(Minghui.org) On September 19, 2021, the third day of the World Summit on Combating and Preventing Forced Organ Harvesting, government leaders and lawmakers from the U.S., U.K., France, Sweden, and Spain unanimously condemned and called for an end to the Chinese Communist Party’s state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience, with Falun Gong practitioners being the main target. They called on the international community to work together to end the atrocity, and stand united in advocating for the global adoption of accepted human values and ethical norms.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, former Health Minister of the U.K., said during the summit that “Organ donation is a precious act of saving a life, but forced organ harvesting is commercialized murder and without a doubt, among the worst of crimes.”
With his strong advocacy, Lord Hunt was successful in driving changes to the medical laws in the U.K. In June 2020, he introduced an amendment to the Medicines and Medical Devices Bill. With strong support from his colleagues, it was passed at the upper chamber on January 12, 2021 and became law on January 27, after passing the lower chamber. It was the first piece of U.K. legislation to fight against forced organ harvesting by ensuring that no medicine in the U.K. could include human tissues from victims of forced organ harvesting. He hopes the legislation can set a precedent for further action in the U.K. and around the world.
In May 2021, Lord Hunt introduced another Private Members Bill “Organ Tourism and Cadavers on Display Bill,” serving to further protect U.K. citizens from complicity in forced organ harvesting in two ways.
“First, by ensuring U.K. citizens cannot travel to countries such as China for organ transplantation. Second, to put a stop to the dreadful traveling circus of body exhibitions which sources deceased bodies from China.”
Lord Hunt said that “Spain, Italy, Taiwan, Israel, Belgium, Norway, and South Korea have already taken legislative action to prevent organ tourism in China… International government action must continue. It is all our duty to act when we see innocent people falling victim to such dreadful crimes.”
Ms. Ann-Sofie Alm, Member of Swedish Parliament and Member of Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), said that “The Chinese Communist Party’s rule has decimated Chinese culture and tradition. There is no free speech or freedom of belief in China and information is strongly controlled and censored. The Chinese regime is openly aiming for world domination by waging a silent war using information, technology, and money, lots of money.”
She said that in order to retain its power, the CCP uses various ways to persecute its people, such as the genocide against Uyghurs and Falun Dafa practitioners. This horrific persecution has been going on for decades and is still continuing.
“In China…. there are no waiting times for organs. You can even call a hospital and order a heart at a time that is convenient to your travel schedule. If you are willing to pay extra, you can even get a healthier organ, such as a fresh and healthy heart from a Falun Dafa practitioner,” she noted.
She said she was horrified after reading the report from the China Tribunal about the forced organ harvesting. It’s something she can’t forget or keep silent about. “The world needs to know about these cruel and evil human rights abuses that the Communist Party of China is subjecting its people to.”
MP Alm said the CCP had tried to silence her through intimidation. “But they cannot, because I am not alone. Sweden, like the rest of the world, is waking up now and dares to face the reality. The Swedish government, parliament, firms, businesses and our people are beginning to wake up to see what is happening in China. This awareness is growing every day, from country to country, from parliament to parliament, from fellow human being to fellow human being. It is with knowledge that we can and will change this.”
She suggested that with this knowledge, the world can make a change and “call[ed] on the EU and the US and all other representatives and communities in the free world to stand up for human rights in China, and stop the illegal, inhumane trade of human organs from prisoners of conscience in China.”
Françoise Hostalier, French MP and former Minister of Education, expressed concern that organ trafficking “may one day affect people around us or even ourselves. I am talking about organ transplantation and the risk of being caught up in trafficking without knowing it.”
“In our societies based on the respect of humanistic values, how can we imagine what is happening in China? How can we imagine that in a country, at the state level, organ trafficking can be organized from living people who obviously do not consent? This is beyond our comprehension.”
She noted that the demand for organ transplant in China has begun to grow in the 1990s, when organs were taken from death row prisoners. With the further advancement of scientific technology, “many possibilities for using human material became available, it became more practical to have a ‘herd of healthy, living humans’ on hand, ‘available’ for very lucrative operations.”
In the CCP’s search for new organ sources, the Chinese people are being “persecuted, imprisoned, tortured, and used a reservoir for organ harvesting, on the pretext that they are of another ethnic group than the dominant one, such as Tibetans or Uyghurs, or that they have spiritual practices contrary to communism, such as Falun Gong followers.”
She urged the scientific community to open their eyes to the risks of engagement with China. “There is a great risk that our researchers, doctors, laboratories, industrialists, and students, through scientific or economic exchanges, will find themselves complicit in the inhuman and criminal practices of their Chinese counterparts, which are contrary to all ethics, but without being aware of it!”
André Gattolin, French Senator and Co-Chair of IPAC, shared that IPAC was making significant progress against the “increasingly repressive and invasive policies” of and the “increasingly flagrant violation of human rights and international law” by the Chinese regime in Beijing.
“To question the forced removal of organs in China is obviously to expose oneself to scathing and outraged denials and sometimes even to threats of commercial or political retaliation from Beijing.” As a result, the appalling “diplomacy of silence” is prevalent in France.
He felt that the lack of awareness by many Western parliamentarians of China’s forced organ harvesting was due to Beijing’s obscuration, censorship, and intimidation of those who expose its transplant practices. He opined that the majority of French people are reluctant to talk about organ transplantation, which is “almost taboo in our society,” and there is a lack of sympathy among the French people as Beijing has used propaganda to mislead them with a false negative image of Falun Gong.
He said that personally for him, it was only in 2018 that he realized the seriousness of the issue during a Senate symposium. “We then started to discuss the political ways to put in place so as to fight against this appalling situation.”
He proposed to “put this issue on the international media and political agenda. China’s authoritarian drift and its increasing infringement of international law are leading Western leaders to abandon the blindness and naivety they have shown towards this country until now.”
Senator Gattolin felt that “our scientific and medical cooperation must absolutely be rethought. Collaboration in these fields raises essential ethical questions and can only be carried out in a spirit of reciprocity, responsibility and high standards.”
He concluded, “The EU must also now take very concrete action to denounce all the flagrant and repeated violations of human dignity and fundamental rights perpetrated by the Chinese regime, at the risk of becoming an accomplice.”
Steve Chabot, U.S. Congressman and Senior Member on Foreign Affairs Committee, stressed the importance of raising awareness of this atrocity. He said, “Although many of us have been fighting the evil practice of forced organ harvesting for some time now, the public overall is mostly unaware of this horrific practice, much less than it occurs on a vast scale.”
He said the “Chinese Communist Party’s most fundamental challenge to the free world is in the area of human rights. The PRC [People’s Republic of China] under communist leadership is engaged in one of the most barbaric practices in human history – forced organ harvesting – to bring health and wealth to the CCP and its cronies. Sadly, the sheer scope and scale of the organ harvesting in China truly breathtaking. According to well-known estimates, 60,000 to 100,000 organ transplants occur each year in the PRC, most of which are the result of forced organ harvesting. The principal sources of the organs used in these transplants are Falun Gong practitioners. This despicable practice allows China to maintain a virtual on demand organ transplant regime, which is unheard of even in the most developed countries.
“Over the past several years, however, the evidence that has become increasingly clear that the PRC is engaged in state sponsored organ harvesting. In 2019, the China Tribunal released its final judgment documenting widespread and systematic human rights abuses against the Falun Gong practitioners in China. The important practices documented by the China Tribunal echo the findings of other recent efforts to document these horrific abuses. Taken together, these reports make clear that the CCP’s view of human rights stands in direct opposition to nearly every other nation in the civilized world.”
“The CCP believes that individuals exist to serve the state and the Party. Therefore, the CCP has no concern about harvesting organs from individuals who they deem undesirable despite each person’s intrinsic right to life. Because the CCP’s worldview is fundamentally at odds with that of the free world. They are trying to protect their values by undermining ours at every turn.”
Congressman Chabot concluded that “a world that conforms to the values of the CCP is one in which those who don't toe the party line can be put in a concentration camp or have their organs harvested. That’s a vision for a world that nobody wants to live in. And that’s the vision of the world that we are all fighting against.”
John Hoffman, the State Senator of Minnesota, said, “Leaders of all levels of government in every country have a responsibility to ensure such violations of human rights cease and that everyone has the opportunity to live free of the terror that is forced, and that is part of forced organ harvesting.”
He said he was shaken to the core upon learning about China’s live forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience. “Forced organ harvesting is truly a monstrous practice that is difficult to conceive even exists until it is brought before you. The idea that there are those that take someone’s life and treat them like parts for pay or favors, still leaves me horrified.”
While working to bring awareness on the issue in his own state, he met some obstacles – due to the economic ties the CCP has with many nations, the international community has largely stayed silent in the face of such horrific actions, preventing more people from knowing what’s happening.
He noted that he was encouraged to see organizations such as Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH) are working to “provide the medical community and society with objective findings of unethical and illegal organ harvesting, which protect ethical standards to preserve human dignity.”
With more information put forth by DAFOH, “it will build a wave that cannot be stopped by financial interests – a wave that is about human dignity and human rights. I have hope that with perseverance and with strength of the truth, we can all come together to end forced organ harvesting for good.”
Hermann Tertsch del Valle-Lersundi, Member of the European Parliament and Member of the Foreign Affairs and Environment Committees of the European Parliament, remarked that the European parliamentarians are very concerned about the unacceptable, cruel and tragic topic of live organ harvesting. It is well known that live organ harvesting is taking place in China under the Chinese communist regime’s dictatorship, with Falun Gong practitioners being one of the most affected groups.
MP Tertsch said that in a country ruled by the CCP, the dictators do not allow any voice of dissent. There is no freedom of speech. And the CCP despises human life and freedom while tolerating the horrific crime of organ harvesting with impunity.
He berated the West over its silence about China’s transplant abuses. He said that it is “considerations of immediate economic interests that lead these Western elites to be complicit with the Chinese Communist Party, with the regime of the People's Republic of China, to hide the monstrosity of the transplants, which are taking away, we do not know how many thousands of political prisoners, of common prisoners, of people from the Falun Gong movement, of dissidents.”
He concluded, “We are in a situation full of uncertainties in the world but there are a few certainties that we must always be very clear about: if we want to maintain our aspiration for a dignified life we have to fight against cruelty and injustice such as the monstrosity of forced transplants, we have to fight whoever perpetrates them. We must unite to raise our voices and tell the People’s Republic of China, tell the Chinese dictator, and tell all the allies of this Chinese dictator, that this is intolerable and that enough is enough.”