Taiwan lawmakers led by legislator Hsu Chih-chieh (L5) held a press conference at Taipei Legislative Yuan to rally for support for proposing criminal law against forced organ harvesting on Dec. 9, 2022. Legislators Chang Liao Wan-chien (R1), Kuo Kuo-wen (R2), Chen Su-yueh (R3), Lai Hui-yuan (L3), and Chen Jiau-hua (L4) attended, along with human rights attorney Theresa Chu (L2) and Huang Chien-feng (L1) from Taiwan Association for International Care of Organ Transplants. (NTD Television)
Taipei City Council passed a resolution on June 21 to support a global declaration to stop forced organ harvesting that has been taking place in China for over two decades.
“This resolution represents universal values and a global wish,” said Hong Jian-yi, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City Councilor, in an interview with The Epoch Times.
Hong was the initiator of the resolution, which was endorsed and co-signed by 28 cross-party and independent councillors of the city council.
The resolution condemns the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) state-sanctioned organ harvesting, supports worldwide legislation against the inhumane practice in China, and urges the public not to go to China for illegal organ trading and transplantation.
“Such a resolution could be co-signed and supported by all city councils across Taiwan,” Hong told NTDTV Taiwan, a sister company of The Epoch Times. “I think we should jointly condemn this practice [of live organ harvesting], and mainland China has the most cases of forced live organ harvesting among all countries in the world.”
Kuomintang (KMT) Taipei councilor Hsu Hung-ting told The Epoch Times: “No organ should be harvested, sold, or commodified under non-consensual circumstances.”
“That’s why I believe this proposal, which pertains to human rights, receives cross-party support in the legislature,” added Hsu.
“The Legislative Yuan of the Republic of China should prudently pass laws with certain sanctions [on organ transplants in China],” DPP Taipei City Councilor Li Jian-chang said in an interview with the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times. “Let our fellow countrymen know that under this authoritarian regime, there exist such heinous acts as forced organ harvesting.”
Taipei is the second city council in Taiwan to pass this resolution, following the Taoyuan City Council, which passed a similar resolution on June 7, reported NTDTV Taiwan.
Cross-party lawmakers in Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan are currently working to enact criminal legislation aimed at combating and preventing forced organ harvesting.
Taiwan has been playing an active role with international communities in efforts to stop forced organ harvesting from living persons.
Falun Gong practitioners in Vienna, Austria, stage a demonstration of organ harvesting of imprisoned practitioners in China during a peaceful protest on Oct. 1, 2018. (Joe Klamar/AFP via Getty Images)
Global Efforts
In September 2021, the “Universal Declaration on Combating and Preventing Forced Organ Harvesting” (“UDCPFOH”) was signed by five initiating NGOs: U.S.-based Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH), Europe-based CAP Freedom of Conscience based in Europe, Taiwan Association for International Care of Organ Transplants (TAICOT), Korea Association for Ethical Organ Transplants (KAEOT) and Transplant Tourism Research Association (TTRA) based in Japan.
Since then, the list of co-signatories has increased, with currently over 130 from around the world who are supporting UDCPFOH.
“From all over the globe, former Ministers, Senators, British Lords, Members of Parliaments, Congressmen, members of the European Parliament, university professors, medical doctors, lawyers, magistrates, journalists, authors, human rights activist[s], and NGOs have taken a principled stance to support the Universal Declaration," says a briefing on the UDCPFOH website.
“They urge the world to safeguard humankind’s inalienable rights, to maintain the highest values of justice, and to end one of the most egregious atrocities of this century: forced organ harvesting from living persons - without consent and for profit.”
US Efforts
In the U.S., Texas signed into law on June 18 a bipartisan bill to combat the Chinese regime’s criminal practice of forced organ harvesting.
Last year, Texas Senate lawmakers unanimously adopted a resolution condemning the Chinese regime’s “vile practice of forcibly removing human organs for transplant” while urging the United States to take a more aggressive stance on the issue.
The U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee unanimously passed a bill, H.R. 1154, also known as the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2023, on Feb. 28 and will be taken up by the full House for debate.
The bill would ban entry by perpetrators to the United States and block financial transactions on U.S. soil. It also would require the U.S. secretary of state to report to Congress on organ transplant abuses committed in foreign countries.
Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) at the Policy Forum on Organ Procurement and Extrajudicial Execution in China on Capitol Hill on March 10, 2020. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), the bill’s principal sponsor, called attention to the penalties in the bill for those found to be involved in forced organ harvesting: a civil penalty of up to $250,000 and a criminal penalty of up to $1 million and 20 years in prison.
Now, 19 countries have passed extra-territorial legislation that people involved in killing for organs abroad can be prosecuted domestically, according to David Matas, a renowned international human rights lawyer.
Organ transplants in China surged in 2000 after the CCP began its persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in the country in 1999.
Falun Gong practitioners were reportedly forced to take blood tests and other physical checks, including their corneas, but were not given test results. According to Minghui.org, a Falun Gong practitioners’ information platform, the Chinese regime intended to use Falun Gong practitioners as a “live organ bank.”
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual improvement practice based on the moral values of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance with five gentle, slow-moving meditation exercises. The communist regime began suppressing the practice in 1999 due to its popularity among Chinese people.
Whistleblowers 'Annie' and 'Peter' at a press conference in Washington on April 20, 2006. It was their first public testimony about large-scale organ harvesting atrocities in China. (The Epoch Times)
A whistleblower—the ex-wife of a Chinese neurosurgeon at the Liaoning Provincial Thrombosis Hospital—told The Epoch Times in 2006 what her husband had done to Falun Gong practitioners. She said he removed corneas from living Falun Dafa practitioners and that the victims’ bodies were thrown into incinerators after the surgery, sometimes while they were still alive.
Speaking at a rally to raise awareness about organ harvesting in Washington in 2006, Annie (pseudonym of the doctor’s wife) said, “If I don’t stand up, perhaps the other witnesses will not dare to stand up.”
The Epoch Times reported in 2019 that two other sources of information disclosed more about forced organ harvesting targeting Falun Gong practitioners in China.
Peter (using an alias), a Chinese journalist, gave details about a detention facility in Sujiatun where organs were harvested from living Falun Dafa adherents.
A military doctor in Shenyang, who requested to stay anonymous, provided detailed accounts of secret military camps in Shenyang and other regions where Falun Dafa prisoners of conscience were subjected to forced organ harvesting.
Two Canadians—human rights lawyer David Matas and the late David Kilgour, a former Canadian member of Parliament—are pioneers in investigating the matter, with their findings first released in July 2006.
Former Canadian Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific David Kilgour presents a revised report about organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China, as report co-author and human rights lawyer David Matas listens in the background, on Jan. 31, 2007. (The Epoch Times)
“Over two decades, the Beijing regime has been directing the vast network of organ-harvesting from prisoners of conscience—primarily Falun Gong since 2001, but also Tibetans, Christians, and Muslim Uyghurs,” said David Kilgour at the Harvard Club of New York City on Sept. 25, 2019.
China Tribunal, a London-based independent people’s tribunal chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, came to a conclusion in 2019, after over a year’s investigation, 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. ”
Nice led the prosecution of Slobodan Milošević, former president of Serbia.
Though there’s increasing global awareness of the atrocities committed by the CCP, David Matas said that “there’s still a long way to go [to stop forced organ harvesting in China]” because only 19 countries out of 194 countries that have passed extra-territorial legislation to prosecute domestically people involved in killing for organs abroad.
Wu Minzhou and NTD Taiwan contributed to this report.
