Medical Groups Launch Petition Urging Countries to Act Against Communist China’s Forced Organ Harvesting

A banner calling for the end of forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China is displayed as practitioners demonstrate the spiritual practice's meditation, next to the United Nations in New York City on Sept. 20, 2023. (Chung I Ho/The Epoch Times)

Two medical ethics groups have launched a petition calling on the G7 and several other countries to take action against the Chinese communist regime’s crimes of forced organ harvesting from living prisoners of conscience, particularly Falun Gong practitioners.

Washington-based Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH) and the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC) said in a statement on July 22 that their petition is aimed at breaking through “the great wall of silence built by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) around the atrocity of [forced organ harvesting].”

“After more than two decades of killing Falun Gong practitioners for organs in an unrelenting genocide by attrition, we are faced with an urgent matter of conscience: will we remain silent and embolden the perpetrator in Beijing, or will we take a courageous stand and say firmly that no human being should be killed for his or her organs, and no country, including China, should be allowed to get away with this crime against humanity,” DAFOH Executive Director Dr. Torsten Trey said in a statement.

“For human dignity to prevail in this world, we must stop forced organ harvesting now.”

Allegations of forced organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners detained in concentration camps first emerged in 2006, seven years after the CCP launched a nationwide campaign to eradicate the faith group out of fear that the practice’s popularity would threaten its authoritarian rule.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, was introduced to the Chinese public in 1992. The practice consists of slow, meditative exercises and moral teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. According to official estimates, at least 70 million people had taken up the practice by 1999.

The persecution has continued unabated to this day, 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.

Since 2015, Beijing has claimed to procure organs from voluntary donors only, but investigators have since rejected the claim. A 2019 study published in the scientific journal BMC Medical Ethics found compelling evidence that the Chinese regime had falsified organ donation data.

Also in 2019, the London-based China Tribunal concluded that the regime had been forcibly harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience for years “on a substantial scale,” with Falun Gong practitioners being the primary source of organs.

The CCP has been wielding its economic and diplomatic power to stifle people from speaking out about forced organ harvesting. In an interview last year with NTD, a sister media outlet of The Epoch Times, Dr. Trey said the CCP had started a “sophisticated network of influence” to prevent information related to the crimes from reaching the public.

Aside from the G7, the petition also calls on Argentina, Australia, India, Israel, Mexico, South Korea, and Taiwan to take action to address the issue.

Governments should “issue a joint declaration condemning the [People’s Republic of China’s] practice of forced organ harvesting, calling for its immediate end and an implementation of an intergovernmental action plan,” the petition states.

The action plan should include measures to protect citizens from getting transplants in China, ban any exchange in transplant-related practices with the country, and initiate annual parliamentary hearings, according to the petition.

Moreover, the petition calls for the start of “investigations to determine accountability for any acts contrary to the provisions of the Genocide Convention committed against Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, and others in the PRC.”

“The world must stop turning a blind eye to the crimes against humanity occurring in China. Innocent prisoners of conscience have been, and continue to be, killed for their organs to be used for transplantation,” Wendy Rogers, a distinguished professor from Australia’s Macquarie University and chair of ETAC’s International Advisory Board, said in a statement.

“The G7 have the chance to show leadership on this issue; I urge them to act.”