Czech MEP Zdechovsky : ”Organ harvesting is a lucrative state-sponsored business in China”

“Organ harvesting is a lucrative business that is state-sponsored in China and specifically targets Falun Gong practitioners as well as other prisoners of conscience, which is unacceptable,” Czech MEP Tomas Zdechovsky said in his introductory speech at an event organized at the Press Club in Brussels on 29 June, on the eve of the EU rotating presidency by the Czech Republic.

The conference was an initiative of EU Today which had invited to the debate [watch full conference below]

• Carlos Iglesias, head of the legal team of NGO Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH)
• Nico Bijnens, President of Falun Gong Belgium,
• A Chinese Falun Gong practitioner who had been a victim of the repression of the Chinese Communist Party, and
• Willy Fautre, director of the Brussels-based watchdog Human Rights Without Frontiers. 

“I was one of those MEPs who tabled the last resolution against this practice adopted by the European Parliament on 5 May last,” Zdechovsky said.

“The European Parliament considers that organ harvesting from living prisoners on death row and prisoners of conscience in China may amount to crimes against humanity, as defined in Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. If China wants to have harmonious commercial relations with the EU, it must put an end to this inhuman practice.”

During the conference, the attendees could watch a video showing several phone conversations between a potential client abroad in search of an organ and several hospitals in China. It could be concluded from those discussions that human organs could be provided to him, even “à la carte.” Indeed, the foreign client asked with insistence to get an organ from a Falun Gong practitioner because “those people have a healthy life, do not smoke or use drugs” and the potential traffickers in the hospitals agreed to this sort of transaction.

In the resolution, the Parliament is calling on the Chinese authorities to promptly respond to the allegations of organ harvesting and to allow independent monitoring by international human rights mechanisms, including the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Up to now, there has not been any constructive response.

The Parliament is concerned over the lack of independent oversight as to whether prisoners or detainees provide valid consent to organ donation. Its resolution also denounces the lack of information from the Chinese authorities on reports that the families of deceased detainees and prisoners are being prevented from claiming their bodies.

The EU and its Member States should raise the issue of organ harvesting in China at every Human Rights Dialogue, said MEP Zdechovsky, who insisted that the EU Member States should publicly condemn organ transplant abuses in China

The resolution also warns EU citizens against transplant tourism to China and proposes to take the necessary measures in order to prevent such a business. No detail is however provided about the nature of such measures but some think this sort of tourism should be criminalized.

The issue has however become more complex since China has established transplant centers in the Gulf region which have advertised ‘halal organs’ which can only come from Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities.

The Parliament calls on its Member States to ensure that their conventions and cooperation agreements with non-EU countries, including China, in the area of health and research respect the EU’s ethical principles in relation to organ donation and the use for scientific purposes of elements and products of the human body.

On the eve of its presidency of the EU, the Czech Republic should consider the resolution of the Parliament about the issue of forced organ harvesting as a matter of priority.

Watch and listen the conference here:

Chinese persecutors of Falun Gong get sanctions by the U.S.

Falun Dafa reports that “U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has announced sanctions against a Chinese official who perpetrated human rights abuses against Falun Gong practitioners in Chengdu City, Sichuan Province in China.“

“Today I am announcing the designation of Yu Hui… for his involvement in gross violations of human rights, namely the arbitrary detention of Falun Gong practitioners for their spiritual beliefs,” said Secretary Blinken at a press briefing.

Yu and his immediate family are therefor now banned from traveling to the United States.

Mr. Erping Zhang, Falun Dafa Information Center spokesperson stated that they “applaud the US Government and “Secretary Blinken” for issuing these sanctions on this official who “drove tremendous human suffering in Chengu against people who practice or support Falun Gong,”.

“This will surely send a potent message across China that the world is watching and there will be real-world consequences for persecuting Falun Gong practitioners,” Zhang added. “As the news spreads among the CCP’s security apparatus, it will very likely make some think twice about perpetrating further abuses.”

The sanctions were announced as the State Department transmitted its 2020 Annual Report on International Religious Freedom to the U.S. Congress. The report cites illegal arrests, detention, and forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners.

Last year, the U.S. Government sanctioned Huang Yuanxiong, chief of China’s Xiamen Public Security Bureau Wucun police station in Fujian Province for his involvement in gross human rights violations against Falun Gong practitioners.

Yu’s Chengdu City: A Hotbed of Suppression

Chengdu is known as having been particularly harsh in recent years in its crackdown against Falun Gong believers in the city.

Among those victimized in Chengdu during Yu’s tenure as a key official was Ms. Liu Guiying an engineer who was detained for over 20 months without trial and then sentenced illegally in 2018 to three years in prison for practicing Falun Gong and filing a complaint over previous torture and abuse. She subsequently suffered deliberate malnourishment and torture at Chengdu’s Women’s Prison.

Yu’s name was included in a database of 9,000 6-10 officials submitted by Falun Gong human rights workers to the State Department earlier this year.

Former Official of “China’s Gestapo”

Yu is the former director of the CCP’s notorious 6-10 office. Referred to by rights activists as the CCP’s “Gestapo for Falun Gong,” the 6-10 office was an extralegal police task force responsible for carrying out the mission of eliminating Falun Gong.

Established by former CCP leader Jiang Zemin and announced in a speech to elite cadres a month before the campaign against Falun Gong was announced in 1999, the organization has long existed outside China’s legal framework. Jiang granted it wide-ranging powers to use “every means necessary” to wipe out Falun Gong.

In his book A China More Just, human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng describes being shocked by the extent of the 6-10’s operations. “The immoral act that has shaken my soul most is the 6-10 Office and policeman’s regular practice of assaulting women’s genitals,” Gao wrote after his 2005 investigation. “Of those persecuted, almost every woman’s genitals and breasts and every man’s private parts have been sexually assaulted in a most vulgar fashion.”

In addition to torture and sexual abuse, 6-10 Office agents also administratively sentence  Falun Gong practitioners to labor camps and abducted adherents straight from their homes to brainwashing classes. As noted in a 2011 article on the 6-10 Office in the Jamestown Foundation’s China Brief, “transformation” and coercive thought reform are a central aspect of the agency’s activities.

In addition to direct involvement in rights abuses, the 6-10 Office has possessed significant power to force the hands of other Party and government bodies.

“The 6-10 office is just like Hitler’s Gestapo,” says Guo Guoting, a Chinese human rights lawyer in exile. “They are powerful and they got enough financial support from the government so… they secretly control all the Falun Gong practitioners in their local areas.”