International Advisory Committee (IAC)
Prof Wendy Rogers, FRACGP, PhD (Chair)
Professor of Clinical Ethics – Australia
Wendy Rogers is Professor of Clinical Ethics and Deputy Director of the Macquarie University Research Centre for Agency, Values and Ethics, Macquarie University, Australia. She has a long-standing interest in the ethics of organ donation and transplantation. She has twice been a member of the Australian Health Ethics Committee, taking a leading role in developing the 2007 National Health and Medical Research Council’s guidelines for organ and tissue donation, and leading the current revision of the national research ethics guidelines.
Her research interests include transplantation ethics, ethics of surgical research and practice, artificial intelligence in healthcare and conflicts of interest in medicine. Wendy’s work is widely published in international medical and bioethics journals. In 2019, Wendy received the NHMRC Ethics award and was identified as Australia’s leading researcher in the field of bioethics. Her research exposing publication of unethical Chinese transplant research has been internationally recognised, leading to her inclusion in Nature’s list of 10 people who mattered in science in 2019 and Medscape’s 12 best physicians of the year.
Clive Ansley
Lawyer – Canada
Mr. Ansley speaks and reads Chinese. He holds both undergraduate and graduate degrees in Chinese Studies from the University of British Columbia. He also holds an L.L.B degree from the University of Windsor and an L.L.M. degree from the University of London. As a former professor of Chinese History, Civilization, and Law, Mr. Ansley taught at the University of Windsor and the University of British Columbia. Mr Ansley also taught Maritime Law at Fudan University, Shanghai and International Economic Law at Jiaotong University, Shanghai.
Since coming to Canada in 2003, Mr Ansley has represented clients in civil litigation against police officers on several occasions, and also against Walmart, a major forestry company, the BC College of Pharmacists, the City of Vancouver, the City of Courtenay, and a Canadian publisher.
Mr Ansley has provided expert opinions on Chinese law to many courts and tribunals in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S.
Practicing since 1983, Mr. Ansley has handled many criminal litigation cases in Canada, and over 300 litigation cases in China.
Dr Angela Ballantyne PhD
Bioethicist – New Zealand
Dr Ballantyne is President of the International Association of Bioethics and a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Primary Health Care & General Practice, Universtiy of Otago, New Zealand. In 2016 she received a UOW Award for Best Emerging Researcher. Her research interests include exploitation, research ethics, vulnerability, ethics of pregnancy and reproductive technologies, and secondary use research with clinical data.
Dr Ballantyne has worked in a wide range of international settings, including Australia, England, Europe and the United States. She has worked in schools of medicine, primary health care and philosophy. Her interest in global health policy lead to a position as Technical Officer for Genetics and Ethics for the Human Genetics unit at WHO in Geneva in 2005, where she worked on projects concerning the ethical, legal and social issues associated with medical genetics.
Prof Arthur Caplan, PhD
Professor of Bioethics – USA
Professor Caplan is currently the Drs. William F and Virginia Connolly Mitty Professor and founding head of the Division of Bioethics at New York University Langone Medical Center in New York City.
He is the co-founder and Dean of Research of the NYU Sports and Society Program and the head of the ethics program in the Global Institute for Public Health at NYU and also founded the Center for Bioethics and the Department of Medical Ethics and the Center for Biomedical Ethics, the University of Pittsburgh, and Columbia University.
Prof. Caplan is the author or editor of thirty-five books and over 700 papers in peer reviewed journals.
He is the recipient of many awards and honors including the McGovern Medal of the American Medical Writers Association and the Franklin Award from the City of Philadelphia. He was a person of the Year-2001 from USA Today. He was described as one of the ten most influential people in science by Discover magazine in 2008.
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He has also been honored as one of the fifty most influential people in American health care by Modern Health Care magazine, one of the ten most influential people in America in biotechnology by the National Journal, one of the ten most influential people in the ethics of biotechnology by the editors of Nature Biotechnology and one of the 100 most influential people in biotechnology by Scientific American magazine. He received the Patricia Price Browne Prize in Biomedical Ethics for 2011. In 2014 he was selected to receive the Public Service Award from the National Science Foundation/National Science Board which honors individuals and groups that have made substantial contributions to increasing public understanding of science and engineering in the United States. In May, 2016 the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) honored him with their ‘Rare Impact Award’.
He holds seven honorary degrees from colleges and medical schools. He is a fellow of the Hastings Center, the NY Academy of Medicine, the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the American College of Legal Medicine and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
He is a regular commentator on bioethics and health care issues for WebMD/Medscape, for WGBH radio in Boston and WMNF public radio in Tampa. He appears frequently as a guest and commentator on various other national and international media outlets.
Prof Irwin Cotler, OC
Emeritus Professor of Law & International Human Rights Lawyer
Founder, Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights – Canada
Irwin Cotler is Emeritus Professor of Law at McGill University, former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, long time Member of Parliament, and recent Founder and International Chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.
A constitutional and comparative law scholar, Professor Cotler intervened in landmark Charter of Rights cases in the areas of free speech, freedom of religion, minority rights, peace law and war crimes justice.
As Minister of Justice and Attorney-General, he initiated the first-ever law on human trafficking; crafted the first ever marriage equality legislation; headed the Canadian delegation to the Stockholm Conference on the Prevention and Combating of Genocide; and made the pursuit of international justice a priority for Canada, including initiating the first ever prosecutions for incitement to genocide and the commission of mass atrocity crimes in Rwanda.
An international human rights lawyer, he has served as counsel to prisoners of conscience including Andrei Sakharov and Natan Sharansky (Soviet Union), Nelson Mandela (South Africa), Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim (Egypt) and, more recently, imprisoned Saudi Arabian blogger Raif Badawi, and the imprisoned Baha’i leadership in Iran. He was also a member of the International Commission of Inquiry On the Fate and Whereabouts of Raoul Wallenberg. A feature article on him in Canada’s national magazine – Maclean’s – referred to him as “counsel for the oppressed”, while the Oslo Freedom Forum characterized him as “Freedom’s Counsel.”
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Professor Cotler is an Officer of the Order of Canada, Canada’s highest civilian award. Among his recent honours, he was the first Canadian recipient of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation’s Centennial Medal; the first recipient of the Roméo Dallaire Award for Human Rights Leadership; was elected 2014 Canadian Parliamentarian of the Year by his colleagues; and received the Law Society of Upper Canada’s Inaugural Human Rights Award. In its citation, the Law Society recognized “The Honourable Irwin Cotler’s tireless efforts to ensure peace and justice for all.
Prof Heather Draper PhD
Chair of Bioethics, Health Sciences, Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick – UK
Heather has an international reputation as a bioethicist with over 100 research papers on a wide range of issues in bioethics in peer reviewed journals and edited collections. She is a Professor of Bioethics at the University of Warwick in the UK.
Heather has been invited to serve on several national policy bodies (UK Donation Committee, Human Genetics Commission (co-opted), Unrelated Live Transplantation Regulatory Authority) as well as being active in clinical and research ethics locally. She has also been an ethics consultant for the Royal Centre of Defence Medicine, and lead an ESRC funded project exploring the ethical challenges face by Defence Medical Service personnel who deployed to Sierra Leone during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. She continues to write in areas of interest to the medical military as well as transplant ethics.
During 2020 – 2021 she was a member of the ‘core’ coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic ethics advisory group for a local NHS Trust drawing on her experiences during the 2009 swine ‘flu pandemic and work on pandemic ethics in 2008-9. She was also part of a research team (funded by the AHRC) looking at the ethical issues experienced by those working through the pandemic, or re-starting, non-COVID related services in paediatrics and maternity care, while the pandemic still raged on in the UK.
Louisa Greve
International Affairs/Asia Specialist – USA
Louisa has worked on human rights for over three decades. While serving at the National Endowment for Democracy as Director for East Asia, Senior Program Officer, and Program Officer, she developed NED’s small-grants program for East Asia as it grew from less than $1.5 million in 1993 to $8 million in support for nearly 90 civil society groups in 2009. She developed new programs for North Korea, Mongolia, Cambodia, Malaysia, Vietnam, and China, including support for Tibetan and Uyghur human rights. She was NED’s Vice President for Asia, Middle East & North Africa, and Global Programs from 2009 to 2017, where she oversaw over $60 million annually in grants for human rights and democracy activists in 40-some countries.
Ms. Greve served on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International USA from 1993 to 1998, and was co-chair of the China & Tibet Coordination Group from 1990 to 1999. She has served on the Virginia State Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and the Board of Trustees of Telluride Association. She was a member of a Council on Foreign Relations Term Member working group on emerging global threats and the Taiwan Policy Working Group (AEI/Armitage International, 2008), She has testified before Congressional committees and commissions on human rights in China and democracy promotion in Asia, and is the author of “China at the Tipping Point? The Troubled Periphery” (Journal of Democracy).
Ethan Gutmann
Investigative Journalist
Co-Founder, International Coalition To End Transplant Abuse In China
Ethan Gutmann, a London-based China analyst and human-rights investigator, is the author of Losing the New China (Encounter Books, 2004) and The Slaughter (Prometheus, 2014). He has written for publications such as the Wall Street Journal Asia, The Weekly Standard, National Review, and Investor’s Business Daily, while briefing the United States Congress, the Central Intelligence Agency, the European Parliament, and the United Nations. He has also testified in London, Ottawa, Canberra, Dublin, Edinburgh, Prague, and Jerusalem. A former foreign-policy analyst at the Brookings Institution, Gutmann has appeared on PBS, CNN, BBC, and CNBC and was recently nominated for the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.
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Mr Gutmann’s research into Chinese Internet surveillance, the Laogai System, and the intersection of Western business with Chinese security objectives has received sustained attention for almost 15 years.
His book The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ Harvesting, and China’s Secret Solution To Its Dissident Problem was released in 2014.
He is a co-author of the 2016 investigative report An Update to Bloody Harvest and The Slaughter. The report meticulously examines the transplant programs of hundreds of hospitals in China, drawing on media reports, official propaganda, medical journals, hospital websites and a vast amount of deleted websites found in archives.
David Kilgour (1941 – 2022)
Former Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific
Co-Founder, International Coalition To End Transplant Abuse In China
David Kilgour was a former Canadian cabinet minister, Member of Parliament, prosecutor, lawyer, author, columnist and human rights advocate.
First elected to Canada’s House of Commons in 1979, he was re-elected seven times for the south-east region of Edmonton, Alberta. While in Parliament, he served as Deputy Speaker and Chair of the Committees of the Whole House, and in Jean Chretien’s cabinet as Secretary of State for Latin America & Africa (1997-2002) and Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific (2002-2003). He was co-chair of the NGO Friends of a Democratic Iran, a director of the Ottawa Mission (for homeless men) Foundation, a director of the Helsinki-based NGO First Step Forum, and a Session member of Westminster Presbyterian Church.
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Before entering Parliament, he was a Crown and defence counsel. His prosecution work began as an assistant city prosecutor in Vancouver, later working on tax litigation for the Department of Justice in Ottawa. In 1970-72, he was Crown Attorney for the Dauphin Judicial District in his native Manitoba. From 1972-79, he was a senior agent of the Alberta Attorney General in Edmonton.
His awards include Honorary Doctor of Divinity (Knox College, University of Toronto); Special Award, Ukrainian Canadian Congress – Alberta Provincial Council; Masaryk Award, Czechoslovak Association of Canada; Human Rights Award, B’Nai Brith Canada; Katipuman Award, Council of Edmonton Filipino Associations; Outstanding Service Award, Edmonton Sikh Association; Community Religious Liberty Award, International Religious Liberty Association, Liberty Magazine and the Seventh-Day Adventist Church.
In 2006, Mr Kilgour co-authored Bloody Harvest: Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China alongside David Matas. Both Mr Kilgour and Mr Matas were nominated for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize for this work.
He was a co-author of the 2016 investigative report An Update to Bloody Harvest and The Slaughter. The report meticulously examines the transplant programs of hundreds of hospitals in China, drawing on media reports, official propaganda, medical journals, hospital websites and a vast amount of deleted websites found in archives.
Dr David Matas
Human Rights Lawyer
Co-Founder, International Coalition To End Transplant Abuse In China
David Matas is an international human rights lawyer, author and researcher based in Winnipeg and currently acts as Senior Honorary Counsel for B’nai Brith Canada. He has served the government of Canada in numerous positions including as member of the Canadian delegation to the United Nations Conference on an International Criminal Court; the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research; and the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe Conferences on Antisemitism and Intolerance. He has also been involved in several different organizations, including the Canadian Helsinki Watch Group, Beyond Borders, Amnesty International, and the Canadian Council for Refugees.
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Mr Matas has received numerous awards and honors, including the Manitoba Bar Association Distinguished Service Award in 2008, the Order of Canada in 2009, the Canadian Bar Association National Citizenship and Immigration Section Achievement Award in 2009, and the International Society for Human Rights Swiss Section Human Rights Prize in 2010. In 2018, David received an Honorary Doctor of Laws Degree from the University of Alberta, and an Honorary Doctor of Laws Degree from Concordia University in Montreal in 1996.
In 2006, Mr Matas co-authored Bloody Harvest: Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China alongside Hon. David Kilgour. Both Mr Matas and Mr Kilgour were nominated for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize for this work.
David Matas is a co-author of the 2016 investigative report An Update to Bloody Harvest and The Slaughter. The report meticulously examines the transplant programs of hundreds of hospitals in China, drawing on media reports, official propaganda, medical journals, hospital websites and a vast amount of deleted websites found in archives.
His other works include Why Did You Do That? The Autobiography of a Human Rights Advocate; Justice Delayed: Nazi War Criminals in Canada with Susan Charendoff; Closing the Doors: The Failure of Refugee Protection with Ilana Simon; No More: The Battle Against Human Rights Violations; Bloody Words: Hate and Free Speech; and Aftershock: Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism.
Professor David McGiffin, MB BS, FRACS
Heart and Lung Transplant Surgeon – Melbourne, Australia
Prof. McGiffin is a cardiothoracic surgeon who trained in Australia and spent many years working at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham Alabama, USA. He returned to Australia in 2013 and took up the position as Head of Cardiothoracic Surgery at The Alfred Hospital and Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Monash University, Melbourne.
His clinical career includes general cardiac surgery but his focus has been end stage heart and lung disease, particularly heart and lung transplantation in adults and children and mechanical circulatory support. Prof. McGiffin’s career spans the early days of heart transplantation, when the results were poor, through the world wide remarkable pathway of progressive improvement in the outcomes of heart and lung transplantation.
Prof. McGiffin has also had an academic career with a major focus on heart and lung transplantation and was a co-author of one of the major textbooks of cardiac transplantation which does include a section on the use of hearts of executed prisoners for transplantation in China. He has published many papers and book chapters in journals of cardiothoracic surgery and transplantation.
Edward McMillan-Scott
Founder, European Instrument for Democracy & Human Rights – UK
Edward McMillan-Scott was MEP for Yorkshire & Hunter 1984-2014 and VIce-President of the European Parliament from 2004-2014. As Vice-President his portfolio included Democracy & Human Rights, and Transatlantic Relations. Internationally recognised and respected as a staunch defender of human rights, from dissidents in the ex-Soviet bloc to China and the Arab World, Edward lends his voice to the voiceless.
A frequent visitor to the Middle East, he has long advocated democratic reforms across the Arab world. He founded the €180 million European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR), which promotes democracy and human rights worldwide, operating without host country consent.
In 2013, Edward launched the Defending Freedoms Project in Brussels and Washington together with blind Chinese activist Chen Guancheng. The transatlantic project between the EU and US highlights human rights abuses around the world and calls on MEPs and US congressmen and women to advocate on behalf of individual prisoners of conscience worldwide.
Edward advocates civil liberties, fair elections, fair taxation, education reform and radical reform of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy. He stopped eating meat in 2008 to draw attention to climate change; ‘green’ and heritage issues are central to his agenda. He supports EU economic governance after the Euro crisis to sustain the EU’s Single Market – which has created 3.5 million jobs in the UK. He also campaigns for better child rights across the EU.
Dr Sev Ozdowski AM FAICD
Honorary Professor, Centre of Peace and Conflict Studies and Director of Equity and Diversity – Australia
Dr Ozdowski is the Director of Equity and Diversity at the University of Western Sydney, Honorary Professor in the Centre of Peace and Conflict Studies at Sydney University and President of the Australian Council for Human Rights Education.
As the Human Rights Commissioner (2000-05) he conducted the ground-breaking “National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention “A last resort?” and the National Inquiry into Mental Health Services “Not for Service”.
In addition, Dr Ozdowski published many articles and represented Australia in negotiations on the United Nations Convention for the Rights of People with Disabilities, at the UN Human Rights Commission and on a range of other assignments worldwide.
Between 1980-96 Dr Ozdowski worked within the Federal government portfolios of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Attorney General and Foreign Affairs where he played a major role in the advancement of Australia’s key multicultural and human rights policies and institutions. Between 1996-2000, he headed the Office of Multicultural and International Affairs in South Australia.
Dr Ozdowski has an LLM and MA in Sociology from Poznan University, Poland and a PhD from the University of New England, Armidale. In 1984, Dr Ozdowski was awarded the Harkness Fellowship, which took him to Harvard and Georgetown Universities and the University of California to work on race relations, international human rights and public administration.
He was also awarded an honorary doctorate from Melbourne’s RMIT University, and for his service to the Polish community and furthering Australian Polish relations, Dr Ozdowski was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in 1995. He was also recognised for his outstanding contributions to the human rights movement in Poland and presented with the Solidarity Medal in 2006 and most recently with the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit by the Polish President.
For many years Dr Ozdowski has been involved with a range of voluntary organisations and since 2006 is President of the National Committee of Human Rights Education.
Prof Robin Palmer
Professor of Law/Barrister – New Zealand
Robin Palmer is a Professor of Law at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and prior to that, the Director of the Institute for Professional Legal Training (IPLT), which is affiliated to the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa. He is also a practicing barrister (advocate).
He has been involved in numerous high-profile cases, including as defense counsel in the ‘Trust Feed’ trial, in which the existence of apartheid hit squads was conclusively proved. From 2006 to 2012, he was the lead specialist prosecutor of the ‘Life’ case, where international brokers, local hospital groups and surgeons were prosecuted for illegal organ trafficking.
He has also run various training courses and consultancies for the UNDP, UNODC, OSI, OSISA, the Commonwealth, USAID, GIZ, DFID, EU, the IBA and others in diverse fields from 1995 to the present, including justice reform, legal aid, constitutional development and good governance projects in various African, Asian and East-European countries. He was a member of the IBA Human Rights Institute’s Task Team into money laundering, tax evasion, poverty and human rights from 2012 to 2013. He was the lead consultant in the UNODC expert group meeting on private/public security cooperation in Vienna from 2009 to 2011.
He initiated, and run a postgraduate diploma course in forensic investigation at the University of Kwazulu-Natal in South Africa since 2000, and is currently specialising in transnational and international criminal law, organ trafficking, corruption issues and legal sector reform.
Benedict Rogers
Author, journalist – UK
Benedict Rogers is the East Asia Team Leader at the international human rights organisation Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), based in London, where he specialises in Burma, Indonesia, China and North Korea. He is also the Co-founder and Deputy Chair of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission in the UK, founder of the NGO Hong Kong Watch and a former parliamentary candidate.
Ben travels widely in the region, including making over 50 visits to Burma and its borderlands and several visits to Indonesia. In 2010, he travelled to North Korea with Lord Alton of Liverpool and Baroness Cox of Queensbury, members of the House of Lords, and in 2011 he co-founded the International Coalition to Stop Crimes against Humanity in North Korea (ICNK). Ben has also lived in and travelled to East Timor and China, and previously worked on Pakistan and Sri Lanka. From 1997-2002 he lived in Hong Kong, working as a journalist, and in 2003-2004 he was based in Washington, DC, establishing CSW’s presence there.
Ben regularly briefs senior Government ministers and officials, UK Members of Parliament, the European Union, United Nations officials, US Congressional offices and the State Department on human rights and freedom of religion or belief in Asia, and has testified in hearings at the European Parliament, the House of Commons, the Japanese Diet and the US Congress. He is a regular speaker at conferences and universities around the world.
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He is the author of six books and a regular contributor to international media, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, The Guardian and The Catholic Herald, and has appeared on BBC, CNN, Sky and al-Jazeera. Ben has an MA in China Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), and a BA in Modern History and Politics from Royal Holloway College, University of London. He is co-founder of the International Coalition to Stop Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea (ICNK) and has testified in the US Congress, the European Parliament, the British Parliament and the Japanese Parliament.
Prof Russell W. Strong AC CMG PJN RFD
BDS, MB BS, MRCS LRCP, FRACDS, FRCS (Eng), FRACS, FACS,
FASGBI (Hon), FRCSE (Hon), FASA (Hon), FACS (Hon)
Emeritus Professor, Pioneer of Hepatopancreatobiliary Surgery and Liver Transplantation
Emeritus Professor Russell W. Strong is a pioneer in the field of Hepatopancreatobiliary Surgery and Liver Transplantation, both in the Asia Pacific region and internationally. He set up the first liver transplant program in Australia in 1985 and pioneered several aspects of this, in particular, with relation to using portions of adult livers from deceased donors to transplant
into children and performed the first successful living donor liver transplant in the world, from a mother to her son in 1989. Under his leadership, the unit at the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane, trained more than 85 international surgeons in liver surgery and liver transplantation, and on his retirement in Brisbane, went to Malaysia for two years to help with their liver surgery program and setting up liver transplants in Malaysia.
He has some 300 publications in the scientific/medical literature, including 18 book chapters and an autobiography. He has been a guest lecturer/visiting professor on more than 100 occasions in 24 countries.
Due to the human rights abuses in mainland China and the use of executed prisoners as organ donors, he refused to train any surgeons from there in liver transplantation, and has been outspoken in condemning these activities in China.
Enver Tohti
Former Surgeon from Xinjiang, China – UK
Enver Tohti worked for over 13 years at the Railway Central Hospital in Xinjiang, China, as a surgical oncologist. He is featured in the award winning documentary Hard To Believe where he tells his story of being asked to remove the organs from a living prisoner who had just received a non-fatal gunshot in the chest. He has subsequently spoken at numerous events around the world including parliamentary hearings and film premieres.
After discovering the connection between the disproportionately high malignant tumour rate and the nuclear test in the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang, he exposed the devastating effect of the nuclear test by making the documentary film Death On the Silk Road. As a result he was compelled to quit the PRC and seek asylum in the UK. Upon settling in London he continued to promote knowledge about the shocking consequences of nuclear testing in the Lupnor (luobopu) area, and fought for the rights of the test victims. Tohti also campaigned for the human rights of the Uyghur people and, for a number of years, headed the Uyghur political activities in the UK. His more rational and realistic stand on the Uyghur issue proved incompatible with the separatist tendencies of other Uyghur Diaspora organisations based in the West, so he detached himself from the World Uyghur Congress and continued his individual crusade thereafter. Tohti created the online platform Silk Road Dialogue, where various interest groups could share their views and debate controversial issues in a civilised manner.