The Dangers of Upcoming Policy Changes at the WHO (Part 2)

A World Health Organization (WHO) logo at their office in Beijing on April 19, 2013. Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images

Commentary

While Russia is militarily active, the World Health Organization (WHO) has to resort to contracts and policies to be active. China is again the passive player in the background but not inactive.

Under the new WHO regulations, to be voted on at the end of May, another virus outbreak on U.S. soil would trigger the full extent of the newly passed pandemic prevention treaty, and this would be the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) scissor cut to the United States via the WHO as a proxy. Was the Wuhan virus outbreak a sacrificial pawn with the purpose of activating the WHO to encircle the United States? A pawn sacrifice is a move in chess, which is tremendously popular in Russia; encirclement is the key strategy in the Chinese game “Go.”

With the proposed changes to its policies, the WHO could impose forced vaccinations, forced medical testing, forced DNA tests, and forced medical examinations on all member states. If a health emergency is declared shortly before a national election, the director-general would potentially have the power to influence presidential elections. He or she could impose surveillance and geo-tracking, and the data would lie in the hands of the WHO—and its private donors. Surveillance data of U.S. citizens could easily end up in the hands of the CCP. It has never been so easy for the CCP to get detailed information about Americans.

The U.S. Congress has to ask: Do we have reciprocal access to surveillance data for Chinese citizens? Why would we give away national sovereignty and universal human rights? With the new WHO policies, the CCP is in the backyard of every American.

According to the new policies, the power of defining a health risk includes not only real threats but also potential threats: In other words, the director-general could declare anything as a potential risk to the health of the people. This could apply to environmental problems, climate change, obesity, abortion or a ban thereof, or social problems. If the director-general defines gun violence as a “health risk,” he or she could impose measures to disarm people, and if a religious group such as Christians is declared a potential risk to the mental health of the people, the director-general could potentially impose restrictions or detainment.

For the CCP, it would be a dream come true: The CCP would convince the director-general that the spiritual practice of Falun Gong is a risk to the mental health of the people and request the enforcement of a total ban, and there would be no measure to appeal. A political bias in the position of the director-general equipped with the unlimited power of the International Health Regulations (IHR) of 2005 and the pandemic prevention treaty could turn any political agenda into a potential risk to the world’s people, and there wouldn’t be a single mechanism to prevent any overreach.

Although the WHO speaks of an advisory board to balance opinions, that same board has only a few members, and, as shown in the recent monkeypox health assessment, the director-general can overrule the majority of the advisory board, which had advised against declaring monkeypox a global public health emergency. In other words, the director-general holds near-absolute control over what constitutes a health risk. Worldwide.

When the WHO recommended the vaccines against COVID-19, it did so with authoritarian power: The vaccine is good, and criticism is disinformation. However, in March, the WHO corrected its previous position, and the WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization now say they no longer recommend the COVID-19 vaccine for “healthy” children aged 6 months to 17 years. If the WHO hadn’t dismissed doctors’ concerns as disinformation, this insight could have been communicated much earlier. Centralization of health responses might not always be in the best interest of patients. Then why give the WHO such power? Is it really worthwhile to give up our sovereignty for a centralized WHO mandate if the WHO decisions provide a worse outcome?

On a separate note: If equipped with such totalitarian power, wouldn’t the election of the next director-general become a voting process that would be heavily exposed to risks of corruption with tremendous amounts of funding pouring into the WHO? The WHO would lose its neutral mission; it would risk becoming partisan. Adopting the new policies could end up in a “health race,” similar to the arms race during the Cold War. Objective decisions in the best interests of the people would suffer.

The new amendments to the IHR become binding and, at the same time, annihilate human rights under the premise that a pandemic justifies the suppression of the human rights of the individual for the greater good of the people, which is nothing more than sacrificing constitutional freedoms to totalitarian control. The new amendments have deleted the line “full respect for dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of persons.”

But who would really be interested in abandoning universal human rights? Authoritarian regimes. Chinese leader Xi Jinping doesn’t seem to hold the Western concept of human rights in high esteem. In Xi’s view, human rights should belong in the hands of the government, and the care of the people should be centralized. Of course, the government can resort to authoritarian measures against the people, and the individual person thus has no rights. This is the view of the Chinese communist leader and the newly intended structure of the WHO.

In other words, passing the WHO amendments and treaty equates to handing over “intrusive power” and the possibility of incursions on our sovereignty to billionaires, companies, and an enemy state of the United States. Countries would have to surrender to private interests.

Now, what’s the problem here? The danger lies in the absolute power to declare a health emergency without the possibility of intervention. And the channels that could intervene—thousands of independently thinking, trained medical doctors—are censored under the excuse of disinformation.

Put the WHO and Its Policies to the Test

At this point, we should put the WHO to the test. The WHO speaks of a “One Health” approach. Is the WHO really committed to fighting health risks and promoting the health of the people? Let’s cut to the chase.

Falun Gong is a spiritual discipline based on the key principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance—that sounds pretty sane and healthy. The discipline includes five exercises in the tradition of qigong—that sounds pretty healthy for the body. In 1999, about 100 million Chinese were practicing Falun Gong—this suggests that many people considered this practice to be helpful and beneficial to them.

In July 1999, Chinese leader Jiang Zemin arbitrarily banned Falun Gong and started a brutal persecution campaign. This included labor camps and torture, resulting in death, and, eventually, we learned about forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners. Since 1999, an undisclosed number, likely more than a million, of Falun Gong practitioners have been killed for their organs.

Whether one frames this as a political domestic affair or not, killing living people for their organs isn’t contributing to the people’s health. Forced organ harvesting from living people is a practice that doesn’t fit under the One Health approach. Or to say it in the terms and definitions of the WHO: People are “dying” through forced organ harvesting; thus, it should be considered a health risk.

But what has the WHO done to stop this health risk? Between 2012 and 2018, Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH) organized an informal global petition asking the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights to call upon China to end the practice of forced organ harvesting. DAFOH collected more than 3 million signatures in more than 50 countries and regions and met with representatives of the commissioner’s office on three occasions to deliver the signatures. It appears that no significant action has followed.

In 2019, the China Tribunal, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice KC, came to the unanimous conclusion that forced organ harvesting occurred in China after conducting a year-long review of all available information. Hamid Sabi, counsel to the China Tribunal, addressed the U.N. Human Rights Council on Sept. 24, 2019, and informed the council of the tribunal’s conclusion and judgment about forced organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners and others in China. Again, it appears that no significant action has followed.

Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.) speaks during the meeting for legislative business regarding HR 1154—Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2023 in Washington on Mar. 27, 2023, in a still from a video. The House of Representatives/Screenshot via NTD

In 2021, 12 U.N. special rapporteurs and experts published a statement in which they raised concerns about forced organ harvesting in China. The U.S. Congress has passed several resolutions acknowledging that forced organ harvesting in China has to stop. Most notably H.R. 343 in 2016 and the bill H.R. 1154 in 2023. The European Parliament adopted resolutions against forced organ harvesting in 2013, 2016, and 2022. Countries such as Israel, Canada, and Taiwan have passed laws to respond to the crime of forced organ harvesting. Following the criteria of the genocide convention, scholars found the persecution to be a “cold genocide.” But what has the WHO done to stop the transplant abuse in China?

It appears that the WHO didn’t recognize the concerns about forced organ harvesting in China that were raised by so many different independent investigators. The WHO didn’t organize hearings to invite those independent investigators. The WHO didn’t organize independent investigations in China, something that the WHO would likely do if there were an Ebola outbreak in an African country, despite the number of deaths through forced organ harvesting in China.

Instead, the WHO has invited Huang Jiefu, China’s former vice minister of health, under whose tenure the practice of forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners started and expanded, to be a member of the WHO Task Force on Donation and Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues (pdf). Why would the WHO do that?

To the WHO: Is the forced organ harvesting of more than a million living Falun Gong practitioners not a health catastrophe? Why did the WHO not call upon China to stop this human disaster? What did the WHO do over the past 23 years to investigate transplant abuse in China? If the WHO were really concerned about the health of the people in the world, why did it not try to save the lives of those who are subject to forced organ harvesting?

The way that the WHO responds to forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Christians, and other people in China is the litmus test for the WHO’s true intent to establish a One Health agenda in the world.

If the WHO is selective in defining what’s a health threat and what’s not, then the WHO is just a marionette in the hands of its private donors.

After 23 years of forced organ harvesting and international attention by parliaments, officials, investigators, and evidence that has been reviewed by the China Tribunal, it’s justified to ask the WHO for immediate action. If the WHO isn’t calling out China for forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners and others before the World Health Assembly votes on the pandemic prevention treaty, then one can see clearly the bias within the WHO.

As long as China continues its practice of forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners and others, China’s signing of the WHO pandemic prevention treaty and the amendments to the IHR is a deception and a hoax. If the WHO doesn’t protect the lives of tens and hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners of conscience, then what are the WHO treaty and the amendments really about? If One Health is the WHO’s agenda, then ending forced organ harvesting wherever it occurs, including China, has to be part of it. If the WHO ignores this atrocious crime against humanity, then what’s the purpose of the treaty and the amendments? Gaining power under the pretext of health?

The United States would be better off immediately leaving the WHO until the WHO has recalibrated itself. We have to refrain from signing the WHO pandemic prevention treaty and the amendments of the IHR and withdraw our membership from the WHO immediately. Once the CCP fails to set up its WHO “scissor trap,” the people will see the CCP for what it is: a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

President Ronald Reagan made history when he said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”

Today, the U.S. Congress can write history and protect the sovereignty of the United States by tearing down the U.S. membership in the WHO. Several congressmen have proposed legislative measures linked to the debt ceiling that could help the United States to pull out of the WHO until better times. Congress should do its due diligence to ensure U.S. independence and protect the freedom of U.S. citizens.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.