Urgent Call for U.S. Intervention in China's Forced Organ Harvesting Trade
Written by Susan Crabtree for RealClearPolitics
A prominent group of China critics in the U.S. Congress is pressing the State Department to intensify its attempts to put a stop to Beijing's appalling forced organ harvesting trade. This trade, which is estimated to be worth $1 billion, targets ethnic and religious minorities, including Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims, Christians, and practitioners of Falun Gong.
Request for Action from the State Department
Six members of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) recently sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Their request was for him to use existing agency reward programs to offer monetary incentives for information that could help "deter and disrupt the market for illegally procured organs" in China. The signatories of the letter included Rep. Chris Smith, the chair of the CECC, and Sen. Marco Rubio, the commission’s ranking member, as well as Democrat Rep. Jennifer Wexton of Virginia and GOP Reps. Michelle Steel of California, Zach Nunn of Iowa, and Ryan Zinke of Montana.
Existing Reward Programs
The State Department currently runs two programs that offer rewards of up to $25 million for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of members of significant transnational criminal organizations. One program targets violators of U.S. narcotics law, while the other focuses on other crimes that pose a threat to U.S. national interests. These crimes include human trafficking, wildlife trafficking, cybercrime, money laundering, and trafficking in arms and other illicit goods.
Pressing Need for Information
The lawmakers expressed their strong support for the Department of State’s efforts to issue rewards for wildlife and narcotics trafficking in the People’s Republic of China. However, they stressed the urgent need to obtain first-hand information from those who have witnessed or participated in the illegal trafficking of organs in the PRC, given the global demand for organ transplants.
China's History of Organ Harvesting
Communist China has a long history of harvesting organs from prisoners, despite initial claims from the Beijing government that all their organ extractions were from voluntary donors. However, as early as 2005, China's top transplant doctor, who was then serving as the nation’s vice minister of health, admitted that about 95% of all organ transplants came from prisoners.
Targeting Prisoners of Conscience
In recent years, it's been documented that prisoners of conscience, including religious minorities and political dissidents, are the main victims of this horrifying practice. There's now extensive evidence that Chinese surgeons first developed their lethal organ harvesting practices on practitioners of Falun Gong, a meditation and exercise movement. In recent years, the regime has expanded its pool of victims to include China’s imprisoned Uyghur population as part of its systematic oppression of the Muslim minority group.
Findings of the China Tribunal
Despite China's vehement denial of these claims, the China Tribunal, an independent non-governmental commission in the U.K., concluded otherwise in 2019. The Tribunal investigated accusations of organ harvesting in China and found that some of the more than 1.5 million detainees in Chinese prison camps are being killed for their organs to serve a booming transplant trade worth an estimated $1 billion a year. The Tribunal also found that the Chinese organ trafficking industry is harvesting organs from executed prisoners and political prisoners on an industrial scale, actions that constitute crimes against humanity.
Response from United Nations Human Rights Experts
Following the Tribunal’s findings, over a dozen United Nations human rights experts expressed their extreme alarm over reports that organ harvesting was targeting "specific ethnic, linguistic or religious minorities, including Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims, and Christians" detained in China. These experts, who operate under United Nations mandates but do not speak on behalf of the international organization, urged China to respond to the allegations of illegal organ harvesting promptly and to allow international human rights monitors into hospitals and other areas to monitor the country’s organ extraction practices. China has ignored these requests.
Evidence of Live Organ Harvesting
In 2022, the American Journal of Transplantation, the world's leading medical transplant publication, published a peer-reviewed article that revealed compelling evidence that Chinese surgeons are systematically removing organs from prisoners while they are still alive, supplying the Chinese organ export industry on demand. This practice contravenes the internationally accepted "dead-donor" rule, which states that organ procurement "must not commence until the donor is both dead and formally pronounced so."
Lawmakers' Call for Action
The group of lawmakers described forced organ harvesting as an atrocity and stated that the disruption and deterrence of this practice should be a priority for the State Department. They emphasized that holding the PRC accountable and fully addressing evidence of forced organ harvesting will be crucial in ending this horrific practice and promoting, in the long term, the establishment of a truly voluntary organ donation system. They concluded by saying that with effective enforcement mechanisms, we can work towards ensuring organs are procured safely and ethically.
About the Author
Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics' national political correspondent.
Article by Tyler Durden
Published on Wednesday, 8th May 2024 at 22:35
Closing Thoughts
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