DOYLESTOWN, Pa.—“I feel crushed. It couldn’t be any more sad and horrifying, this thing that I’ve not known,” said pilot Chris Davies after watching the 76-min film “State Organs” at Doylestown Borough Hall in Pennsylvania on Jan. 29.
The film took dozens of Doylestown residents on a shocking and emotional journey on the first day of the Chinese New Year. “State Organs” exposes the practice of forced organ harvesting in China, featuring disturbing testimony involving torture and other human rights violations.
Forced organ harvesting is the state-sanctioned extracting of organs by force, mostly from prisoners of conscience, for transplantation purposes.
Davies said he wasn’t surprised by the details of the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China, since he was already aware of the nature of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
“It’s no surprise to me, because the evilness of communism, when they saw the growth of [Falun Gong], they decided to exterminate it, and then they not only decided to exterminate these innocent people, they’re harvesting their organs for profits,” Davies said. “It’s the devil’s work. These people are devil workers.”
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. It was introduced to the public in China in 1992 and grew rapidly, with official estimates saying there were 70-100 million practitioners by the late 1990s. Its practitioners have been brutally persecuted in China since 1999.
“It’s the evil demons that are running the country and keeping everybody under their boot and in terrorizing and harvesting their organs and locking up people’s children for no reason whatsoever,” Davies said of the Chinese communist regime.
He believes the world must act to end the atrocity.
“Something has to be done. I think that not just the United States, but we’re one of their larger trading partners, but the whole world. It'll be painful, mostly for the Chinese people, if they were to embargo any products made in China, because all over the globe, manufacturing is made in China, but it might quickly bring enough pressure on the Communist Party that some change can happen. But the change, like any revolution, is going to be very costly, but it needs to happen,” Davies said.
He said that it’s “obscene” to continue doing business with companies and individuals with ties to the CCP.
In 2019, an independent tribunal in London unanimously concluded that prisoners of conscience have been killed in China for their organs “on a significant scale,” with Falun Gong practitioners as the main source.
Davies’s wife, lawyer Mariann Davies, said she was horrified after learning the extent of the persecution.
“Horrified. Had no idea. I knew that Falun Gong was being persecuted, but I had no idea the extent and the depth. It’s very frightening,” she said. “This film opened my eyes to the really gruesome reality and horrific acts. It’s a crime against humanity, and it needs to be stopped immediately.”
“It’s frightening this is being allowed in the world,” she said. “Hopefully more Americans and more Western societies understand what’s going on, and that will change maybe our attitude towards dealing with the CCP, or any CCP entities that are in our own countries.”
Audience Inspired to Take Action
After watching the documentary and hearing from the host and panelists in a discussion after the film, many attendees said they want to do something about forced organ harvesting in China.
Ilka Werner, who makes handcrafted therapeutic heating and cooling packs, shared her overwhelming deep concern about the issue.
“I have heard of the forced organ harvesting before, especially the cornea. I just didn’t realize how far it went that prisoners give their lives for others to come in and purchase their organs,” she said.
“I think as Americans, we’ve got to speak out against this [forced organ harvesting] wherever we can. We need to stop, and we need to put an end to this. And we can,” Werner said.
She suggested introducing state-level legislation to require Chinese medical students to stay in the U.S. for 10 years after their education, to prevent them from returning to China and participating in forced organ harvesting.
Marie Bushnell, a retired florist, expressed shock after hearing that U.S. pharmaceutical companies are sending supplies to Chinese military hospitals involved in organ transplants.
“I was totally amazed and upset about this whole situation in China, and our pharmaceutical companies sending the supplies to these hospitals, these military hospitals in China that are doing the transplants,” she said.
Bushnell plans to inform local legislators about the persecution and speak to the mayor of Doylestown about this issue.
Bushnell appreciated the filmmaker and event organizers for letting people know what’s going on, “because it’s going to impact the United States.”
John Ruby, a retired business owner, said he has started “thinking about the promotion side of how to get the message out.”
His wife, Marlene Ruby, teared up after watching the film.
“My heart hurts. It’s so impactful, and there was remarkable information provided for us, that I was not aware [of],” she said. “To have the word go out is so important, because we don’t understand a lot of what’s going on in the world, and particularly, in China. Because there isn’t open information coming out from there, in my opinion. So this is really pretty remarkable.”
