Former Religious Freedom Ambassador Calls for Targeted Sanctions Over CCP’s Forced Organ Harvesting

Sam Brownback, then-U.S. ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom, at the Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom at the Department of State in Washington on July 16, 2019. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times

WASHINGTON—The U.S. government needs to impose targeted sanctions against the Chinese regime over its crimes of forced organ harvesting in China, according to a religious freedom expert and former government official.

The United States must “step up a lot more and aggressively push back and sanction China for doing this practice,” Sam Brownback, who served as President Donald Trump’s ambassador-at-large for religious freedom, told The Epoch Times on the sidelines of the International Religious Freedom Summit on Jan. 30.

“Just think about what we’re talking about here—forced organ harvesting. You’re taking somebody’s organs from them and, in all likelihood, killing them. This is completely medieval.”

Mr. Brownback, who co-chaired the summit, said it is “really unbelievable” that these crimes are happening in the second-largest economy in the world.

China’s state-sanctioned practice of forced organ harvesting first gained global attention in 2006, following the publication of a report by David Matas, an international human rights lawyer, and the late David Kilgour, a former member of the Canadian Parliament. In 2019, the London-based China Tribunal concluded that forced organ harvesting targeting prisoners of conscience had taken place in China for years “on a significant scale,” with Falun Gong practitioners being the “principal source” of organs.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice that encourages its adherents to live a life guided by the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. Since 1999, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has waged a campaign of persecution against practitioners of the faith.

The CCP’s systematic harvesting of organs from Falun Gong practitioners as part of its brutal persecution has turned China into a top destination for international transplant tourism. Chinese hospitals often offer short waiting times for matching organs to patients—sometimes only days or weeks—that far outpace the times in developed countries with established organ donation systems.

Congress has taken up the issue in recent years. In 2016, the House unanimously passed a resolution expressing concerns about organ harvesting in China, and in March last year, the House passed the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act by a vote of 413–2. The Senate version of the House bill (S.761) has not been advanced after being introduced.

Currently, nothing on the CCP’s organ harvesting has reached the president’s desk.

“I think we fall short on actually using sanctions, actual economic sanctions on China. I think we fall short on not specifically citing to keep people in the decision-making process and sanctioning them as individuals under [Magnitsky-style] sanctions,” Mr. Brownback said.

The former ambassador said the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which became law in December 2021, should serve as a template for future legislation regarding the Chinese regime’s practice of forced organ harvesting.

“I think that the Forced Labor Act has been remarkably successful. And I think that the design of it should teach us something on other laws, very targeted, very specific, very condemning of what’s been taking place in this one particular region,” he said.

“And we need to do that same sort of thing with forced organ harvesting, and just very targeted, very specific, and condemning of this practice.”

‘Atrocious’

While rights groups and activists have been raising concerns about Beijing’s forced organ harvesting for years, experts see limited progress in curbing the abuses.

Frederick Davie, vice chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), told The Epoch Times at the summit that he thinks “there is probably a particular set of people who control the conversation about this in various areas.”

“Organ harvesting is atrocious; it is wrong. And it should never be tolerated in any society, much less a civilized society,” Mr. Davie said.

“There is no daylight for that horrific practice. And it has to be soundly condemned when and wherever it happens.”

On the House-passed organ harvesting bill, Mr. Davie said he doesn’t know “why a bill like that is stalled” in the Senate.

“What we will do as an agency is [conduct our own] investigation to try to understand that bill better, to understand if there’s a role for USCIRF in educating around that particular piece of legislation. And if there is, we will do that,” Mr. Davie said.

“If there’s a place for us to enter and try to advance or educate around that, then that’s what we would do.”

Americans and others around the world should be concerned about China’s crimes, according to Mr. Davie.

“A civilized world is at stake for everybody when abuses like that happen,” he said. “The United States and many nations around the world are committed to creating a world where people don’t have to live in fear for their lives and don’t have to be subjected to horrific and horrendous practices such as this.”

He cited a quote from civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr.: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

“That kind of horrific activity is simply a threat to civilized society,” Mr. Davie said.

On Jan. 18, the European Parliament adopted a resolution condemning the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. The resolution also called on the European Union and member states to impose sanctions against perpetrators of the crime.

David Curry, a USCIRF commissioner, told The Epoch Times at the summit that he supports targeted financial sanctions on individuals who run these “hideous operations.”

He said that the United States should find a way to “associate the sanctions on the personal level” to send a strong message to the people involved that they are ”perpetrating a crime.”