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SURGEON Enver Tohti has performed scores of operations – but there is only one that still haunts him.

In June 1995, he was working in north-west China and was told he would be performing his first operation outside.

But when Tohti arrived at the destination, he was shocked to find at least 10 prisoners had been shot in a field by a firing squad.

Armed police waved the surgeon and his medical team over and directed them to a man lying unconscious on blood-soaked ground.

Tohti said: “He’d been shot in the right-hand side of the chest but was still alive.

“I told my chief surgeon he wasn’t dead but he ordered me to remove the man’s liver and kidneys there and then – and to be quick about it. I was ordered not to give the man any anaesthetic.”

It was an incident the 50-year-old will never forget and later this month he will form part of a delegation visiting the Scottish Parliament to give evidence about organ harvesting by the Chinese state.

Organ harvesting is an illegal practice which involves the removal of organs from a person without their consent.

Critics of the Chinese government claim thousands of people have been killed for their livers and kidneys in recent years in order for them to be sold illegally.

Victims are thought to include death row inmates, members of the Uighur ethnic community and Tibetans.

It is also alleged around 65,000 members of the Falun Gong spiritualist group have been murdered for their organs.

Tohti and other campaigners were invited to Scotland by the SNP’s Bob Doris MSP, who tabled a motion in Parliament last November condemning organ harvesting in China.

Tohti came to Britain in 1999 after fleeing China and was granted political asylum three years later. He said: “When I performed that operation in 1995, I knew nothing of organ harvesting. It wasn’t until I came to Britain and first heard of the practice that I realised what had taken place.

“That man had been shot but, technically, I killed him and that still haunts me to this day.”

Tohti will be joined in parliament by Chinese Falun Gong and Canadian lawyers David Matas and David Kilgour, who co-wrote a book in 2009 called Bloody Harvest.

In 2009, the investigation by Kilgour, a former Canadian MP, and Matas was given an award by the International Society for Human Rights in Switzerland. Kilgour said: “The major conclusion of our book is that there continues today to be large-scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong.

“Their vital organs are seized involuntarily for sale at high prices, sometimes to foreigners who normally face long waits for voluntary donations of organs in their home.”

It is estimated that thousands of Falun Gong have been imprisoned in China since the movement was banned there in July 1999.

Falun Gong combine meditation and qigong – a strengthening, powering and relaxing healing system – but the Chinese Communist Party claim they are an “evil cult”.

The persecution of Falun Gong in China has been condemned by Amnesty International. Hundreds of Falun Gong have come to the UK, including Annie Yang who fled to Britain seeking political asylum after serving 17 months in a Chinese labour camp.

She said: “I haven’t seen my family since I left China in October 2006 as I can’t go back. If I went, I would be arrested immediately.

“I was tortured in the labour camp. The guards gave me drugs to destroy my central nerves and force me to renounce my beliefs.

“Because of the drugs, my memory has become very bad and my eyesight has deteriorated. My hair also turned grey.”

Doris says the scale of organ harvesting in China is staggering.

He added: “I look forward to international experts such as David Kilgour and David Matas being able to inform MSPs as to the sheer scale of organ harvesting abuses in China.

“While this is an event with an international perspective, it has been inspired by local constituents in Maryhill who approached me about the abuses to Falun Gong practitioners in the country.

“MSPs will hear evidence of organ harvesting on an industrial scale.”