Petition to the UN Human Rights High Commissioner

Background

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) performs the second-highest number of organ transplants per country per year, yet there exist no sufficient public organ donation program or organ distribution system in China, and the Chinese population has a cultural aversion to donation.

Medical professionals in the People’s Republic of China began conducting organ transplants with the use of organs that were harvested from executed prisoners in the 1980s. In June 2001, Chinese Dr. Wang Guoqi testified before the House International Affairs Subcommittee that hospitals worked in collusion with state security agencies to extract organs from executed prisoners without written consent of the donors. These transplants became a lucrative source of income for Chinese hospitals. The practice of sourcing organs from nonconsenting prisoners is a violation of medical ethics and has been condemned by international medical organizations, such as the WMA, TTS and the transplant community.

In order to protect their families and associates, while in detention, many Falun Gong prisoners refuse to provide their real names or other identifying information. This makes them more of a target for transplant abuse. In 2006, Canadian researchers human-rights attorney David Matas and former Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific David Kilgour conducted an investigation into allegations of organ harvesting from Falun Gong prisoners. Based on extensive circumstantial evidence, their report concluded that the allegations were true, and that tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners may have been killed for their organs.

After 1999, an exponential increase of transplantations in China coincided with the onset of the unlawful and brutal persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. In the absence of a public organ-donation program and a decrease in the number of executions, detained Falun Gong practitioners became part of a living pool of donors, ready to be organ harvested on demand. They have been contributing to the more than 10,000 transplants per year in China.

Falun Gong practitioners are subject to medical examinations while in detention, such as blood tests, urine tests, Xrays, and physical exams. These examinations are unlikely to be motivated by health care concerns since detained Falun Gong practitioners are subject to persecution and torture. It is implausible that the detention centers would go to the extra expense for the exams unless there were financial returns.

Senior Chinese Communist Party officials are complicit in the forced organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners. In 2012, David Matas said at the annual conference of the International Association of Genocide Scholars in San Francisco:

“On Nov. 30, 1999, the head of the ‘610 Office’, Li Lanqing, announced the government’s new policy on the movement: ‘Defame their reputations, bankrupt them financially, and destroy them physically.’ A call to destroy Falun Gong physically is a call to genocide. It is not admittedly a call to genocide through sourcing their organs. Nonetheless, when that sourcing occurs, in the context of a call for physical destruction, the two should be linked. Organ sourcing is the means. Physical destruction is the intent.”


Under the format of “executing prisoners”, killing people to harvest their organs for transplantation is a crime against humanity and a breach of medical ethics. The demand for transplant organs must not justify the means. Falun Gong practitioners, the largest group of prisoners of conscience in China, are the main targets of this crime against humanity.


Petition to the UN Human Rights High Commissioner Calling for an Immediate End of Forced Organ Harvesting From Falun Gong Practitioners in China


 Petition

We, the undersigned, are alarmed at the evidence of forced organ harvesting from detained Falun Gong practitioners in China. We understand that the forced organ harvesting from detained Falun Gong practitioners is an egregiously evil form of persecution against this peaceful spiritual discipline and we expressively support European Parliament’s urgent resolution on organ harvesting in China adopted on 12 December 2013 calling for a full and transparent investigation by the EU into organ transplant practices in China, for the prosecution of those found to have engaged in such unethical practices and for the immediate release of all prisoners of conscience in China, including Falun Gong practitioners; we hereby ask the UN Human Rights High Commissioner:

  1. Please publicly condemn organ transplant abuses in China and call upon China to immediately end the forced organ harvesting from detained Falun Gong practitioners in China.
  2. Please initiate further investigations that lead to the prosecution of the perpetrators involved in this crime against humanity.
  3. Please call upon the Chinese government to immediately end the brutal persecution of Falun Gong, which is the root cause for the forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners.