Open letter to the NSW Premier calling for immediate investigation into Real Bodies – The Exhibition
Leading human rights lawyers, medical professionals, academics and civil society organisations have written an open letter urgently calling on the NSW Government for an immediate investigation into Real Bodies – The Exhibition (Exhibition) currently showing at the Entertainment Quarter in Sydney until October 2018.
The Exhibition is a for-profit business and involves a display of 20 plastinated human bodies and 200 plastinated human organs, human foetuses and body parts. Mr Tom Zaller, President and CEO of Imagine Exhibitions, the company responsible for the Exhibition, has publicly admitted that there is no documentation verifying the provenance and identity of the deceased persons, and any certification of the deceased’s consent for display at the Exhibition.
There are grave ethical and human rights concerns about the circumstances surrounding how and where the bodies and organs in the Exhibition were sourced. Credible evidence suggests that the exhibits may be the bodies and organs of executed prisoners of conscience including Falun Gong practitioners and Uyghurs, of whom there are currently over a million detained in China.3 The extrajudicial killing of prisoners of conscience for their organs breaches fundamental human rights laws, and laws governing crimes against humanity, organ trafficking and organ transplant tourism.