Forced Organ Harvesting: China's Donors Are Prisoners. A Kidney in Days | Dr. Torsten Trey

[00:00:00] I sat down with people from five countries who know what communism actually does. Today, we learn more about what happened to them in communist countries. Welcome to The Jenny Beth Show. I'm Jenny Beth Martin, and this is our Surviving Communism Series.

[00:00:14] Welcome to The Jenny Beth Show. Dr. Torsten Trey, thank you so much for joining me today. Well, thank you for having me here.

[00:00:37] So, we have interviewed your wife in this series, and you grew up in West Germany, so you didn't really grow up under communism, but it was in half of your country as you were growing up. And then you can remember the wall coming down. Just talk a little bit about your childhood and your younger years and what you remember about the wall coming down as Germany tried to reunify.

[00:01:06] Torsten Trey, The Jenny Beth Show, Jenny Beth, Yeah, sure. So, when I grew up in West Germany, I always followed the news. My parents watched the news, I followed the news. And there were always stories where people were looking over the wall to East Germany, and they described the wall that was kind of built with all its self-shooting apparatus to

[00:01:35] To kill anyone who would try to leave from East Germany. So, it was a very dangerous enterprise, if you want, to cross the border from East Germany to West Germany.

[00:01:52] And when we learned about the fall of the wall after the special announcement from President Reagan, Mr. Gorbachev teared down the wall, then I was seeing all the historic developments on TV.

[00:02:12] And the people were happily, happily taking down the wall, taking a stone from the wall home. And the people were only coming from East Germany to West Germany. There were no Germans who went from West Germany to East Germany. And that is for a reason.

[00:02:33] So, over time, I learned, for example, that in East Germany, the secret police even asked the children to spy on their parents. So, it could actually happen that a disgruntled kid would go to the police and accuse his dad or whatever that they were talking about West Germany and whatnot.

[00:02:58] So, it was a society where the people were turned against each other with, in that case, the socialist government pulling all the strings, having all the control. And as you can imagine, living in West Germany in a free society, this was horrible to hear. There's something else. I was just thinking about it recently.

[00:03:26] When, you know, after the war, after the Second World War, East Germany and West Germany were at the same starting point. And then at one point, from the communist side, they raised this wall and literally separated East Germany and West Germany.

[00:03:46] So, from that point onwards, it was almost like a comparison between the two systems, the free market system and the communist system. And then in the 1980s, if you compare it after 30, 40 years, you could see that West Germany and East Germany had a completely different society. It was almost like East Germany was 20 years behind West Germany.

[00:04:13] And that tells you something about the societies, the systems, that in a free market or free society, the advances are faster. Everyone is happier. Everyone has a better car, if you want. In East Germany, they had the so-called traffic car and it was like a backward for 20 years. And that was outstanding for all other developments.

[00:04:42] So, East Germany was actually far behind West Germany. And it was almost like an experiment. What does a free market society and a socialist society do to a country from the same starting point? Yeah. And it was very obvious. Yeah.

[00:05:03] When the wall came down, did people in East Germany and West Germany, what was it like as the country was trying to reunify into a singular country? And I can't imagine. You just said that East Germany was behind for 20 years.

[00:05:25] So, you had to have a generation and a half of people who just couldn't even imagine the freedom that you experienced. Exactly. Exactly. So, the moment when the wall came down, everyone was happy. But then life started. And then going forward, especially around the reunification, there were actually problems. And the problems came from the East German side.

[00:05:51] They say they were used to such a slow tempo in the factories that they couldn't keep up with the speed of Western factories. They complained about it. And there were people from East Germany who first came to West Germany. And after a few years, they went back to East Germany because they felt kind of overwhelmed.

[00:06:17] I experienced this myself when I was a student and I had a side job as a student. I was going with a surveyor to an area in East Germany, former East Germany, to survey the city, a particular city, because they wanted to invest in the rebuilding of the city.

[00:06:42] And so, I was experiencing East Germany after the fall of the wall, just two, three years afterwards. And then I could see how the society, how the people were living. And, you know, at five o'clock, you hit the alarm. And then all of a sudden, the empty streets were filled with people.

[00:07:07] But they were walking so slow that it was like really like almost like a Sunday walk in the park. And someone was riding his bike and I was worried that he will fall over because he was just riding so slow. So, what this tells you is that in East Germany, the society was so inefficient that they couldn't treasure the time they had.

[00:07:37] There was nothing to rush for. There was nothing to do. They were just living in a cage. And because there was nothing to do, they could also walk slowly, but also walk slowly. And so, this tells you so much about what the communist system and free market system is doing to the people.

[00:08:02] The communist system is taking away some freedom of the people. And it places them in a work environment where they are forced to work, but where they are not efficient because there's no goal. No goal for them to work faster or to, you know, work for a promotion. So, it slows down.

[00:08:29] And if you see, if you compare that experience with the current situation that we have now, where we face these questions about socialism in this country, then you see how much the people are misled about the system.

[00:08:53] You know, they think they can drive a Rolls Royce just by standing there and waiting until the government gives them a Rolls Royce. That won't happen. You know, that things like this only happen because you work for it. And anything else is just a deception. So, literally, I made this experience of how the government of East Germany was deceiving the people. I literally could witness it myself.

[00:09:21] And then you were in school. You became a doctor. Yes. And were there students from East Germany who were trying to compete and become doctors? How was... Not at that time. Okay. At that time, I already... You were already a doctor before? Okay.

[00:09:45] And then, you know, as you're saying that, and you were a doctor before, you had something to aspire to because you could study and you knew you would be able to become a doctor. And it's not easy to become a doctor. You have to know so much and be able to really critically think. Yeah. I would imagine that when you were watching just the slower society, that must have been strange,

[00:10:15] very strange to you because you were very driven and goal-oriented yourself. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So the... Since in... When I was in medical school, there was basically no upper limit. Right. You know, it's not like there's one book and you memorize this one book. No, there are like hundreds of books.

[00:10:39] And you try to read as much as possible, as many books as possible, just to be on top of the medical profession. Because it's... When you see patients, you don't know what you encounter. So you have to know everything. That's basically the mindset that students in Western Germany were studying in. Yeah.

[00:11:07] And it's almost the exact opposite of what you just said. There's no upper limit versus what your neighbors, not very far away, just had nothing even to be excited about to go home or to go to work. There was no aspirational aspiration for them. Exactly. In socialist communist countries, everything is decided by the government.

[00:11:34] So the government says, the doctor has to read this book, this particular book. And that's it. That's enough. And that's the goal for the student, to just memorize this one book. So in socialist controlled countries, there's nothing that is allowed to exist outside of the box. Control is everything.

[00:12:02] So they also want to control what you learn and study. And so there is no incentive to do a little bit more, to have, you know, your own initiative to do something. Okay. So let's fast forward a little bit because you experienced and you could see some of the differences between a free market society and a communist society growing up.

[00:12:27] Then you become a doctor, you get married, you move to America, you marry someone who survived the CCP and the cultural revolution there. And then you, before we go into what, some of the work that you're doing related to that, just make sure people understand your medical background and talk a little bit about that. Yeah.

[00:12:54] So after medical school, I went into the path of become an internist to work in the field of internal medicine, not the surgical field, but internal. And I was about to just, you know, do my additional education, go to courses and, you know, had my path.

[00:13:19] And then I jumped now in this topic. Yeah, that's right. So when I moved to the U.S., I found out that my license that I have acquired in Germany wouldn't count. So I had to redo my license. And that means I had to study and do the exams that the students do here. In this process, I was actually almost done with that.

[00:13:48] In this process, I learned in 2006 from a newspaper that in China they were taking organs from prisoners of conscience. And what happened is there was a whistleblower. It was the wife of a Chinese doctor. And he said he removed the corneas, the tissue from the eyes from 2,000 Falun Gong practitioners.

[00:14:16] He confessed that to her. And I found the number was astonishing because there was no consent. And in this case, the victims were killed for this. So I thought that's impossible. My first reaction was that's impossible. No doctor would do that. That's against the medical oath. So that was early 2006.

[00:14:43] But because I heard the wife of the surgeon, I thought there must be something. She doesn't make that up. She risks her life to go to public to say that. So I spent some time and following this case over the next half a year. And then there were other people who did some small investigations. The vice president of the European Parliament went to visit China. His field was human rights.

[00:15:11] And he talked to, in this case, Falun Gong practitioners. And they told him, yeah, our friend, he died. And we visited him in the morgue. And he had holes in the body. And organs were missing. And then this was another piece. All of a sudden, there's another source independent. And then there were two Canadian lawyers who did a more professional investigation.

[00:15:40] They called hospitals in China and said, pretend to need an organ. And if they have organs, yeah, we have organs. Yeah, we want fresh organs. Yeah, we have fresh organs. Yeah, we hear that the organs from Falun Gong practitioners are very good because they don't smoke, they don't drink. Yeah, our organs are all Falun Gong practitioners. So the doctors in the Chinese hospitals, they were saying this on a phone call.

[00:16:06] And at that time, I thought, wow, this is really happening. Yeah, and at one point in July 2006, I went to the World Transplant Congress in Boston in the hope to maybe see some doctors from China. And indeed, I found two doctors. And they were basically saying, this is all true.

[00:16:32] They have transplant numbers that are astonishing, given that there was no organ donor program. And then I asked another doctor, why would he go back to China to start a transplant department? Where do the organs come from? And he was just telling me from Falun Gong practitioners. At that time, that was in summer 2006, I decided that we need actually an NGO, a medical organization

[00:17:01] that gathers, compiles the information, and then shares the information with other doctors. So in the summer, 20 years ago, I started this NGO, Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting. And that means I pivoted my career from patient care to this advocacy work.

[00:17:23] I would imagine that as you're talking about this, if somebody hasn't watched one of our podcasts before or a few others that are talking about this, they haven't heard a lot about this. And first, let's explain who the practitioners are that they're getting the organs from and why that is, what their lifestyle is like, because you just alluded to that.

[00:17:52] And then let's talk about how this is happening. Where are they? How can they, how can you just do this to people who are alive? Yeah. Well, this is actually a very interesting talking point. This is very important to understand.

[00:18:15] So Falun Gong is a spiritual movement in the sense of Buddhist Qigong practice, very, very common in Asia and China. And it was introduced in 1992. And in 1999, seven years later, there were 100 million practitioners of Falun Gong. And that is, there's a reason why the people in China, they were doing Tai Chi and Qigong exercises in the parks because it's good for health.

[00:18:45] But then when they tried the Falun Gong exercise, they immediately felt, wow, this is much better than what I'm practicing. So the 100 million within seven years is because the practice was so overwhelmingly good. And it was, the people were already experienced with this type of practice.

[00:19:12] So yeah, in 1999, there were about 100 million Falun Gong practitioners. They do these exercises, but it also comes with a spiritual content. And that is living by three universal principles, truthfulness, compassion, forbearance.

[00:19:31] So the practice included not only the physical exercise, but also to integrate these three tenets or principles into the daily life. That means the practice that you should become a better person. You should be, you know, truthful, honest, simple. You should be compassionate.

[00:19:58] Who would not like to have, you know, compassionate people around you, right? And they should be tolerant and forbearing. So that's a very nice feature. So everyone was happy. So there were actually 100 million Falun Gong practitioners who practiced it. But then their family members, their relatives, they saw not only the people practicing, but also the changes.

[00:20:23] And so they often said, oh, you have changed within a year. So it's not only 100 million, but probably like, let's say, 400 million. If you add the relatives who were impressed by this practice. So at that time, the number exceeded the number of communist members of the CCP. In 1999, there were only like 60, 70 million.

[00:20:53] And then the former secretary of the CCP, Jiang Zemin, he was said he became jealous about this number. There were more Falun Gong practitioners than communist party members. And he said, why do the people like this practice more than me? So he became jealous.

[00:21:21] And overnight, you know, actually, I have to say, there's a sports ministry that they did surveys on tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners. Okay. How their health improved. So, and that survey said that, like all of them or most of them, they said that health actually has improved.

[00:21:44] And the sports ministry actually made this statement that every Falun Gong practitioners was saving the country, I think, like $100 per person per year. So that was, as you can imagine with 100 million people, that is a tremendous number in healthcare savings.

[00:22:06] So anyhow, overnight in July 1999, the position of the government has changed. And now they outlawed this practice.

[00:22:23] I personally think it was not only jealousy, but Falun Gong was presenting principles that were exactly opposite to the principles of the CCP. So on the CCP side, you see that everything is built on propaganda, on lies. Everything has to please the party.

[00:22:47] If there is anything that would criticize the party, they would just turn it around and lie about it. And so in Falun Gong, you have truthfulness. So the practice was showing, like I say, like a mirror, was showing the party like, well, you're not saying the truth, you're lying. And that was exposing the character of the party. Same with, you know, the student massacre in 1989. Right. They were brutal.

[00:23:18] They were killing 3,000 students or more within one night. This is just an example. But over the history of the CCP, they killed like millions, 70 million of people with famine or within the Cultural Revolution and others.

[00:23:42] So the CCP is a brutal, ruthless party. And then on the other side, you hear Falun Gong saying, talking about compassion, being compassionate. So if you have somebody, if you have 100 million people who are compassionate, then the brutality of the party is really like exposed. You know, self-exposed. They do this to themselves. Right.

[00:24:10] And the same with tolerance. And the same with tolerance. The third principle of Hong Kong is tolerance or forbearance. So in China, you only have one party state for decades. It's a one party state. That means it's a one opinion only. If you have no second opinion, there's nothing that you can tolerate. The CCP is unable to tolerate.

[00:24:40] Communism is unable to tolerate. They only see their doctrine and have to follow it. But they are unable to tolerate. I ask you if you have ever seen in negotiations, treaties in the past 20 years, if China has ever given in to something, they always go around or find, you know, their joining of the WTO.

[00:25:08] That was a huge problem because now they had all the benefits, but they were not willing to, you know, adapt to it. So now you see a one party state, a one party society, a communist society is unable to tolerate or forbear. So now you have Falun Gong showing exactly the opposite.

[00:25:36] So there was a natural opposition. Right. But it was not intended. It was just the CCP did this to itself by having this character. So, yeah. Of course, as I mentioned earlier, through the practice, they had a very healthy body.

[00:26:03] No alcohol, no smoking, moderate lifestyle, physical exercise. Everything, what a doctor would say in this society and here in the U.S. to their patients, don't drink alcohol, don't smoke, do moderate lifestyle, do some exercise. That's what the Falun Gong practitioners were doing. And that's how they became a favorable source of organs for transplantation.

[00:26:32] Yeah, so so forth. But there was another aspect to it, and that is something that that is important to understand. It was when the CCP started to use, not to detain Falun Gong practitioners, to take blood from them for systematic categorizations of their blood type and tissue factors.

[00:26:56] And when they built up an archive of all the data that helps you to decide within 10 minutes who could be a matching donor. It was not for the financial incentives. The financial incentives, that went to the doctors.

[00:27:15] And there was like, I call it like a self-propelling momentum where the doctors are paid so that they continue with the organ harvesting and the transplantation. But it was not the most important incentive for the government.

[00:27:33] It was also not the incentive just to, you know, serve the people with transplantation because the CCP does not really care about people. It's in communist China, a human being is just like a speck of dust. They have so many people that they don't care about the individual. Right.

[00:27:59] They actually stop any individual thought. You know, the incentive for the CCP in forced organ harvesting and this transplant abuse is to eliminate the dissidents in a prolonged way,

[00:28:24] in a way where nobody would be suspicious. It was like a final solution for the CCP against the dissidents. Wow. And so that's a very important point to understand. The forced organizing, the transplant industry in China is designed to kill in a large scale dissidents.

[00:28:47] And first, for the longest time, it was actually Falun Gong practitioners for about 15, 20 years. Then later, they also expanded it to the Xinjiang province on the Uyghurs. Right. The population is much smaller. It's almost like a factor of 1 to 10.

[00:29:07] So the Uyghurs would not be large enough to sustain this system. I believe the Uyghurs have a different purpose because once you had Falun Gong practitioners as organ source, there were foreign patients coming from all over the world to China to get a transplant, including from the Middle East.

[00:29:36] But the patients from the Middle East, mostly Muslims, they required halal organs. That means organs from people who didn't eat pork and so on. And the Uyghurs were Muslims. So the Uyghurs from the Xinjiang province was a dedicated group to serve the demands from patients from the Middle East.

[00:30:01] And recently I heard that the number of Christians in China exceeded like 50 million. Now I'm actually getting really worried because you remember the… 100 million? For, yes, for Falun Gong, the crossing, a certain number, there was a trigger to persecute this particular group and to harvest their organs.

[00:30:28] So Christians in China are very close to be the next big group to fall under this final solution. So forced organ harvesting is like a machinery to kill people in a large scale but without anyone noticing. So the patient lies on the operating table, they take the organs out and then they just say, oh, we are sorry, you know, the patient didn't survive.

[00:30:56] No wonder because they took the… removed the heart or the liver and kidneys. And… You can't live without that. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I… I… And they're doing this with… I… It's really hard as an American, I think, maybe even not an American, but just most people, to wrap your head around the fact that they're just taking people in who are perfectly healthy… …and taking their organs and leaving them to die. Yes.

[00:31:26] Yes. Yes. I just had a thought. I have to… Unfortunately, the student massacre from 1989, I think this was the biggest lesson for the CCP.

[00:31:50] And those who are now suffering from this experience are the Falun Gong practitioners, I believe. Because in 1989, the massacre was filmed on cameras. Right. And within days, the international community pulled out business out of China because they said, this is something we cannot tolerate.

[00:32:16] So then the leadership and the CCP knew, oh, we cannot just, you know, kill 100 million people in a large scale, just shooting them with firing squads, etc. Then the people would react in the same way. So they have to date in a clandestine way. So that's why the whole mechanism of forced organ harvesting and hospitals came into play.

[00:32:42] I sometimes say the doctors who are committing the forced organ harvesting are doing the job of the firing squad. And the execution side shifted from the fields to the hospitals. And so it is just very important to understand that the Chinese government has its own goal when they build up this transplant system in China.

[00:33:13] So you've been, you started this organization, you've been working on this for about 20 years. What is it that you are able to do to make a difference? How can you make a difference? It's, we are, we are exploring different ways to, to do it because it's not easy in terms of finding the years, but also overcoming the obstacles.

[00:33:40] So in the beginning, the media was not reporting about it. When we, when I talked to journalists, they asked me like, oh, what evidence do you have? Do you have new evidence? And then, well, the next year we had new evidence, but then they asked, do you have new evidence? So, so the question went on and on that give me more evidence and more evidence. At one point I thought I can give you all the evidence and you still won't talk about it.

[00:34:07] It's, you can imagine the, the victims, they are killed, so they cannot speak up as evidence. Right. And the doctors who are doing this, they are under surveillance. They cannot just, you know, talk into a microphone on a camera and say, oh, I just took organs from, you know, 50 prisoners of conscience. They won't say that.

[00:34:29] So then I, when they asked for evidence, I actually turned around and say, what evidence would you actually accept? And there was nothing, no answer. Because it was just an, the question for, for evidence was almost like an illusion to, to get the, the magic bullet presented on the tablet.

[00:34:55] So, so that was the first difficulty that we encountered. And, but we, we continue to get evidence. Every year we produce new evidence. We analyze the data and just found flaws. And we observed the, the published data where they said, oh, within a day we got so-called 25,000 new registered organ donors, which is impossible.

[00:35:23] Everyone is laughing about that. Say the number one more time. 25,000. It was, the numbers, the transplant, the numbers of the registered donors were publicly presented on the website. We monitored that website for three years. So on December 30 in 2015, they had, I think they had around 40,000 registered organ donors.

[00:35:50] And then on December 31st, one day later, the number was at 65,000. And the, the interesting part is that the three last digits didn't change. So they simply just added 25,000, zero, zero, zero, zero. So these were not real people that were added. This was end of the year, changing, fabricating numbers for the statistics.

[00:36:18] And similar things happened then later, the following year. And at one point, there was a study, an academic study with forensic statistical analysis. And they said the numbers were too good to be true. They were actually manufactured. This was not an original, you know, organ donor pool with real numbers.

[00:36:47] This was a, this was a fake organ donor program and to appease the international community. So, yeah, these, these were some of the obstacles. We, we had different campaigns. At one point, we had a petition worldwide where we collected 3 million signatures addressed to the United Nations.

[00:37:16] But then they didn't respond to it. They didn't take action. And we had, we had articles, published articles in medical journals. We had forums. We spoke on TV, on podcasts. So many different ways. And in, in, during that time, I have to tell you, one of the most disheartening experience

[00:37:45] was when the Western doctors, Western transplant experts actually were starting to block us. And that, I, I didn't expect that. So, for example, here in the U.S., one of the leading transplant professors from, in, from Boston, he was, he, he was blocking us.

[00:38:09] And a few years ago, three, four years ago, we had prepared a forum with a student organization at Harvard. And we had, by RSVP, we had like 40, 50 doctors saying they will attend our forum to see more information. And then this professor has sent actually an email to these doctors, circulated an email and said, don't go to that forum.

[00:38:36] This has all changed and this is outdated and China is not harvesting organs anymore. And you can imagine like how would a doctor in the free world would block us to present our data? You know, if one thing is if doctors look at our data and say, our data is not good. And they say, well, your data is not good. That's fine. You know, everyone is entitled to, you know, have an opinion, et cetera.

[00:39:06] But if they don't even allow us to present our data, then this is censorship. And this happened again when we, for example, applied at the American Transplant Congress, which is organized by two American transplant societies. And you would think that they would welcome us to present our data because this is, we are talking about ethics, medical ethics. But then we learned that they actually rejected our application to present at an exhibition hall.

[00:39:36] And you would say, how is that? You know, they tried possibly to stop us and censor us and basically to hurt us as an organization. However, who was the group of people who were really hurt by this were the 4,000 doctors. Because they have the information. Because the organizer prevented those doctors to get the information.

[00:40:04] So I can only encourage medical doctors, transplant doctors to look up our work and to look into the information that we have. Because censorship in the medical field should not have a place in this century. The harvested organs that they take, it's just, it's so troubling to me.

[00:40:33] But the ones that they take, where are they going? Are they going all over the world? Are people going to China to have the surgeries? How does that work? Well, to our knowledge, at least we don't have any evidence on that or proof. They are not shipped around the world, but they make the patient come to China.

[00:40:56] And there was a case where, four or five years ago, where a Canadian traveled to China and received a kidney within three days. And now there's something called the Hainan Island, which is an island close to the mainland. And that island has a special economic, is a special economic zone. You can travel to that island without a visa.

[00:41:24] That means without leaving any traces. And you can stay there for four weeks. Because that island, the Hainan Island, recently has, there were like 10, about 10 hospitals built on that island. So they specifically prepare this free economic zone on that island for medical treatment for patients from all over the world. They let the people come to China.

[00:41:50] Otherwise, they would risk that the information about the sources could leak out. Even if you go to China and get a transplant, usually you get a letter from the doctor, what happened, the procedure is complicated. The patients don't get a letter anymore. Because the letter would be a proof that it happened in this hospital and this was a surgeon.

[00:42:19] So you see the systematic of luring people to go to China without showing any, without leaving any traces. And that is, you know, I learned so much from this topic of forced organization. I learned so much about communist systems.

[00:42:41] For example, this aspect, they have a problem, but they hide their participation in it. And if you see how China was supporting Russia on the Ukraine war, how China delivered weapons to Hamas or to Iran,

[00:43:08] they like to incite arsons everywhere, but you won't see so easily that China is involved in it. You know, one of the most obvious ways is maybe the fentanyl crisis, where now we know that China is sending the precursors to Mexican cartels. And the fentanyl is killing more Americans than troops were dying in the Second World War.

[00:43:39] And if people don't understand that this is truly happening, you can go look up the House Joint Committee report on China and fentanyl. And you'll see a report from the United States House of Representatives that was, I think it's from 2023 or 2024. So it's a couple of years old where they are talking about that and how China is providing the precursors to Mexico.

[00:44:07] And it isn't for medical use. It's to, for the cartels to bring drugs into this country and those drugs kill Americans. Yes. And China is hoping that people are killed. Because in the eyes of the CCP, America is the biggest enemy, the biggest adversary.

[00:44:33] So they have to, in their mind, in their five, ten years or 50 year plans, they have to take on this adversary. And what to do? They do it by the so-called death by a thousand cuts. So they have little impacts here and there. They erode our transplant system.

[00:44:56] They, you know, for example, how can you compete if people have to wait for a kidney four or five years? And in China is only a few days or two weeks. How can you compete with that? So that puts the American transplant community under pressure. And then they start taking shortcuts where you see that... The report recently... Some people are described as brain dead, but they were actually still alive.

[00:45:25] You know, now there are these short attempts to, you know, taking a shortcut. And so, or with the Confucius Institutes, you know, this... And there are actually not only Confucius Institutes in the universities, but actually many, many more in the high schools. Yeah. Nobody talks about that. They have little Confucius clubs.

[00:45:49] And what they do is they don't teach Chinese culture or Chinese language. They call it Confucius Institutes because I think they got this term from the German Goethe Institutes. And the Goethe Institutes from Germany, they are really like teaching German language and culture. So they just stole that concept. But what they do is they export the communist doctrines to the universities and to the schools.

[00:46:19] At the same time, they make these Confucius Institutes as a hub for students to report back what they did in research in their lab. So it becomes like a spy organization. Yeah. So that's how communist China is infiltrating the enemy.

[00:46:40] And, you know, when you look back into the history, in China, there was this time where the Guomintang and the Communist Party were fighting against each other to get into power. The Guomintang was actually the larger group, the larger army. But what happened is the CCP sent out spies into the Guomintang camp.

[00:47:07] And that's how they got critical information to defeat the larger group. So that's, you know, just from the start on, it is very common to the CCP that they infiltrate the enemies and opponents and adversaries. And this is also part of the art written in the book from Sun Tzu, Art of the War.

[00:47:34] But also in another book written by two colonels in the 1990s about the unrestricted warfare. And that is basically saying you go into a conflict without telling that you are in a conflict. So they have a completely different definition.

[00:47:57] You know, we might think, OK, the war is starting when we, you know, shoot the first bullet or whatever. But for them, the war can already start way before that. And that starts with infiltration and deceiving the opponent, etc.

[00:48:17] So we might not even know that we are, that China is already in war with us and why we are living in a peaceful society. And then we are surprised how are so many things going wrong in our society. So, you know, when the COVID hit, China knew about COVID in January 2020.

[00:48:44] They actually had a quarantine on the city of Wuhan in mid of January. But when the Italian minister of foreign affairs asked the Chinese equivalent if they have to stop the air traffic, then the Chinese counterpart said, no, it's not contagious, no problem. That was a lie. And he knew it. And it was only two months later when they actually said, yeah, we should shut down the air traffic.

[00:49:14] It was in the interest of the CCP to export the virus and to cause a pandemic. When that happened, actually before that happened, the year before, that's very interesting. China has bought billions of face masks from everywhere, from all countries, like billions of face masks everywhere. So they had a monopoly on face masks. That was in the summer of 2019.

[00:49:40] So once there was this pandemic in Europe, China was trying to be the, you know, generous helper, savior, and was offering to countries to buy the face masks, which were at that time were rare. But what they did is they didn't offer face masks, for example, to all Europe. They went to certain countries.

[00:50:08] They approached certain countries and offered face masks to individual countries. Meaning they were trying to split the European Union. Some countries got a better service than others. So that created like arguments between the countries. Hey, you got a face mask from China. Can you give some to us? No, no, we need all of that.

[00:50:35] So China is trying to sow discord in the international community. And not only in the international community. Now we have this discussion here in the U.S. Now there are different parties and then all of a sudden there is a socialist party in America. And we were wondering, where do they come from? And they got their support.

[00:51:02] And this is by intention because this is a way to sow discord, to split the American people like Europe was split with the trade of face masks. So we have this saying, united we stand. So of course that's the goal that the CCP tries to destroy, to divide us, to split us apart and to divide us. And that's a very common phenomenon.

[00:51:31] And we have to start to read the actions of the CCP. I think we are very naive and we cannot follow this. Like in the beginning 20 years ago, I could not imagine that they take organs from dissidents. No, people who are listening right now aren't going to be able to believe it. Yes. It's hard.

[00:51:55] When we did a documentary in 2014 about the border, we were going around learning about the southern border. And we got down there and the very first day on the ground, my producer, he was having to help a woman who was about to die because she was dehydrated.

[00:52:25] She may have been pregnant. It just was a terrible, terrible situation. And then we talked to all of these sheriffs and they told us about these trees where the coyotes hang prophylactics and undergarments as trophies of the abuse that they've committed on women.

[00:52:45] And we realized we couldn't show those trees in our documentary and we couldn't talk about them because it was so horrific that Americans, we knew Americans wouldn't believe us. We just knew they're not ready to talk about it. And right now on this episode, there'll be people who have never made it all the way to this point because they just, they can't, they don't, this is more than they can handle.

[00:53:11] It's terrible, but evil happens in this world. Yes. And what you're describing right now is happening because of totalitarianism. Yeah. It doesn't mean that every communist country in the world is going to go this far, but it doesn't mean it's not happening either. Yeah. It's, communism is the breeding ground for, for example, for forced organ harvesting.

[00:53:40] But in some countries, the breeding ground is not big enough to, to do it. But there was, I don't know about the, the person who said that, but there was on a recently a post on the, on, on X where a Chinese person, official,

[00:54:03] he said, when we conquer Taiwan, we will make all Taiwanese soldiers to become sources for forced organ harvesting. Yeah. I don't know if this is true, but just the thinking of it, you know, the fact that you can think this way, that is astonishing. But this is the same country that forced families to have only one child. Yes.

[00:54:31] If they could, if they could say you can't have your child and they could sterilize women to prevent them from ever becoming pregnant again, the, they don't respect human life. They don't respect it the way we do. And if they can't respect human life, they can't respect basic or other rights. Exactly. Exactly.

[00:54:53] When you look how they treat their own people, why do, why do we think they would treat us in a better way? Right. And if I can't respect that, I may disagree with someone on everything else.

[00:55:10] If I can't at least say, yes, you have the right to life and you have the right to be alive, then, then how would I respect their right to speak or their right to, to, to worship or their right to bear arms or, or any of the other rights that, that we take. Oftentimes we take for granted here in our country that are, that are listed in, in, in our, our founding documents. Yeah.

[00:55:41] You know, um, the aspect of understanding the CCP is a big problem for Western people who, who grew up in a free society. For example, many Americans never left America, but then they say, they, they, they support, uh, the socialist movement. And I was wondering, well, if, if you really, if you knew what you are talking about, then I would suggest go to the Tiananmen Square in China and say,

[00:56:10] say something stupid against the party and then experience how life really is in a totalitarian country. So many people, especially the young people here, I think they have something like a, I call it like a Robin Hood mentality where they think, Oh, we, we, we take money from the wealthy and give it to the poor, like Robin Hood. And they, they think they do something good, but that's an illusion. That's, that's naive.

[00:56:38] The communist system is brutal. And if you don't follow along, uh, you're at risk to be killed. You know, Winston Churchill said, if you are, uh, uh, so if you are not a socialist at the age of 20, you don't have a heart. But he said, if you are still a socialist when you're 30, you don't have a brain. Right. So there, there, there is something to it that we, we, uh, we, uh, we fail to understand about the CCP.

[00:57:08] And, uh, I try to find a simple way to understand it. And I came to the insight that it is about control. The, the CCP, the, the communist regime, after it has taken down any free society is paranoid that they will see the, they experience the same fate.

[00:57:32] So because of this paranoia to use, uh, to lose, uh, control, they control whatever they can. And you, you see when, uh, if you, if you want to find a common denominator for communism, it's control. And you see that, that, uh, what happened in different, um, states now in this country, uh, in, in New York state, in New York city, where the mayor wants to implement certain measures.

[00:58:00] And all of them can be, can be, uh, summarized by taking control. Yes. So control, taking control, taking away the freedom. Because your control is the opposite to freedom. So that's why they, they want to take away any freedom that we have here so that they have more control. Control is, is the key aspect here.

[00:58:23] And now, uh, when you are, when you bring up this case with the one child families in, uh, in, uh, in China, why is that? That is, that is, that was a measure of control. Because if you have siblings, the, the connection between siblings would be stronger than the control of the country. Yes. They would help each other even against the government.

[00:58:48] So only if you're, you know, if you're a single child, then you have nobody to really, you know, rely on. They cut off all connections. And this is the way how they can control billions of, millions of people. But, and they have to substitute the, they can be no family. There can be no religion.

[00:59:13] There can be no, no God that is greater than, than the, than the government itself, than the, the, than the, those who hold the power. Yeah. Your, your relationship with your family cannot be stronger than the relationship with the, the government. So they are doing all that they can, whether it's through the cultural revolution, which we talked about with your wife, Janice, um, to break that bond, forcing children into labor camps. So they did this.

[00:59:42] They forced children into labor camps. What makes this thing they can't do if they don't respect little children and, and they're, you know, I, I just think about how good children here in America have it. And to think what they did to children, forcing them to work all day, be separated from their family.

[01:00:07] Uh, Janice said if she didn't pick up enough, um, sugar cane and put it in a bag, she wasn't allowed to go to school the next day. All of that is just reminding them the government, the government is in control. You have to, to be, you have to, to focus on the government. That is the focus. That is who you need to worship. That is who you need to love. That is who, who is going to take care, take care of you in air quotes.

[01:00:37] Um, but it, it's not, none of that is loving. None of it is, it is the exact opposite. You're exactly right. It's the opposite of freedom and it is the opposite of love. And it's the opposite of compassion, bringing us back to those three, the three components that the honesty, uh, compassion and tolerance. There's no honesty in it. No. No compassion. Yeah. And there's absolutely zero tolerance. Yeah.

[01:01:06] Whether it's the organ harvesting, the cultural revolution, the one child policy, what they did with COVID, all of it. It's, it's evil. It is. I, you said a second ago that communism was a breeding ground for, for this kind of harvesting. I think communism is a breeding ground. I'm elaborating on what you said. I don't disagree with that.

[01:01:30] It is also the breeding ground for totalitarian control. Of course. And for tyrants. Yes, of course. And, um, you just mentioned the child labor. So, um, you know, if you want to understand it, I have a way to explain very quickly what this child labor actually does to the next generation. Just apply the concept of the Stockholm syndrome.

[01:01:59] You know, the Stockholm syndrome where a terrorist, uh, uh, uh, uh, kidnapper is holding a person hostage. And because the hostage is, uh, stays alive, he's basically devoted to the terrorist or to the, um, kidnapper.

[01:02:24] And they, some of them are so grateful that, that they were not killed, that they start to love the, uh, terrorists. So that's actually what is happening with all this, uh, child labor and forced labor. They, they, they make the people actually appreciate the CCP because yes, they, they were like, um, like forced to do the work, but at least they were, they stayed alive.

[01:02:50] So I say the CCP, uh, party, the, the CCP is taking all China hostage. And the, you know, there's a difference between the CCP and the Chinese people. And the CCP was maybe a hundred or 70 or now a hundred million people is, is taking a country with a billion of people hostage.

[01:03:16] And that's why the, the, the, the, the, the people follow, uh, accept the control. So, and this is the concept. So then imagine like if you, they are basically a terrorist country, they, they hold the people hostage. And, uh, um, the, the policy is, is like, like a terrorist to destroy the enemies or to, to, et cetera.

[01:03:42] So why would we do so much business with them? You know, there's nothing good comes out of it. No, it, it doesn't. And I say that, and I'm sure 90% of what we're looking at in this room was manufactured in China because you can't escape it right, right now. Yeah. We, we need, and I think President Trump is working on trying to bring more manufacturing back to America. And I think it needs to happen.

[01:04:11] The, that's a, a side, a little bit of a, a side topic. Um, when you were just mentioning that about the Stockholm syndrome, of course, North Korea comes to mind as well. Yeah. Because the people who are living there are in, I, I, I was, as I was preparing for these interviews, I was saying something. There is a, a woman who has escaped and defected from North Korea. And I, I want to interview her at some point of writer books.

[01:04:41] And, um, and I think, oh, her, her story was so absolutely horrible. And it was, and it absolutely was. And yet the people who you're describing who are being held captive in, in China right now, it's horrible for them as well. Yeah. And the people who were affected in the Soviet Union, it was horrible for them.

[01:05:09] Um, it's, it, and they don't know that it, that they, they may understand it's bad or they may be in that, that, um, disassociated state where they don't, they, they don't know any difference. So this is all they know. And they're just surviving with what they know.

[01:05:29] Um, but it, it, it, it doesn't matter because it's bad and all of the, once you are being held captive and you don't have freedom and, and your aspirations are gone and your hopes are gone and your dreams are gone and you can't trust even your neighbors. I, I, I, I can't even, it's got a, it's a terrible way to live.

[01:05:52] And it kind of comes back to even where you grew up, not in West Germany as much, of course, but in, in East Germany, they were, they, they, they wanted to go back and be in East Germany where it was a little bit easier for them. Even though they couldn't handle the freedom. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, um, it's a tough situation, but we can't let this happen here.

[01:06:20] I, and I'm not saying that here in America, it's going to be so bad that we're going to have organ harvesting. I want to be a little bit cautious about that, but we can't allow communism or socialism to continue to creep in here. And because we are free here in America, we need to be doing what we can to help the people in China and also in North Korea. Yeah.

[01:06:44] It's actually not only helping the people in China or North Korea, it is actually helping ourselves. We are helping ourselves. It's, uh, we, we, we would start realizing what we have, the freedoms that we have. And, um, those who, those who want to change the system towards the socialist way, um, what they do is they benefit from the freedom.

[01:07:12] Because in a, in a socialist way, they wouldn't have the freedom to do certain things. Right. They benefit from the freedom, but then want to promote a system that is intolerant of those freedoms. Right. And so it's, it's a very mixed, um, way of, of, it's a very mixed policy that, that is, you know, finding its way into the society.

[01:07:38] People have to think through, people have to think through like where it ends. When you said that, I, Bernie Sanders came to mind, especially because of course he's been spreading so much of, of socialism and what is now becoming communism. Marxist thinking here. He gets married and he goes to the Soviet Union for his honeymoon.

[01:08:04] And then he comes back and he rails against America and our free market society, basically the entirety of his career, always. And he's made money working for the government and has become a millionaire working for the government. But if he were in a Soviet country, he wouldn't be able to rail against the government. He wouldn't have been able to go to a free country to, to honeymoon. Exactly.

[01:08:33] The very, the very privileged, not privileges. I want to be careful because the left uses privileges. But those, um, exercising his rights and his freedom. He's, he's exercising his rights and his freedom against everyone else's freedom and rights. Yeah. I'll give you an image. You're sitting on a branch and you have a saw and you're a saw in the branch on which you sit. On which you sit.

[01:09:03] That is what, that is what is happening. Yes. That is, that's a beautiful, scary image. And that's why I think they don't really have anything to offer because it would only take away freedom while putting us in an even more miserable situation. Right.

[01:09:23] Because the wealth in this country is not accumulated by workers from a communist society. The wealth is produced by people who made, who take full advantage of this open free market society. And that's why we are leading also with inventions and, and technical progress.

[01:09:53] As I said earlier, if you compare West Germany and East Germany after, you know, 30, 40 years going through this experience, then in the 1980s, you saw a clear difference between the free society and the socialist society. So that's, um, that's something that people have to take into consideration. You've spent 19, 20 years working on this one issue.

[01:10:22] You could have been doing, you could have taken a much different path as an internal medicine doctor or a surgeon or so many other, other ways to be focused with that medical degree. Two questions for you.

[01:11:07] So this is a very interesting question. So I, I do all my work pro bono. I, I don't earn any, any money from this. And, um, the reward that I get is actually from the work itself.

[01:11:24] And that comes to, you know, that comes to life when, when I do my work and all of a sudden there comes a doctor or, uh, a person comes up to me and say, thank you so much for what you're doing. And that, that, um, that, um, appreciation is worth like a million dollars.

[01:11:45] I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't change it for a million dollars because this is, um, you know, reflecting what, what I'm working for. It's, it's, it's like really, I'm, I'm working for the better of the, of humankind. I'm working for ethics in the society because without ethics and morality and, and proper, um, practices, you know, everything goes down.

[01:12:12] Don't have, there, there was a professor who, who once made a statement, which I, uh, I, I never forgot. He said ethical medicine is good medicine. And that, you know, you think about it, um, if you don't follow ethics, you go down a, a, a, a bad path in medicine. Medicine can do good, but can also do bad things. And we have seen this in the recent years, uh, quite a bit.

[01:12:42] And, um, so yes, the, um, the, my reward is when, when, uh, when I, you know, get a comment like this where people appreciate what I'm doing. And, um, yeah, I, I wouldn't change it for anything else. The, the, um, other aspect for politics is actually close related to that. I'm, I'm not a political person.

[01:13:06] Um, I'm, um, you know, um, you know, uh, before my engagement with force or interested in work to work on force or harvesting, I was not really interested in politics. But, uh, through the, um, through this horrible abuse, uh, I could see that, uh, there's really evil in the, uh, in the, um, in humankind.

[01:13:32] And some really want to bring that evil to, to fruition. And, um, um, I say, no, the, you know, the human beings came with a purpose. They, um, in every human being, there is some, some goodness. Or in most, uh, most, uh, human beings is, is some goodness. And, um, you know, when, when this goodness can come out, they are actually happy about it and grateful for it.

[01:14:01] That, that, that they actually saw the goodness coming out. You know, um, I'll give you an example. Uh, we were working, um, to, to bring this, um, issue of force or when harvesting to the, um, US Congress. And in, um, 2016, US Congress passed a resolution, House Resolution 343.

[01:14:30] And that resolution was, uh, talking clearly about, uh, uh, misery of forced organ harvesting and, uh, importance to stop it. So, that, that was a first step. But then we thought, well, this is just, you know, a statement, uh, resolution. Um, what about having, like, real actions? So, we, um, some of our members, they talked to their, uh, congressman from their district.

[01:14:59] And then they found a congressman who said, well, I take on this issue. And it was a Republican congressman. And he started it. And then, um, he introduced the, a bill in, uh, 2024. 2024. And three months later, it has passed the Foreign Relations Committee and passed the House. So, that, that was like an astonishing tempo. And then, uh, we, uh, we reached, uh, actually faster than we thought.

[01:15:27] And then, only then did we actually start to look for a senator for the companion bill. But it was too short. It was an election year. It didn't go through. But then, um, that same congressman reintroduced the bill in early 2025. But this time, it was a bipartisan bill because a Democratic congressman joined him. And again, it was introduced past, past the House within three months.

[01:15:56] And at the same time, actually, this time we approached, uh, um, a Republican, uh, senator to, to introduce a companion bill, which he did. But it didn't go forward. And, um, the, it was asked to, um, that this, uh, the, the, the companion bill is also bipartisan. So, it took a while. It, it took almost a year.

[01:16:22] But then there was a Democratic senator who said, I step up and I join this. So, within two years, that, uh, became from, from initially, initially from coming from one party, from one congressman. Within two years, it became bipartisan and bicameral in the House and the Senate.

[01:16:45] So, within two years, this topic, Fost Organ Harvesting, moved the entire congress to stand united behind this bill. And that is something, uh, astonishing in these times where, where there's more discourse and, uh, disagreement. But this topic could unify the, the, the, the, um, you could unify the people because it touched on something good in all people.

[01:17:12] You know, and all, all, all congressmen and senators, they said, they realized this Fost Organ Harvesting really cannot continue. And, um, you know, you see, so involvement in politics doesn't need to be partisan where, you know, the parties go just, you know, every day go against each other.

[01:17:34] But, uh, no, if you just follow common sense and if you allow your good side, your good heart to speak, then actually you realize, well, Fost Organ Harvesting, that's a little bit too much to just let them get away with it. Yeah. So, um, um, now we are in this situation where this bill is, uh, in both chambers and, and there are a few more steps, but hopefully we can turn it into a law.

[01:18:03] Well, maybe you can get it turned into a law during the lame duck session this year, like after the election, because you've gotten it so far in this legislative session. And it seems like something that no matter which party you're a part of as not just as Americans, but as human beings, we can agree on this.

[01:18:22] Dr. Trey, Dr. Tortsen, Trey, thank you so much for the work you're doing and for the courage that you have to show people what is happening and standing up for those who aren't able to stand up for themselves. Sure. Thank you. If you enjoyed today's conversation, go ahead and hit like, and subscribe. It really helps us reach more people who care about liberty and the constitution.

[01:18:46] You can find this and other episodes at JennyBethShow.com, as well as Facebook, YouTube, Rumble, Instagram, X, and your favorite podcast platform. The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin. The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots Action. For more information, visit teapartypatriots.org.