Beijing, China - China on Wednesday denounced reports by the outlawed Falun Gong group that a Chinese hospital was a "concentration camp" taking detained practitioners' organs for transplants.
Officials from the National Traditional Chinese Medicine Thrombus Treatment Center in Shenyang, capital of the northeastern province of Liaoning, told a Beijing news conference that the Falun Gong reports were "totally fabricated."
"We haven't performed any organ transplants, because we don't have the qualifications or the means," said hospital vice president Zhang Yuqin.
She said two people the group had cited as witnesses "did not exist".
Falun Gong is a spiritual group that espouses meditation exercises. Chinese authorities tolerated it until 1999, when the group mobilized thousands to surround the ruling Communist Party's heavily guarded leadership compound in central Beijing.
Shortly afterwards, China banned it as a "cult" and thousands of followers who refused to renounce their beliefs underwent detention and re-education, prompting claims from the group and human rights activists of brutality and abuses.
But few of Falun Gong's accusations have attracted as much attention -- or such vehement government denials -- as the latest hospital claims.
Zhang said the hospital might sue an overseas Falun Gong Web site and newspaper after being flooded with phone calls from abroad following the report's appearance in March.
Falun Gong alleged that at one time the hospital had held up to 6,000 practitioners in a basement, using them for live vivisections, taking their organs for transplants and burning the corpses in an incinerator.
A Hong Kong-based spokeswoman for Falun Gong, Sharon Xu, told Reuters the group stood by the report and had credible witnesses.
"We believe they're true and stand by them" she said by telephone. She said the Shenyang hospital no longer held Falun Gong followers, but other hospitals across China were still engaged in "systematic organ harvesting" from its adherents.
The United Nations torture investigator said on March 30 he was looking into the allegations.
"I am presently in the process of investigating as far as I can these allegations ... If I come to the conclusion that it is a serious and well-founded allegation, then I will officially submit it to attention of the Chinese government," Manfred Nowak told a news briefing.
Zheng Bin, a deputy head of the Sujiatun district government in Shenyang, where the hospital is, said the Falun Gong claims were "an attack on Liaoning province and on China".