Falun Gong practitioners walk in a parade in Brooklyn, N.Y., highlighting the Chinese regime's persecution of their faith on Feb. 26, 2023. (Chung I Ho/The Epoch Times)
Utah has signed into law a bill to combat the Chinese regime’s horrific practice of forced organ harvesting, making it the second U.S. state to take legislative action against the abuse.
As of May 1, it will be illegal in the state for health insurance providers to cover organ transplant surgeries performed in China or any other country that is known to have engaged in forced organ harvesting, as well as post-procedure care for any such operation. The bill (S.B. 262) was passed unanimously in both the state’s Senate and House and was signed by Utah Gov. Spencer Cox on March 14.
Texas was the first U.S. state to take up the issue; its related law went into effect on Sept. 1, 2023.
For years, China has been one of the major destinations for transplant tourists, as Chinese hospitals often offer extremely short waiting times for matching organs. Such short wait times are only made possible, however, because China’s transplant industry is supplied by a living organ bank. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been forcefully harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience—including Falun Gong adherents—on a “significant scale” for years, according to findings published by an independent people’s tribunal in London in 2019.
The CCP’s practice of organ harvesting was the topic of a panel discussion at Harvard Medical School on March 7. During the event, a Uyghur woman cried and asked if there were ways to stop the abuse more quickly.
“This is an emergency,” she said. “We always say ... we have to take lessons from the history. But it’s happening again and again, and even worse.”
Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas, author of the book “Bloody Harvest,“ responded that the West needs to ”increase the political cost.”
Right now, the CCP’s calculation is that “they benefited more from the mass killing of Falun Gong and Uyghurs because it doesn’t make much of a fuss and they make a lot of money,” according to Mr. Matas.
“You increase the political cost outside of China by increasing awareness, increasing protests, increasing legislation,” Mr. Matas said. “Let’s do it more quickly. Let’s do it soon. Let’s give it a priority. Let’s make this an important thing to do.”
In January, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) called out the CCP for its abuses, during a speech at the International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington.
“Tibetan Buddhists and Falun Gong practitioners are placed in forced labor camps, and they have their organs harvested by the Chinese Communist Party,” Mr. Johnson said.
‘Genocide’
Maya Mitalipova, director of the human stem cell lab at MIT’s Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, watched the documentary “State Organs“ at a screening hosted by the Falun Dafa Club on the campus of Harvard University on March 7. The film documents the CCP’s crimes of forced organ harvesting.
“In not a single corner of the world should this happen,” Ms. Mitalipova told The Epoch Times’ sister media outlet NTD. “It’s a genocide. It’s a genocide against Chinese people.”
Maya Mitalipova, director of the human cell laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, at a screening event of State Organs, a documentary that highlights the state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting in China, at the Harvard University, in Boston, Mass., on March 7, 2024. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
The 75-minute documentary, produced in Canada last year, centers around the disappearance of two Falun Gong practitioners in China shortly after the CCP launched its eradication campaign against the practice in July 1999.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice with meditative exercises and moral teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. Just before the start of the CCP’s nationwide persecution, there were approximately 70 million to 100 million adherents, according to official estimates.
Since then, millions have been detained inside prisons, labor camps, and other facilities, with hundreds of thousands tortured while incarcerated, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center.
In 2023, there were 209 new reported cases of Falun Gong practitioners being persecuted to death, according to a report from Minghui.org, a U.S. website that tracks the persecution in China.
Han Yu, a Falun Gong practitioner who lives in New York, said her father, also a practitioner, died in a Chinese prison. When she saw her father’s body, she saw scars and “bruises all over his face.”
There were stitches from his throat to his abdomen, which was full of “hard ice,” she said.
After reading reports in 2007 about forced organ harvesting, she suspected the authorities had harvested organs from her father.
“I cried for a whole night until I had no more strength left,” she told The Epoch Times on March 7.
(L-R) Moderator Erping Zhang; producer Cindy Song; Han Yu, daughter of organ harvesting victim; David Matas, international human rights lawyer at an event on forced organ harvesting at the Harvard University in Boston, Mass., on March 7, 2024. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
The Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) is scheduled to hold a hearing on organ harvesting on March 20.
“This hearing will evaluate the evidence of organ harvesting from formerly detained Uyghurs, Falun Gong practitioners, and political prisoners; assess the PRC’s denials that it is complicit in transplant abuse and its assertion that the PRC [People’s Republic of China] has stopped sourcing organs from executed prisoners, and look more broadly at how the scientific and medical research communities are addressing the amassed information about organ harvesting,” the CECC said in a statement announcing the hearing.
Among the witnesses scheduled to attend the hearing are Ms. Mitalipova and Texas state Rep. Tom Oliverson, who was a primary sponsor of the Texas legislation that became law banning health insurers in the state from funding organ transplants performed with organs originating from China.
Frank Fang is a Taiwan-based journalist. He covers U.S., China, and Taiwan news. He holds a master's degree in materials science from Tsinghua University in Taiwan.
