Hong Kong security chief accuses ex-district councillors living overseas of involvement in wave of withdrawals from city’s organ donor scheme
- Chris Tang says actions could affect people waiting for a transplant and ‘endangers our safety’
- Tang condemns those prepared to risk lives ‘for the sake of their own political interests’
Hong Kong’s security chief has accused former district councillors who live overseas of involvement in a wave of withdrawals from the city’s organ donation scheme and pledged possible arrests as criminal investigations are launched into suspected abuse of the register.
Secretary for Security Chris Tang Ping-keung on Monday highlighted the case of four-month-old Cleo Lai Tsz-hei, who last December became the first Hongkonger to get a heart donated from mainland China, which sparked the examination of a transplant mutual aid scheme.
“There were people intending to endanger our safety and deliberately distort this act of kindness who claimed that if someone did not apply for a withdrawal of organ donation, they would automatically be included in the list of registrations,” he said.
“These people include some former anti-government district councillors who fled to foreign countries.
“We believe that some people maliciously used others’ names to make these withdrawals to create an illusion that a lot of people are dissatisfied with the proposal.”
Tang emphasised that organ donation was “a very noble act” that prolonged the lives of others.
“Wherever life is, it is still life,” he said. “I very much despise people who deliberately made these positive acts into negative things for the sake of their own political interests, which could affect those who are waiting for a transplant.”
Tang was speaking just days after the government highlighted “abnormalities” in the number of withdrawals from the register since last December - about 3,000 of them made by people who had never opted in.
He said criminal investigations had been launched into the use of “deliberate and illegal methods” to make registration withdrawals for people who had never opted in as donors in the first place.
“We will make arrests when evidence is found and file charges when there is enough evidence,” Tang warned.
What’s behind wave of withdrawals from Hong Kong organ donor register?
The increase in withdrawals came after the city at the end of last year started to examine the feasibility of an organ transplant mutual assistance mechanism with the mainland in the wake of the Lai transplant.
The system would act as a second-tier response if transplant patients could not find a match on their side of the border.
More than half of them - 2,905 applications - were invalid because they were filed by people not on the donor register.
Police to target organ donation rumour mongers, Hong Kong health chief warns
The percentage of invalid withdrawal applications was as high as 74 per cent in February alone.
The authorities earlier condemned the “utterly irresponsible behaviour” and said they suspected that “a small number of people” had produced the applications with the aim of “disrupting the representativeness” of the register and overloading its administration.
The Department of Health also announced a new feature for the register, which allows users of the “iAM Smart” electronic identification system to check their registration status.
