Two Falun Gong practitioners spoke at the U.N. body’s meetings, raising awareness of the plight of their faith group under the CCP’s relentless persecution.
The Chinese regime’s practice of forcibly harvesting human organs for sale and transplant was highlighted at a recent United Nations Human Rights Council meeting, in which two Falun Gong practitioners raised awareness of the regime’s ongoing persecution of their faith.
During a
council meeting on March 4, Ding Lebin, a Berlin resident, said that in 2024, the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China led to 164 confirmed deaths and 764 newly documented cases in which people have received prison sentences.
He called for the release of his father, Ding Yuande, who was sentenced to three years in prison in December 2023.
Last year, Ding Lebin
told The Epoch Times that he feared for his father’s safety and was worried that he could be tortured, subjected to forced labor, or even killed for his organs.
“We want to call upon the United Nations Human Rights Council to appoint a special rapporteur on forced organ harvesting in China; to strongly urge the Chinese government to release Mr. Ding, all Falun Gong practitioners, and all other prisoners of conscience; and to investigate China’s transnational repression against Falun Gong practitioners and all human rights defenders abroad,” Ding said.
He made the remarks on behalf of the Society for Threatened People, a human rights organization based in Germany.
The U.N. Human Rights Council began its
58th regular session on Feb. 24 and is scheduled to end on April 4. Every year, nongovernment organizations (NGOs), intergovernmental organizations, and national human rights institutions
can choose to participate in a session alongside the council’s member states.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a meditation discipline based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. In China, the number of adherents reached more than 70 million in the late 1990s, according to official estimates.
Seeing the spiritual discipline’s popularity as a threat, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched a nationwide campaign to eradicate the group in July 1999. Since then, millions of Falun Gong practitioners have been detained inside prisons, labor camps, and other facilities, with hundreds of thousands tortured while incarcerated, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center.
Evidence of the CCP’s forced organ harvesting first
emerged in 2006.
In 2019, following an investigation, a London-based independent people’s tribunal, known as the China Tribunal,
concluded that the Chinese regime has “beyond reasonable doubt” been forcibly harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience for many years, with the primary victims being Falun Gong practitioners.
The tribunal
found that medical tests of Falun Gong and Uyghur detainees but not on other prisoners are “highly suggestive of methods used to assess organ function.”
During the U.N. body’s 55th regular session, in 2024, the Society for Threatened People
urged diplomats stationed at the embassies of U.N. member states in China to visit the regime’s prisoners of conscience, according to its written statement.
At a separate
council meeting on March 5, Wong Kayan, spokesperson for the Falun Gong community in the Netherlands, said in a speech that China’s transplant industry has benefitted from the regime’s barbaric practice.
“Chinese Communist Party systematically conceals and denies these crimes, manipulating transplant data and misleading international institutions,“ Wong said. ”This practice violates fundamental human rights, medical ethics, and international law, as per the Genocide Convention.”
Wong made the remarks on behalf of the Stichting Global Human Rights Defence, an NGO based in The Hague.
She urged governments worldwide to support the Falun Gong community by
signing the Universal Declaration on Combating and Preventing Forced Organ Harvesting, an initiative
launched by five NGOs, including the U.S.-based Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting.
In the United States, a bicameral bill targeting the CCP’s forced organ harvesting was
reintroduced earlier this month. The legislation, officially known as the Falun Gong Protection Act, would require sanctions on those responsible for or complicit in the abuse.
Under the act, the secretary of state would be required to compile a report on China’s organ transplant policies for the relevant congressional committees.
