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CROSS EXAMINED Dark Matas "I BY MY RON LOVE tend to get involved in a lot of very grim issues," says David Matas. "I tend to approach these issues with a fair amount of determination over a long period of time. I was once asked how I find the strength to persevere with these issues. I responded that it is because I had a happy childhood. That has provided me with a reservoir of strength that makes it easier dealing with these matters." In a typical week for the Winnipeg-based lawyer in mid- April, he was in New York, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C., to speak before congressional hearings on the Falun Gong issue. His east-coast swing further included the release of Bloody Harvest: The killing of Falun Gong for their organs, a book he co- wrote with former Edmonton Conservative MP David Kilgour, at Georgetown University; stops at New York and Fordham universities to express his views on the controversial Goldstone report on the conflict in Gaza; and a visit to Rutgers University to present the Falun Gong book. He subsequently stopped off in Ottawa to attend a Rights & Democracy meeting. Then, after a change of clothes in Winnipeg, he was off to Los Angeles to again promote his book. It is Matas and Kilgour's efforts on behalf of the Falun Gong that resulted in their nom- ination for a Nobel Peace Prize, say Matas. The Falun Gong, he explains, is a series of Chinese exercises mixed with a spiritual element (similar to yoga) that has been practised in China for generations. After the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1990, the Chinese government began to view the practice of Falun Gong as a threat to the Communist sys- tem and started clamping down on the millions of Chinese who practised it. The government's actions include arrest, imprison- ment, and murder. "When I was asked, 20 JULY 2010 www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com with David Kilgour, to investigate allegations that Falun Gong practitioners were being killed for their organs, I did not hesitate to agree. I had no views whether the allegations were true. But I knew that the government of China had a policy and practice of persecuting Falun Gong practitioners. And I also knew, from my experience with human rights non-governmental organizations, that this was an allegation which those organizations would have difficulty assessing," he says. "From our research, we concluded in July 2006 that the government of China and its agencies in numerous parts of the country since 1999 have put to death a large, but unknown number, of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience. Their vital organs, including kidneys, livers, corneas, and hearts, have been seized involuntarily for sale at high prices, Nobel Peace Prize nominee's human rights activities on 'grim issues' spurred by early interest in the Holocaust. David Matas and Governor General Michaëlle Jean, who presided over the ceremony in which he was invested as a member of the Order of Canada on April 7, 2010. SGT. SERGE GOUIN, RIDEAU HALL OSGG