Where do the bodies come from, protesters ask
Matthew Little | Epoch Times
[caption id="attachment_3196" align="alignleft" width="300"] Protesters line Fallsview Blvd. in Niagara Fall, Ontario on April 17, 2015, to protest Premier Exhibitions’ Bodies Revealed show, which displays around 100 plasticized corpses skinned to display muscles and organs. (Matthew Little/Epoch Times)[/caption]
NIAGARA FALLS, Ont.—It was two-for-one to see Premier Exhibitions’ skinned and plasticized corpses in Niagara Falls on April 17, but two security guards at the doors were vetting who could get in.
That’s because in the street outside around 250 people gathered to call for Bodies Revealed, Premier’s latest plasticized corpse exhibit, to be shut down.
That message and variations of it speak to the central question surrounding the exhibit. Where do the bodies come from?
A car with two young women stopped to ask some of the protesters why they were there.
‘The bodies inside, we don’t know where they come from. Chinese people, prisoners of conscience, disappear in Chinese prisons, many never come out. Tens of thousands,’ explained a protester.
Attempts to reach someone inside the exhibit were rebuffed by the security guards. They provided a phone number for Kate Whitely, a spokesperson with Kirvin Doak Communications, the company that handles Premier’s PR.
Premier says in an FAQ on its website that the bodies came from people who lived in China and died of natural causes. A disclaimer on a different page hedges that, however, saying the bodies were originally received by the Chinese Bureau of Police.
“Premier cannot independently verify that the human remains you are viewing are not those of persons who were incarcerated in Chinese prisons,” reads the disclaimer.
“Premier relies solely on the representations of its Chinese partners and cannot independently verify that they do not belong to persons executed while incarcerated in Chinese prisons.”
When asked to clarify how Premier could say its corpses came from people who died from natural causes while also saying they cannot verify if they were executed, Whiteley emailed the following:
“Premier’s suppliers have certified that the specimens presented in its exhibitions have been donated by the deceased or their authorized family member for educational purposes.”
“There has never been any evidence tying the specimens in Premier’s exhibitions to unlawful or inhumane acts. Each of the specimens exhibited in Premier’s exhibitions have been examined by a retired anatomy professor and a biological anthropologist in the United States, and they have never found any evidence of trauma associated with bodily injury or abuse.”
A follow-up question as to the actual suppliers and whether they were in fact Chinese police was not answered. For the protesters gathered outside the exhibit, this is a critical question.