A new film expos­es the hor­rors of organ harvesting

Human suf­fer­ing may be all around us, but it can be hard to ful­ly com­pre­hend the every­day hor­rors expe­ri­enced by those liv­ing in war-torn coun­tries like Syr­ia and oth­ers. It might sound delud­ed to say that there are ben­e­fi­cia­ries of these crises, but it is the most pow­er­ful and secre­tive gov­ern­ments that are abet­ted by our geopo­lit­i­cal myopia. Direc­tor Leon Lee is on a mis­sion to expose one such super­pow­er, uncov­er­ing the medieval prac­tice of organ har­vest­ing in his native Chi­na in his new film The Bleed­ing Edge.

Organ tourism is on the rise there, and sta­tis­tics revealed in the film indi­cate tens of thou­sands of organ trans­plants take place in Chi­na every year. The government’s stance remains that the organs come from death row pris­on­ers. How­ev­er, reports pro­duced over the last decade show that the num­bers sim­ply don’t add up. Decades ago the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment began per­se­cut­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of Falun Gong prac­ti­tion­ers, whose fun­da­men­tal tenets of peace, truth and com­pas­sion aren’t seen as accept­able by the people’s repub­lic. What has become appar­ent is that these pris­on­ers of con­science are being rou­tine­ly killed for their organs, mean­ing afflu­ent mem­bers of soci­ety are able to get a match for a trans­plant with­in days or weeks, rather than months or years which is often the case in the West.

This almost sys­tem­at­ic tor­ture and lit­er­al pil­lag­ing of Falun Gong in Chi­na is obvi­ous­ly a close­ly guard­ed secret, but one Lee is deter­mined to reveal in all its bar­bar­i­ty to the world. ​“Ini­tial­ly I felt dis­ap­point­ment that atroc­i­ties like this are still occur­ring,” he tells LWLies. ​“We look back at his­to­ry and think ​“nev­er again” and we want to believe that human­i­ty has learned a les­son. But quite frankly it hasn’t.” This uncom­fort­able truth is per­haps best summed up by Uruguyuan writer Eduar­do Galeano when he said ​‘his­to­ry nev­er says good­bye, it just says see you lat­er’. While most of us take an arm­chair view of these abus­es, Lee seems ener­gised by the sub­ject, and is hope­ful of change. ​“Get­ting involved in this sub­ject has con­nect­ed me with such incred­i­ble peo­ple,” he says, ​“giv­ing me renewed hope. The vic­tims of the per­se­cu­tion have suf­fered so much and yet will not aban­don their beliefs; it shows us the great strength of humanity.”

When asked about any reper­cus­sions Lee has encoun­tered per­son­al­ly, the lev­el of sac­ri­fice need­ed to make a film like The Bleed­ing Edge becomes painful­ly clear. ​“I will say that I won’t be trav­el­ling to Chi­na any time soon,” he reveals. ​“Mak­ing polit­i­cal­ly-charged films like this comes with many chal­lenges and we have expe­ri­enced inter­fer­ence with all our pro­duc­tions. Peo­ple have backed out of pro­duc­tion, loca­tions have been can­celled and actors have pulled out because they fear reper­cus­sions, espe­cial­ly if still have fam­i­ly in Chi­na. The film’s star Anas­ta­sia Lin, a well-known human rights activist, expe­ri­enced this first­hand dur­ing the 2015 Miss World pageant when her fam­i­ly was threat­ened by Chi­nese author­i­ties, and have since sev­ered ties with her as a con­se­quence. In this type of sit­u­a­tion, every­one is tak­ing a risk when they stand up for what they believe in, but it’s a risk we feel is worth taking.”

Such uncom­pro­mis­ing bru­tal­i­ty is bound to pro­voke anger and upset, but in order to effect change, a cer­tain amount of prag­ma­tism is required, some­thing Lee is all too aware of. ​“Using film as a way to reach out to influ­en­tial fig­ures such as for­eign diplo­mats can have a tremen­dous impact,” he says. ​“We screened both Human Har­vest and The Bleed­ing Edge at the House of Com­mons and it has had screen­ings at US Con­gress as well as Swedish Par­lia­ment and most recent­ly in Argenti­na. We have many allies in our fight and con­tin­ue to gain more with every screen­ing.” As Lee goes on to explain, screen­ings in polit­i­cal are­nas has got the ball rolling in terms of aware­ness and action. ​“One MP stood up as the film end­ed to express his wish to intro­duce a res­o­lu­tion con­demn­ing forced organ har­vest­ing in China.”

On the impor­tance of polit­i­cal pres­sure ver­sus pub­lic aware­ness, Lee says: ​“They go hand in hand. Pub­lic pres­sure leads to polit­i­cal action, and polit­i­cal action leads to greater change.” The prob­lem Lee and his team now face is a lack of pub­lic sup­port. This is in part due to the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment hid­ing the prac­tice as well as prob­lems with secur­ing fund­ing and suf­fi­cient dis­tri­b­u­tion for a film with such sen­si­tive sub­ject mat­ter. How­ev­er, Lee has found sup­port from his adopt­ed home­land. ​“In Cana­da we have a firm belief in free­dom of speech,” he says. ​“One of our major film fund­ing bod­ies the Cana­da Media Fund respects that right. [The sub­ject mat­ter] does affect our abil­i­ty to get investors how­ev­er, and it def­i­nite­ly impacts our film’s dis­tri­b­u­tion. Unfor­tu­nate­ly cen­sor­ship issues mean that most peo­ple in Chi­na will nev­er see the film. But there is still so much to be done and I feel a great respon­si­bil­i­ty to help in any way that I can.”