The organs of people held in Chinese prison camps are being harvested without their consent — and the practice is taking place on the deceased and the living.

NBC News cited a China Tribunal report, which said the organs are worth thousands of dollars on the Chinese black market and that they are readily available at hospitals — all evidence of the illegal harvesting. The victims of the practice are Falun Gong practitioners and Uyghurs, who are often rounded up and put into camps in western China.

"Forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale and Falun Gong practitioners have been one — and probably the main — source of organ supply," the report reads. "The concerted persecution and medical testing of the Uyghurs is more recent and it may be that evidence of forced organ harvesting of this group may emerge in due course.

"The Tribunal has had no evidence that the significant infrastructure associated with China's transplantation industry has been dismantled and absent a satisfactory explanation as to the source of readily available organs concludes that forced organ harvesting continues till today."

The purported harvesting often occurs on people who died or were killed by personnel at the camps, but it also takes place on people who are still alive. The procedure of removing an organ, however, results in the person's death.

Some prisoners who somehow made it out of the camps told investigators they underwent medical exams, including x-rays and ultrasounds, for no apparent reason. A doctor even relayed a gruesome story of removing an organ from a patient who was still alive.

"What I recall is with my scalpel, I tried to cut into his skin, there was blood to be seen," Dr. Enver Tohti said. "That indicates that the heart was still beating … At the same time, he was trying to resist my insertion, but he was too weak."

The study also found that prisoners were subjected to torture and rape. Those imprisoned, the report reads, were victims of "persecution on racial, national, ethnic, cultural or religious grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law."

China has long been accused of persecuting minorities and putting them into camps. The communist government has tried to downplay the camps, but it's been reported that they are being forced to work and are not allowed to leave.