Falun Gong practitioners take part in a parade marking the 22nd year of the persecution of Falun Gong in China, in Brooklyn, N.Y., on July 18, 2021. Chung I Ho/The Epoch Times
Rights groups have launched a campaign called the “#NotFromChina Pledge” in a bid to end China’s industrial-scale murder of prisoners of conscience for their organs.
The campaign, which began on Dec. 8, involves a personal commitment not to receive an organ transplant from China should one become ill, to avoid inadvertently aiding the regime’s grisly practice of organ harvesting.
“It is an abomination that today in the 21st century, innocent individuals, including prisoners of conscience, are killed to harvest their organs for profit,” said Andrew Bremberg, president of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC), a Washington-based advocacy group.
The rights groups have called on people to take the pledge to “help put an end to China’s billion-dollar murder-for-organs industry.”
In 2019, the China Tribunal, an independent people’s tribunal, concluded that the Chinese regime has been committing forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience for years, and on a substantial scale.
The tribunal’s final judgment (pdf) stated that it was “certain” the organs are being sourced from imprisoned Falun Gong adherents and that they’re “probably the principal source.” Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice whose adherents have been systematically persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since 1999.
Mounting evidence also suggests that Uyghurs and other persecuted minorities in northwest China are also victims of organ harvesting, along with Tibetans and House Christians, according to the campaign’s website.
Falun Gong demonstrators dramatize an illegal act of paying for human organs during a protest in Washington, in conjunction with a visit by Chinese leader Hu Jintao to the United States, on April 19, 2006. JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images
Organ harvesting is a lucrative business for the CCP. During a Nov. 29 hearing before the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights, Geoffrey Nice, who chaired the China Tribunal, said the Chinese regime could obtain up to half a million dollars from each victim’s body.
Experts have estimated that 60,000 to 100,000 transplants take place in China every year, far exceeding the regime’s official figure of 10,000. Organs for those additional transplants are predominantly sourced from prisoners of conscience, they said.
The CCP has repeatedly denied this practice.
“The free world cannot stand by as the Chinese Communist Party continues to lie about this widespread practice in China blatantly,” Bremberg said. “We call on all people of goodwill to personally commit to ending this horrific practice by committing not to receive an organ transplant from China.”
In June, a dozen human rights experts affiliated with the United Nations expressed alarm at what they said were credible allegations of forced organ harvesting at the hands of China’s communist regime, targeting Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims, and Christians held in detention. The experts included special rapporteurs to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and members of a working group on arbitrary detention.
The pledge campaign drew inspiration from the Taiwan International Religious Freedom Forum in 2019, when China Aid organized more than 70 politicians, activists, and religious leaders to sign a pledge not to receive organ transplants from China.
“It was magical in Taiwan when we all took the pledge,” said Bob Fu, president of China Aid.
“I am thrilled that this initiative is now going global as it will strengthen our movement and send a clear message to China that they cannot hide this crime any longer.”
