Canada’s United Nations representative has criticized China for its persecution of Falun Gong practitioners along with its other various human rights abuses during a recent human rights record peer review session.
Leslie Norton, Canada’s ambassador and permanent representative of Canada to the United Nations in Geneva, put forth several recommendations regarding human rights in China. Among them was the call for the communist regime to “end all forms of enforced disappearances, targeting human rights defenders, ethnic minorities, and Falun Gong practitioners.”
Ms. Norton made the comments on Jan. 23, during the
China review session at the U.N. Universal Periodic Review (UPR). The UPR is
a mechanism of the Human Rights Council, mandating each U.N. member state to undergo a peer review of its human rights records roughly every four years.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice rooted in Buddhist traditions that involves meditative exercises and moral teachings based on the tenets of “truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.” For the past 24 years, practitioners of this discipline have been consistently targeted by brutal persecution initiated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong involves some of the most inhumane tactics, including torture, sexual abuse, and the widely condemned practice of forced organ harvesting, as outlined in a
report by the Falun Dafa Association of Canada released
last October.
The report also documents
numerous instances in Canada where individuals or entities engaged in physical and verbal assault, intimidation, harassment, and social exclusion of Falun Gong practitioners.
During the U.N. peer review, Ms. Norton also raised concerns about Beijing’s “increasing extraterritorial repression” of human rights defenders.
Organ Harvesting
The CCP’s practice of forced organ harvesting gained public attention through a study conducted by Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas and former Canadian Secretary of State and human rights activist David Kilgour. Their investigation began after a March 2006 testimony from a Chinese woman living in Washington, D.C., who disclosed that her former husband had extracted corneas from Falun Gong practitioners at a Sujiatun hospital in Liaoning Province, China.While the Chinese authorities denied the allegations, Mr. Kilgour and Mr. Matas concluded in their report, “
Bloody Harvest,“ that the source of 41,500 transplants in China from 2000 to 2005 could not be accounted for. They suggested that ”the only explanation for the sourcing was Falun Gong practitioners.”
Later, they collaborated with investigative journalist Ethan Gutmann to publish “
Bloody Harvest/The Slaughter: An Update“ in 2016. In this updated report, the authors estimated that between 60,000 and 100,000 transplants, involving the use of forced organ harvesting, were conducted each year in Chinese hospitals.
Speaking at
a U.N. conference in Geneva on Jan. 22, Mr. Matas highlighted growing international recognition and criticisms of the CCP’s organ harvesting. This includes
a joint statement from U.N. human rights experts in June 2021, expressing alarm over reports of “organ harvesting” targeting both ethnic and religious minorities such as Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, and Christians detained in China.
Mr. Matas also highlighted
a joint letter from 107 experts and organizations issued before the 2024 UPR. Citing academic research, the letter said the CCP’s continuous persecution of Falun Gong practitioners constitutes a “Cold Genocide.”
The experts urged all U.N. member states to scrutinize China’s human rights record during the peer review session. Additionally, the experts called for the establishment of a special rapporteur on forced organ harvesting of living prisoners of conscience in China and an International Criminal Tribunal for Forced Organ Harvesting in China.
“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a cornerstone of global ethics, underscores the inviolability of human life and the security of the individual,” the letter stated. “These principles are not mere political positions, they are fundamental rights that every citizen of the world inherently deserves.”
