The International Coalition to End Organ Pillaging in China
Parliamentarians Against Forced Organ Harvesting (PAFOH), a new group created in Australia’s Parliamentary Friendship Groups whose purpose is to raise awareness among Parliamentarians of the issue of forced organ harvesting and transplant tourism across the world. Contact Persons: Senator John Madigan Mr Craig Kelly MP Co-Convenors John Madigan is a good man and an uncompromising…
Ruslana Lyzychko, Ukrainian protest leader, encouraged Chinese people to rise up against the pathologies of the communist regime, like illegal organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners who are killed for profit.
Ruslana Lyzychko, the most successful Ukrainian singer and winner of the Eurovision Song Contest for Ukraine in 2004, received the International Women of Courage Award in Washington, DC on Thursday. Ruslana took part in the popular uprising in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, and spent months alongside demonstrators calling for change.
[Ruslana Lyzychko, Ukrainian Musician]:
“You know that justice is on your side and this gives you strength. If you are a positive person, you pray to God and you have strong moral principles, you have nothing to be afraid of.”
OTTAWA—Canada formally acknowledged reports that the Chinese regime is engaged in organ harvesting without consent for the first time at the United Nations on Wednesday.
Canada’s statements at the United Nations are often noteworthy for their specificity and forcefulness, a trend that continued last week.
Canada’s comments were the only ones to prompt response from specific countries, as most other countries speak in generalities and those with documented abuses use the opportunity to make couched statements that deflect from their own human rights issues.
Canada’s human rights adviser at the U.N., Anne-Tamara Lorre, set the precedent during the Interactive Dialogue on Freedom of Religion at the U.N. in Geneva. The dialogue was focused on reports from two human rights-related special rapporteurs at the 22nd meeting of the current session of the Human Rights Council.
For years the international transplant community proceeded under the assumption that China’s organ transplant system would be shifting away from a reliance on prisoner organs, and instead developing its own voluntary donation system.
The matter has been at issue since 2006, after dark revelations emerged about mass, live organ harvesting from practitioners of Falun Gong, a persecuted spiritual discipline. Chinese officials said that only prisoners on death row, due for execution, were harvested for their organs. And only after giving consent.
Since then, organizations like The Transplantation Society and the World Health Organization sought out ways to cooperate with China, and were generally careful not to say anything that could be construed as negative about the Chinese Communist Party’s transplant system. International cooperation and progress were the watchwords.
But those efforts seem to have paid off very little indeed, judging by recent remarks by Huang Jiefu, China’s organ czar.
By Matthew Robertson, Epoch Times | March 5, 2014
The House of Representatives of the state of Illinois passed a resolution in late February that called on the U.S. government to investigative the source of tens of thousands of organ transplants in China, many of them thought to have come from practitioners of Falun Gong who were murdered expressly for the purpose.
The legislature called the practice “revolting” and asked President Obamato “take all reasonable steps” to bring an end to it.
It also described the practice of Falun Gong, the circumstances of its persecution, and the state of human rights in China broadly.
Reports and evidence that practitioners of Falun Gong were harvested for their organs in China emerged starting in 2006. In that year a Canadian human rights attorney, David Matas, and a former parliamentarian, David Kilgour, published a reporting indicating that around 41,500 organs are suspected to have come from Falun Gong victims from 2000 to 2005.
MEP Niccolò Rinaldi is a member of the Subcommittee on Human Rights of the European Parliament.
Organ trafficking is one of the most important issues government agencies and human rights organizations are fighting on an international scale due to the international criminal networks which profit from the sale of human organs. One of the tragedies of the modern medical world is that involuntary organ transplant and organ harvesting is increasing as medical science finds new ways of extending life expectancy. The removal of vital organs specifically for transplant, and sometimes medical research, without permission, is often, performed with the assistance of trained medical personnel yet without the donor’s consent..
This reality though becomes even more brutal when this criminal and inhuman activity is conducted with the government’s consent or even facilitation. This is the case of China, where organ harvesting from prisoners is an official government policy conducted at public hospitals.
During its plenary of the December 12, 2013, the European Parliament passed a Resolution on the serious human rights abuses in China, and more specifically violations related to organ transplants, which have recently come to light. China is one of the leading countries worldwide regarding the execution of prisoners. It appears though that the Chinese government has transformed this fact into a multimillion dollar business.
By Stephen Gregory, Epoch Times | December 25, 2013
The end of 2013 saw a wave of efforts by individuals and governments to condemn the practice of forced organ harvesting in China, suggesting 2014 will see more being done to stop this crime against humanity.
The most visible sign of this new momentum was a petition circulated by the human rights group Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting.
Addressed to the United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights, the petition asks the high commissioner: to call for “an immediate end of forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China,” to initiate investigations that will lead to the prosecution of those responsible, and to call upon the Chinese government to end the persecution of Falun Gong.
Nearly 1.5 million (1.48) people in 53 countries on 5 continents signed thepetition, which was delivered to the high commissioner’s office in Geneva on Dec. 9.
A blogger from Shanxi Province in north-central China was recently arrested for warning on Weibo (a twitter-like platform popular in China) that forced organ harvesting has been occurring in the area in which he lives.
Mr. Han, 41 years old, is from Wenshui County. He used his cellphone to blog the information of several cases of people being killed for their organs recently in Wenshui and Qingxu counties.
The information had been posted 253 times when he was apprehended. When police arrested Mr. Han, they claimed the blog could cause people to panic.
In September China’s top judicial authorities issued new regulations according to which someone may be jailed if a blog post is forwarded more than 500 times. The broadly worded regulations criminalize “rumor mongering” in the name of preventing harm “to the social order or the national interests.”
By Stephen Gregory, Epoch Times | December 14, 2013
The European Parliament meeting in Strasbourg, France on Dec. 12 passed a resolution that condemns the practice of forced organ harvesting in China.
This video shows a selection of European Parliament members speaking in the debate in support of the resolution.
The resolution received broad-based support from five different political groups. Parliament members gave a variety of reasons for their votes, but came back to a few themes: the moral necessity of opposing the practice of forced organ harvesting; support for basic human rights; the good of the Chinese people; and the need for Europeans not to be complicit in these crimes.
The European Parliament has put the People’s Republic of China on notice that its practice of forced organ harvesting is unacceptable.
A resolution passed Thursday afternoon in Strasbourg, France, expresses “deep concern over persistent and credible reports of systematic, state-sanctioned organ harvesting from nonconsenting prisoners of conscience in the People’s Republic of China, including from large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners imprisoned for their religious beliefs, and members of other religious and ethnic minority groups.”
China is called on by the resolution to: “immediately end the practice of organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience”; respond to requests from the UN special rapporteurs on torture and on freedom of religion or belief as to the source of the organs used in transplantation and allow the rapporteurs to conduct an investigation; and immediately release “all prisoners of conscience in China, including the Falun Gong practitioners.”
By Robin Kemker, Epoch Times | December 12, 2013
LOS ANGELES—On Human Rights Day, Dec. 10, Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH) held a press conference in front of the People’s Republic of China consulate in Los Angeles.
“1.5 million people from more than 50 countries and 160 U.S. Congress members call upon the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to press China for an immediate end to forced organ harvesting from live Falun Gong practitioners,” said spokesman Dana Churchill at the event.
DAFOH is a nonprofit organization founded by medical doctors from all over the world to stop unethical and illegal organ harvesting.
DAFOH and supporters held press conferences in numerous cities, including New York City, Geneva, Sydney, Bangkok, Toronto, Geneva, Ottawa, and Los Angeles, to announce the results of this petition effort. Germany’s Hamburg city officials were persuaded by Chinese officials to disallow a similar public press conference at the Hamburg Chinese consulate.
By Laurent Gey, Epoch Times | December 11, 2013
PARIS—A panel discussion on organ transplant trafficking and tourism at the French National Assembly addressed the ethical issues involved in organ trafficking abroad, and, in particular, in China.
The panel, which took place Nov. 27, was led by Member of Parliament for the Bouches-du-Rhône Valérie Boyer and by Dr. Harold King, contact person in France for Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting(DAFOH). The conference gave the floor to professors and French surgeons.
Medical professionals took part in the discussion: Professor Francis Navarro, transplant surgeon at the Montpellier University Hospital; Professor Didier Sicard, former President of the National Consultative Ethics Committee; Professor Belghiti, transplant surgeon at Beaujon University Hospital; Professor Yves Chapuis, member of the Académie de Médecine, former surgeon, and a pioneer of organ transplantation in France; and Professor Patrick Pessaux, transplant surgeon at the Strasbourg University Hospital.
By Epoch Times | December 10, 2013
A grass-roots movement that has spanned 5 continents and 53 countries reached a climax Monday morning in Geneva when a delegation from the organization Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting formally presented to the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights a petition that has garnered almost 1.5 million signatures. The presentation was timed to coincide with International Human Rights Day, which falls on Tuesday, Dec. 10.
The petition asks the high commissioner to call for “an immediate end of forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China,” to initiate investigations that will lead to the prosecution of those responsible for this crime against humanity and to call upon the Chinese government to end the persecution of Falun Gong.
In a one and one-half hour meeting in a conference room in the U.N.’s Motta Building, Torsten Trey, M.D., executive director of Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH), along with three doctors and three lawyers from six countries and three continents, presented a letter for the high commissioner and briefed the high commissioner’s staff on the forced organ harvesting taking place in China.
By Cameron McKinley, Epoch Times | December 10, 2013
BANGKOK—The 30-something Thai woman waiting at the Bangkok bus station didn’t want to know what the young Chinese woman was asking her to sign, and so brushed her off with a shake of her head.
“I spoke a little bit of Thai but I think she suspected we were those people who want money or a donation,” said Feng Xiaoxin, a 25-year-old woman originally from southern China’s Guangdong Province who was collecting signatures to condemn state-sanctioned organ harvesting in China.
“[The Thai woman] just shook her head but after I showed her pictures and then she saw the petition form and read the information in the Thai language—she then finally understood, and wow her reaction was—she changed completely and she then asked the other people waiting for the bus to sign the petition and asked the police nearby to sign it also.”
By Epoch Times
PARLIAMENT HILL, Ottawa—Liberal MP Irwin Cotler has introduced a bill to crackdown on those who trade in human organs, take part in organ harvesting, or get a transplant without making sure the organs were willingly donated.
With the relative ease of organ transplants, a new and gruesome trade has arisen around the life-and-death operations and organs that make them possible.
It’s a brave new world, without regulation and very little oversight outside of the professional associations of surgeons and transplant professionals that have begun addressing the issue. But while the medical community has started to face this new reality, most governments have not. It’s a situation Cotler’s bill aims at addressing for Canadians.
By Chow Xiaohui | December 10, 2013
HONG KONG—Queen Mary Hospital is home to a database of China’s liver transplants that holds evidence that can be used to help expose the practice of forced, live organ harvesting in China.
“The Chinese Communist Party government is covering up this crime, and part of … [the coverup] is taking place at Hong Kong’s Queen Mary Hospital,” said Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas at a Nov. 28 forum held in Hong Kong by Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH), a Washington, D.C.-based human rights organization.
The database is closed to the public, but it wasn’t always that way, according to Matas who has spent years investigating the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners of conscience.