(Minghui.org) “Prisoners of conscience such as Falun Gong practitioners, Uighurs and Christians are killed for their organs. This makes me sick. I don’t want to talk about it, but I need to make people aware of it,” said Mr. Hans Noot, Chairman of the Gerard Noodt Foundation for Freedom of Religion or Belief and a member of Human Rights Without Frontiers in Brussels, Belgium. 

Mr. Noot made these remarks at a symposium in advance of the 2021 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Utrecht, Netherlands on October 2, 2021.

Mr. Han Steijnebrugh, former Dutch ambassador to the Parliament of the World’s Religions, hosted the meeting. Mr. Jos Douma, Special Envoy for Religion and Belief for the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and a number of other religious representatives attended the meeting.

Local Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) practitioners participated in the symposium and gave a presentation. They talked about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) persecution of their faith, including the regime’s torture and forced organ harvesting of living practitioners. They also introduced the spiritual practice of Falun Gong and demonstrated the five sets of exercises. 

Symposium participants learn the Falun Gong exercises.Mr. Hans Noot (middle), Chairman of the Gerard Noodt Foundation for Freedom of Religion or Belief, tries the exercises.

Organ Harvesting Is Evil 

Mr. Noot said, “Those organ purchasers, sales staff, and related medical practitioners deprive them [Falun Gong practitioners] of their personal freedom and humanity. The perpetrators [of this atrocity] are inhuman. It is the worst thing that can be done to people. Organ harvesting is evil.

“In the West, we should know about this [the CCP’s organ harvesting], but we don’t know,” said Mr. Noot. He feels that Western finance and economies are deeply entrenched in business with China, such that people don’t want to talk about organ harvesting and don’t want to hear what is really hidden behind this economic model.

Noot pointed out that China’s current economic issues have made the West reflect, and he hopes that more people may become aware of the regime’s forced organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience. 

Live Organ Harvesting Is Devastating

“What I heard today is devastating. It is really devastating,” said Mr. Han Steijnebrugh, former Dutch ambassador to the Parliament of the World’s Religions. Although he’d heard about the CCP’s organ harvesting while he worked at the European Parliament in Brussels, he was appalled by the extent of this human rights violation.

“We are aware of the Canadian investigation into the live organ harvesting allegations [referring to the report by David Kilgour, former Secretary of State for the Asia-Pacific, and David Matas, international human rights lawyer, who carried out an independent investigation of the CCP’s involvement in harvesting organs from living prisoners of conscience, the majority of whom are Falun Gong practitioners in China]. This matter, however, is not widely recognized. The entire Western world seems to be blind to it. The only explanation is money, because China is a big trading partner,” said Mr. Steijnebrugh, “but this is so blatant and terrible. I can’t understand why it goes on.”

Mr. Jos Douma, Special Envoy for Religion and Belief of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, pointed out, “China’s human rights situation is very bad. Of course, it is not a democratic country but controlled by one party. In a country with a one-party dictatorship, everyone has to have the same tendency. This tendency, as we see now, violates core human rights.”

Background: What Is Falun Gong?

Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) was first introduced to the public by Mr. Li Hongzhi in Changchun, China, in 1992. The spiritual discipline is now practiced in over 100 countries and regions worldwide. Millions of people who have embraced the teachings—which are based on the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance—and learned the five exercises have experienced improved health and well-being.

Jiang Zemin, former head of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), perceived the spiritual discipline’s growing popularity as a threat to the CCP’s atheistic ideology and on July 20, 1999, issued an order to ban the practice.

Under Jiang’s personal direction, the CCP established the 610 Office, an extralegal security organization with the power to override the police and judicial systems and whose sole function is to carry out the persecution of Falun Dafa.

Minghui.org has confirmed the deaths of thousands of practitioners as a result of the persecution over the past 22 years, though due to the difficulty of getting information out of China, the actual number is believed to be much higher. More have been imprisoned and tortured for their faith.

There is concrete evidence that the CCP sanctions the harvesting of organs from detained practitioners, who are murdered to supply the organ transplant industry.