‘Forced organ harvesting is an atrocity,’ lawmakers wrote in a letter condemning the illicit organ trade in China.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers is urging the Biden administration to seek firsthand evidence to help stop the illicit organ trade in China, where the communist regime is reportedly killing prisoners of conscience to sustain its transplant industry.
“Forced organ harvesting is an atrocity and the disruption and deterrence of this practice should be a priority of the State Department,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter addressed to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, dated May 3, as reported by The Epoch Times in March before its release.
The group—led by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), the chair, and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the ranking member of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC)—requested that Mr. Blinken use the State Department’s rewards programs to obtain firsthand evidence to hold those responsible for Beijing’s forced organ harvesting accountable.
Under the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) watch, the practice of forcibly harvesting vital organs from living individuals for profit has grown into a flourishing industry, according to extensive research and evidence that has emerged over the past decade-and-a-half.
In 2019, an independent tribunal in London concluded, after a year-long investigation, that forced organ harvesting had taken place in China for years “on a significant scale” and that such an atrocity constituted a crime against humanity.
The main victims, the tribunal found, are imprisoned practitioners of Falun Gong, a meditative discipline that has been subjected to sweeping persecution campaigns by the regime since 1999. Its final judgment, released in March 2020 and including 300 pages of witness testimony and submissions, found “no evidence of the practice having been stopped.”
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Despite the “impressive amount of testimony amassed” by the independent tribunal, the group of lawmakers stated that “there has been no effort to seek evidence on individuals complicit in forced organ harvesting or the organ trafficking industry” by using rewards programs at the State Department.
The State Department offered rewards of up to $5 million for information leading to an arrest, transfer, or conviction of “designated foreign nationals accused of crimes against humanity, genocide, or war crimes,” according to the website of the Global Criminal Justice Rewards program.
Other bounty programs at the department include the long-running Rewards for Justice, which aims to gather information that “protects American lives and furthers U.S. national security objectives,” and the Transnational Organized Crime Rewards Program, which covers transnational crimes such as human trafficking.
The lawmakers urged Mr. Bliken to fully utilize the resources available to gather evidence and prioritize addressing the regime’s forced organ harvesting.
The group wrote that “there is a pressing need to uncover first-hand information from those who witnessed or engaged in the practice,” given the “global demand for organ transplants and the evidence of the illegal trafficking of organs” in communist China.
They cited a 2022 study published in the American Journal of Transplantation, which concluded that Chinese surgeons and other medical workers have been acting as “executioners” for the communist regime. The paper documented cases from 71 Chinese-language science publications showing that organ procurement occurred before patients were declared brain dead, in violation of the internationally accepted “dead donor” rule.
“Getting the PRC to account and fully address evidence of forced organ harvesting will be critical in ending this horrific practice and promoting, long term, the establishment of a truly voluntary organ donation system,” the lawmakers wrote, using the acronym of China’s official name, the People’s Republic of China.
In addition to Mr. Smith and Mr. Rubio, the letter was signed by Reps. Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.), Michelle Steel (R-Calif.), Zach Nunn (R-Iowa), and Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.), all sitting members of the CECC, a bipartisan panel that advises the executive branch and Congress about human rights and the rule of law in China.
At a regular press briefing on May 9, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller confirmed they had received the letter, saying that the department would “respond in due course to the members themselves.”
Falun Gong practitioners walk in a parade in Brooklyn, New York City, highlighting the Chinese regime’s persecution of their faith, on Feb. 26, 2023. (Chung I Ho/The Epoch Times)
The lawmakers’ appeal came days after the Chinese communist regime was singled out for rampant religious freedom violations in the latest annual report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. It also mentioned the regime’s organ abuse, saying that organs are carved out from Falun Gong practitioners and Uyghurs, “some while still alive.”
The killing-for-organs criminal industry in China has attracted patients from all over the world by offering an impossibly short waiting period, sometimes mere days. A study published in the American Journal of Transplantation in 2016 shows that China is the most popular “destination country” for overseas transplantation.
To address the CCP’s crimes of organ harvesting, the House adopted the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2023 (H.R. 1154) in March 2023. If enacted, the legislation would sanction anyone involved in forced organ harvesting and require annual government reporting on such activities taking place in foreign countries.
Meanwhile, three states have enacted legislation prohibiting organ transplant tourism. The most recent was Idaho, whose governor signed the state’s End Organ Harvesting Act into law on April 10.
During a CECC hearing in March, Mr. Smith described the industrial-scale forced organ harvesting in China as “an atrocity unmatched in its wickedness.”
“We all bear some responsibility to act,” he told the audience. “If we don’t act now, many more lives will be lost.”
