Many victims of the Chinese regime’s state-sanctioned practice are Falun Gong adherents.
A senior lawmaker on the House Foreign Affairs Committee has welcomed a decision by the State Department to add the issue of communist China’s practice of forced organ harvesting to its annual Trafficking in Persons report.
Speaking at a
congressional hearing on July 9, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), who is also the chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, said he was pleased to see a mention of forced organ harvesting in the
2024 report, which the State Department released on June 24.
The
report, which
calls attention to the communist regime’s crimes targeting certain individuals, reads: “Forced organ harvesting in China appears to be targeting specific ethnic, linguistic, or religious minorities held in detention, often without being explained the reasons for arrest or given arrest warrants, at different locations. We are deeply concerned by reports of discriminatory treatment of the prisoners or detainees based on their ethnicity and religion or belief.”
Many victims in China are Falun Gong adherents. The
China Tribunal, an independent people’s tribunal in London, concluded in 2019 that the regime had been forcibly harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience for years “on a substantial scale,” with Falun Gong practitioners being the “principal source” of organs.
Falun Gong, also known as
Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline that encourages its adherents to live by moral teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. By 1999, according to official estimates, at least 70 million people had taken up the practice.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) deemed the practice’s enormous popularity to be a threat to its control. Since 1999, the regime has waged a mass campaign of persecution against Falun Gong practitioners, using the state’s public security, legal, judicial, and military apparatuses. It has also used state-run media and social media to spread propaganda and disinformation designed to crush the practice and ruin the reputations of adherents.
The persecution continues today, and millions have been detained inside prisons, labor camps, and other facilities, with hundreds of thousands tortured while incarcerated and untold numbers killed, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center.
U.S.-based advocacy group Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH) has criticized the CCP for turning Chinese surgeons into “
executioners” for the state.
A 2022 study published in the American Journal of Transplantation found that 348 medical professionals or researchers had been involved in sustaining the Chinese regime’s lucrative organ transplant industry. Those individuals were co-authors of 71 Chinese-language papers revealing that doctors had carved out hearts and lungs from people for transplant without first conducting a test to establish brain death.
Legislation
During the hearing, Mr. Smith also discussed the legislation he introduced last year and how he “cannot get that out of the Senate.”“I have a bill H.R.1154, the Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2023. It
passed the House 413 to 2 in March ... last year,” he said. “This bill imposes property, passport, and visa-blocking sanctions on persons, individuals, and entities involved in forced organ harvesting, or trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal.”
The Senate version (
S.761) of the House bill hasn’t been advanced after being
introduced in March last year.
“Ethnic groups targeted for mass harvesting include Uyghurs—who suffer from [CCP leader] Xi Jinping’s ongoing genocide—and the Falun Gong, whose peaceful meditation and exercise practices—and exceptional good health—make their organs highly desirable,” Mr. Smith said, according to a
statement from his office issued after his bill was passed.
“State-sponsored forced organ harvesting is big business for Xi and the Chinese Communist Party and shows absolutely no signs of abating. We must act—decisively.”
Last month, the House
approved the bipartisan Falun Gong Protection Act (
H.R.4132) on a voice vote. The legislation would require the United States to impose sanctions on foreign individuals who “are knowingly responsible for, are complicit in, or have engaged in” the CCP’s practice of forced organ harvesting.
Levi Browde, executive director of the Falun Dafa Information Center, said it’s important for the Senate to follow in the House’s footsteps.
“This crucial bill will save lives, provide hope to Falun Gong practitioners still suffering in China, curtail forced organ harvesting there, and help American medical centers and patients avoid complicity in this heinous crime,” Mr. Browde said in a
statement.
“We urge the Senate to introduce and pass a companion bill as soon as possible, and for President [Joe] Biden to sign the bill into law.”
