The Chinese regime’s forced organ harvesting from political prisoners was referenced in an annual report on human trafficking.
The U.S. State Department called out China’s communist regime over reports of forced organ harvesting in its latest submission on human trafficking.
The 2024
report, released on June 24, placed China among 13 nations as “Tier 3” countries, meaning that governments had a documented “policy or pattern” of human trafficking. For the Chinese regime, in particular, the report said it “has been accused of systematically forcibly removing organs from political prisoners.”
“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,” the report reads, quoting from a joint statement from by a group of United Nations human rights experts in 2021.
The 2021
statement, released by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), said the experts were “extremely alarmed by reports of alleged ‘organ harvesting’ targeting minorities, including Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims, and Christians, in detention in China.”
The experts, which included special rapporteurs, came to such an opinion based on what the OHCHR said was “credible information” that certain categories of detainees in China were being forcibly subjected to blood tests and organ examinations without their consent.
“The results of the examinations are reportedly registered in a database of living organ sources that facilitates organ allocation,” the U.N. agency wrote.
“We are deeply concerned by reports of discriminatory treatment of the prisoners or detainees based on their ethnicity and religion or belief,” the experts
said.
There has been a large amount of evidence surrounding the Chinese regime’s state-sanctioned practice of removing organs from incarcerated victims, who are mostly Falun Gong practitioners.
For example, in 2019, the
China Tribunal, an independent people’s tribunal in London, concluded that the Chinese 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 human organs.
The tribunal, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC who previously led the prosecution of former Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic at the International Criminal Tribunal,
found that blood testing and medical testing—particularly on Falun Gong and Uyhgur detainees—“is highly suggestive of methods used to assess organ function.”
Falun Gong
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline introduced to the Chinese public in 1992. It encourages its adherents to live by 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), which deemed Falun Gong’s popularity as a threat to its political power, launched a nationwide persecution campaign in July 1999 aimed at crushing the practice. Since then, 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.
Earlier this month, David Matas, an international human rights expert, estimated that the Chinese regime may be earning about
$8.9 billion a year from its practice of forced organ harvesting.
China has long been one of the top destinations for organ transplants, where hospitals regularly offer short wait times for patients to procure matching organs.
The issue came under the spotlight in Delaware on June 20, when the state’s House
unanimously passed a concurrent resolution (
HCR143). The
resolution called on lawmakers to encourage the state’s medical community to “educate Delawareans about the risks of travel to China for organ transplants [and] to help prevent Delaware residents from unwittingly becoming involved in the murder in the form of forced organ harvesting prisoners of conscience.”
The House is scheduled to vote on the
Falun Gong Protection Act (
H.R. 4132) on June 25. 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.
Falun Dafa Information Center took to social media X, formerly Twitter, on June 24, urging people to contact their House representatives to “vote YES” on the legislation.
“If passed, this will be the 1st time in 25 years that Falun Gong is the centerpiece of a bill,” the center
wrote.
