Exposure of Forced Organ Harvesting Could Trigger CCP’s Fall: Chinese Prison Survivor

‘Forced organ harvesting is a red line for the CCP,’ a former Chinese prison survivor said.

William Huang speaks at a human rights rally in October 2015. The Epoch Times

Wide exposure on the world stage of Beijing’s systematic forced organ harvesting scheme could trigger the communist regime’s fall, according to a Chinese prison survivor.

The Chinese regime’s state-led action—taking organs from prisoners of conscience to fuel its for-profit transplant industry—is “so evil” that “everyone will stand up to be against it,” William Huang, a dissident who spent five years in a Chinese prison and eventually escaped to the United States, told The Epoch Times.

“This is why they [the regime] try their best to hide this crime,” he said.

Huang made the remarks after appearing in a recent webinar urging world leaders to call out the regime for its abuses.

Whistleblowers in 2006 first revealed the existence of the forced organ harvesting scheme.

Annie, who used an alias in speaking with The Epoch Times, said her ex-husband participated in taking corneas from detained Falun Gong practitioners in a northeastern Chinese hospital. Doing such work took a mental toll on the doctor. Annie said he had frequent nightmares, with his sweat soaking through the bedsheets.

In 2019, the China Tribunal in London confirmed the longstanding allegation after a year-long investigation, concluding that forced organ harvesting had been happening on a significant scale in China, with practitioners of Falun Gong being the primary victims.

Huang, a Falun Gong practitioner himself, became Beijing’s target over his involvement in setting up The Epoch Times’ website in China in 2000.

The issue is gaining more attention. Five states in the United States have passed laws aimed at blocking health insurance coverage for transplant surgeries and related post-surgery care for individuals who receive organs in China. In Congress, two bills that would authorize the president to impose sanctions on the perpetrators have passed the House.

But Huang, as well as many others, shared frustration over the lack of awareness among the general public.

“This is a contract murder,” Dr. Andreas Weber said in the webinar held on June 14, urging for stricter laws to discourage complicity.

Patients, by receiving transplants from China, would become unwitting accomplices, the specialist in trauma surgery and orthopedics said.

“It’s a crime from both sides,” he said.

What contributes to the issue is the regime’s effort to censor the topic. Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), sponsor of the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act—which the House has twice voted overwhelmingly in favor of—said a Chinese diplomat emailed his office after the bill’s first passage and demanded that they stop the “anti-China moves.”

“Forced organ harvesting is a red line for the CCP,” said Huang, referring to the Chinese Communist Party. “They don’t want people to cross that red line.”

And that means trying “everything to deny it, to hide it,” he said.

Financial and political pressure have led to self-censorship. A filmmaker of a documentary on the issue said she had seen several potential partners for the project back away, citing fear of Beijing’s retaliation.

David Matas, an award-winning Canadian human rights lawyer and a member of the Order of Canada and the board of directors of the Toronto-based International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, speaks during a press conference in Washington on Aug. 9, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

Unfamiliarity and inattention feed into each other, said human rights lawyer David Matas, who has authored several investigative works on the issue.

Except for Taiwan, few places in the world require hospitals and doctors to report information about patients who receive organs in foreign countries, which would make it easier to track the organ transplant tourism that has helped to sustain forced organ harvesting.

“People don’t know how big the problem is,” he said at the panel. As a result, “we don’t have the mobilization.”

Garnett Genuis, a Canadian parliamentarian who first worked on legislation nearly a decade ago to criminalize receiving an organ acquired without consent, said he was glad to see the bill passed during the last Parliament.

Conservative MP Garnett Genuis speaks to reporters at a press conference in Mississauga, Canada, on Feb. 22, 2024. Andrew Chen/The Epoch Times

Part of the challenge is that “the CCP is constantly trying to project its influence and protect its interests around the world,” he told The Epoch Times.

It’s hard to predict what consequences advocacy on the issue will lead to in the long term, Genuis said, but the most important thing is to “draw attention to the rights of victims of these cases and to work for truth and justice.”

Human rights should “definitely be on the agenda” for bilateral talks with China, he said, and countries should do more to stop the forced organ harvesting abuse, including by adopting laws similar to what Canada has.

“I hope that as attention is brought to these abuses, it will bring about changes—changes in the behavior of the regime and changes that lead to a different approach to politics,” Genuis said.