Ethan Gutmann receives nomination for the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize

February 28, 2017 - For investigative journalism exposing Chinese human rights violations, including illegal organ harvesting, Ethan Gutmann has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 2004, Gutmann's book Losing the New China exposed American corporate collusion in the construction of China's controlled Internet, and contributed to Congress cross-examination of Yahoo, Microsoft, Google and Cisco Systems. Following David Kilgour and David Matas' seminal 2006 report Bloody Harvest, Gutmann began an independent investigation into Chinese state-sponsored organ harvesting of Falun Gong, interviewing over 100 refugees, doctors, and law enforcement personnel over a six-year period. Published in 2014, The Slaughter profiled several doctors who had either participated in live organ harvesting in China or had contact with mainland hospitals exploiting Falun Gong organs. Documented a pattern of "retail organs only" Falun Gong physical examinations, Gutmann established that similar tests were administered to Tibetans, Uyghurs, and House Christians.

While the Chinese medical establishment confessed in 2006 that China's transplants depended on death-row prisoner organs, the leadership consistently denied exploiting religious and political prisoners and claimed that China was exclusively relying on voluntary organ donors by 2015. Yet in the Summer of 2016, Kilgour, Matas and Gutmann released a report demonstrating that Chinese transplant volume was six to ten times higher than Chinese official claims. Gutmann was invited to testify in Washington, London and Brussels, while Congressional and European Parliament resolutions explicitly condemned China's organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience. With the New York Times, CNN, and the Times of London reporting on the issue for the first time, international medical societies that had been supportive of the Chinese official claims of reform, such as The Transplantation Society, publicly admitted that the Chinese medical system had "appalled" the world. In short, by the end of 2016, Beijing had lost the argument.

Ethan Gutmann wishes to thank the National Endowment for Democracy, the Earhart Foundation, and the Peder Wallenberg family for funding, and Leeshai Lemish and Jaya Gibson for research assistance. He also wishes to acknowledge critical support from Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, End Organ Pillaging, Benedict Rogers from Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Matthew Robertson from the Epoch Times, and Miss Canada, actress Anastasia Lin. Finally, he would like to acknowledge the courage of witnesses throughout the world who risked it all to get the truth out.