US Senate Must Act Against Forced Organ Harvesting in China—Now

The U.S. Capitol building in Washington on Feb. 4, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

Commentary

The U.S. House of Representatives has taken a clear, bipartisan stand against one of the most disturbing human rights crimes of our time: state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting in China.

With the passage of the Falun Gong Protection Act in May 2025, the House affirmed a simple but profound moral truth: that no government has the right to kill prisoners of conscience for profit. A Senate companion bill, S.817—introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and cosponsored by eight senators—now awaits markup by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Delay is not neutrality; it is acquiescence. The Senate must act.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a peaceful spiritual practice rooted in Buddhist traditions and guided by the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. By the late 1990s, tens of millions of Chinese citizens practiced Falun Gong openly. In 1999, the Chinese Communist Party labeled this peaceful community an enemy of the state and launched a nationwide campaign of eradication. Since then, practitioners have been detained without due process, tortured, imprisoned, and disappeared—punished not for crimes, but for conscience.

Multiple independent investigations have concluded that Falun Gong practitioners have become the primary victims of China’s forced organ harvesting system. The reasons are chillingly pragmatic: They are nonviolent, systematically demonized, and held in large numbers outside the protection of the law. In other words, they are defenseless. This is not persecution gone awry; it is persecution engineered for exploitation.

Forced organ harvesting is not an abstract allegation, nor a matter of political disagreement. It is a crime against humanity. Prisoners of conscience are subjected to medical testing not to preserve life, but to prepare for death. They are killed on demand so their hearts, livers, kidneys, and corneas can be sold. This practice annihilates every principle that underpins medical ethics, human dignity, and the rule of law. A system that turns healers into executioners and hospitals into killing grounds is not merely corrupt—it is morally inverted.

The evidence is overwhelming. For years, credible nongovernmental organizations, investigative journalists, and independent researchers have documented this atrocity. In 2019, the China Tribunal in London—an independent people’s tribunal chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice KC, who prosecuted Slobodan Milosevic—concluded unanimously that “forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale and that Falun Gong practitioners have been one – and probably the main – source of organ supply.” The tribunal ruled that it constituted a crime against humanity.

Legislatures around the world have taken notice. The U.S. Congress has held hearings and passed resolutions condemning forced organ harvesting in China. The European Parliament has done the same. These actions reflect a growing international consensus: This crime is real, ongoing, and intolerable. The Falun Gong Protection Act advances that consensus by moving beyond words to accountability—imposing sanctions on those responsible and signaling that impunity will not be endless.

Yet despite the scale of the crime and the clarity of the evidence, too many leaders and institutions have chosen silence. Even parts of the mainstream press have faltered. In sworn testimony to the China Tribunal, Didi Kirsten Tatlow, a former New York Times reporter in Beijing, stated that she was discouraged and ultimately prevented from pursuing an investigation into forced organ harvesting. Her testimony raises deeply troubling questions about self-censorship and the corrosive influence of political and economic pressure when confronting abuses by powerful regimes.

History is unambiguous in its verdict on such moments. Atrocities do not persist because they are hidden; they persist because they are ignored. The most enduring shame is not borne by the perpetrators alone, but by those who knew and chose not to act. Silence, when human lives are being systematically destroyed, is not caution—it is a moral failure.

The Falun Gong Protection Act is not about ideology or geopolitics. It is about drawing a line that must never be crossed: Human beings must never be reduced to a source of spare parts for the state. Forced organ harvesting is an assault on the sanctity of life itself and a direct challenge to the ethical foundations of modern medicine and international order.

The U.S. Senate now faces a test of moral leadership. Passing this act promptly would send a clear message—to victims, to perpetrators, and to the world—that the United States will not avert its eyes from crimes against humanity, regardless of political pressure or economic inconvenience.

Silence enables atrocity. Action affirms humanity. The Senate should pass the Falun Gong Protection Act without delay.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.