possession.