Dear Log,
«Although I performed this procedure nearly a hundred times in the following years, one incident in October 1995 has tortured my conscience to no end. [...] At the site, the execution commander gave the order, "Go!" and the prisoner was shot to the ground. Either because the executioner was nervous, aimed poorly, or intentionally misfired to keep the organs intact, the prisoner had not yet died but instead lay convulsing on the ground.We were ordered to take him to the ambulance anyway, where urologists extracted his kidneys quickly and precisely. When they finished, the prisoner was still breathing and his heart continued to beat. The execution commander asked if they might fire a second shot to finish him off, to which the county court staff replied, "Save that shot. With both kidneys out, there is no way he can survive."
The urologists rushed back to the hospital with the kidneys, the staff and executioner left the scene, and eventually the paramilitary policemen disappeared as well. The burn surgeons remained inside the ambulance to harvest the skin. We could hear people outside the ambulance, and fearing the victim's family might force their way inside, we left our job half-done, and the half-dead corpse was thrown in a plastic bag onto the flatbed of the crematorium truck. As we left in the ambulance, we were pelted by stones from behind.»
--"Habeas Corpus" [...] Organs are routinely harvested from executed prisoners, and revenues from transplants are estimated to earn Chinese hospitals tens of millions of dollars annually. [...]
