The New York Times:
DALIAN, China — Tucked away in the back of this coastal city’s export-oriented manufacturing zone is a place that can only be described as a modern mummification factory.
With little government oversight, an abundance of cheap medical school labor and easy access to cadavers and organs — which appear to come mostly from China and Europe — at least 10 other Chinese body factories have opened in the last few years. These companies are regularly filling exhibition orders, shipping preserved cadavers to Japan, South Korea and the United States.
Here in China, determining who is in the body business and where the bodies come from is not easy. Museums that hold body exhibitions in China say they have suddenly “forgotten” who supplied their bodies, police officials have regularly changed their stories about what they have done with bodies, and even universities have confirmed and then denied the existence of body preservation operations on their campuses. Human rights activists have attacked the exhibitions, calling them freak shows that may be using the bodies of mentally ill people and executed prisoners. In June, the police in the city of Dandong, about 190 miles northeast of here, discovered about 10 corpses in a farmer’s yard. The bodies were being used by a firm financed by foreigners, the government said, that was illegally involved in the body preservation business.
The Epoch Times
Recently, German Doctor Gunther von Hagens, held a human anatomy exhibition that was condemned by many human rights associations. It was revealed by the German media that some of the corpses in Dr. Hagens’ exhibition were those of executed Chinese criminals. Dr. Hagens admitted that some of the bodies he exhibited had been shot in the head. Bright Mirror Weekly of Germany reported that Dr. Hagens has been trading in human corpses and organs for more than ten years. He has three sites for his business, the biggest in Dalian, located close to three Chinese labor camps. This site was formerly managed by Dr. Sui Hongjin, who hired 170 Chinese employees.
Additional:
Harry Wu: "Considering that China executes between 2,000 and 3,000 prisoners a year and their long history of freely using death row prisoners for medical purposes, you have to wonder," Mr. Wu said, adding that he would pursue legal steps in this country to ensure that the show was not using illegally obtained bodies. "In China, a piece of paper means nothing."