Sec. 2. Findings

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Congress finds the following: The World Health Organization

(WHO)estimates that approximately 10 percent of all transplanted kidneys worldwide are illegally obtained, often bought from vulnerable impoverished persons or forcibly harvested from prisoners. In 2004, the World Health Assembly passed a resolution urging its member-states to take measures to protect the poorest as well as vulnerable groups from exploitation by organ traffickers. On February 13, 2008, the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking (UNGIFT) hosted the Vienna Forum to Fight Human Trafficking , and subsequently reported that a lack of adequate illicit organ trafficking laws has provided opportunity for the illegal trade to grow. On March 21, 2011, the Council of the European Union adopted rules supplementing the definition of criminal offenses and the level of sanctions in order to strengthen the prevention of organ trafficking and the protection of those victims. In November 2012, Erasmus University Hospital along with institutions in Romania, Sweden, Bulgaria, and Spain launched a 3-year study backed by Europol into illegal organ trafficking, and released a statement that, there are more and more indicators of . organ tourism , whereby a patient travels abroad with the aim of receiving a transplanted organ which may have been bought … donors are often victims of human trafficking. According to organ trafficking specialists at the WHO, Moldova ranks third as a source of organs for sale on the global black market, with such human organs frequently smuggled to underground clinics located in several European Union member-states. Between 2001 and 2003, a South African black market kidney transplant ring coerced over 109 people, mostly from Brazil and Romania, to travel to Durban, South Africa, to forfeit a kidney for the promise of approximately $120,000, although payment was frequently withheld following the operation. On May 3, 2004, Afghanistan’s Interior Minister Ali Ahmed Lakali stated that the problem of child abduction was growing and children were being taken to be sold for sex or labor, or to provide human organs . In March 2006, a children’s rights expert at the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, Hengameh Anwari, stated, Other reports that cause concern indicate that a number of children are abducted because of their body organs; they become victims of trafficking to foreign countries especially for their kidneys. . In June 2001, Dr. Wang Guogi testified before the Subcommittee on International Organizations and Human Rights of the Committee on International Relations of the House of Representatives that Chinese hospitals worked in collusion with state security agencies to extract organs from executed prisoners without written consent of the organ donors, and that these transplants were a lucrative source of income. Researcher and journalist Ethan Gutmann estimates that approximately 65,000 Falun Gong adherents may have been killed for their organs from 2000 to 2008, and that a number of other religious and ethnic minorities may also have been targeted. On November 20, 2004, Xin Ren from California State University stated to the International Bureau for Children’s Rights Conference in Montreal, that, [In India, Pakistan, and some other Asian countries in 2003] [c]hildren were often either sold by their parents for little money or kidnapped and abducted by the traffickers to have their organ(s) removed for transplant purpose … [S]ome people were even murdered in the process of forcible removal of their organs. . The website of the Organ Transplant Center of the Armed Police General Hospital in Beijing, China touted that, Our Organ Transplant Center is our main department for making money … This year

(2004)there is a chance to break through 30,000,000 yuan. . Canadian researchers David Matas, human rights attorney, and David Kilgour, former Canadian Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific, conducted an investigation into allegations of organ harvesting from Falun Gong prisoners of conscience in 2006, and 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. In mid-November 2006, China’s Deputy Health Minister Huang Jiefu acknowledged that condemned prisoners are sources for organ transplants, and Asia News reported that Deputy Health Minister Huang had said he was cognizant of the fact that too often organs come from non-consenting parties and are sold for high fees to foreigners. In May 2006, the website for the China International Transplantation Network Assistance Centre posted the following statements in its frequently asked questions section: The First Affiliated Hospital of China was established in 2003 specifically for our foreign friends … Viscera providers can be found immediately! … Our organs do not come from brain death victims because the organ may not be good. . In November 2008, the United Nations Committee on Torture reported concern over the allegations of organ harvesting from Falun Gong prisoners and called on the Government of the People’s Republic of China to increase accountability and transparency in the organ transplant system and punish those individuals responsible for abuses. In 2005, the United States ratified the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, a supplement to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, which includes the removal of organs as a form of exploitation under the definition of trafficking in persons . On March 30, 2006, the Police Superintendent of Paranaque, Philippines, arrested a suspect alleged to have ties to a regional kidnapping syndicate involved with abducting children in order to remove their organs and sell them on the global black market, as in the case of a child discovered dead in Cavite, Philippines, with his internal organs missing. On April 12, 2008, police raided a black market organ transplant house near Manila, Philippines, arresting three traffickers and discovering nine donors in the house, one of whom stated to authorities that he had been promised $2,800 for his kidney, and he was doing it because, I can barely provide for my wife and children. . In November 2008, the National Bureau of Investigation’s Human Trafficking Division in the Philippines reported, the abducted children are housed somewhere in Mindanao where victims are supplied with vitamin supplements to keep their internal organs healthy, and are then transported outside the country to undergo surgery for organ transplants . In 2007, Pakistan was identified by the WHO as one of the top destinations for transplant tourism . Pakistani authorities in April 2007 raided a black market organ ring in Lahore that consisted of doctors, officials, and middlemen who had abducted potential donors, drugged them and removed their kidneys without consent to then sell for profit. Dr. Zafar ul Ahsan, a top urologist at Fatima Jinnah Hospital in Lahore, Pakistan, stated in September 2007, A mafia is running Pakistan’s kidney transplant business with agents paying $1,000 to poor donors and then selling their kidneys on the black market for thousands of dollars. . In 2007, five employees of the tissue bank at the Faculty Hospital in Brno-Bohunice, the Czech Republic, were arrested and charged with illegal organ trafficking for selling more than $340,000 worth of illegally obtained skin grafts to a tissue bank in the Netherlands. In January 2008, the Government of India’s Health Ministry released an estimate that more than 100,000 kidney transplants are needed in India each year, but only 5,000 are performed legally. A February 2008 police raid on an organ trafficking ring in Gurgaon, India, found that men posed as doctors to remove kidneys from migrant laborers, and conducted approximately 500 illegal kidney transplants over nine years. On April 8, 2009, the Global Post in Cairo reported that the Egyptian Government was considering measures to increase the number of legal organ donations to meet demand, which included a proposal to harvest organs from executed criminals, with or without their consent, as then Ministry of Health spokesman, Dr. Abdel Rahman Shahin stated, They are saying that when [convicts’] organs are taken, they’re compensating for the bad they did. . In November 2010, Netcare KwaZulu, a hospital in South Africa’s eastern KwaZulu-Natal province, pleaded guilty to illegally removing kidneys from five minors between 2001 and 2003. On January 12, 2011, Doctor Yusuf Sonmez, who has been dubbed the Turkish Frankenstein , was arrested in Pristina for his alleged participation in illegal organ trafficking in Kosovo and Azerbaijan. In April 2013, a Kosovo court convicted five defendants for conducting over 30 illegal harvest operations in an organ trafficking ring at the Medicus clinic, where impoverished people from Turkey, Russia, Moldova, and Kazakhstan were coerced into selling their kidneys. In 2011, Egypt passed a law prohibiting the exchange of money for human organs and restricting human organ donations to relatives up to four degrees removed. In February 2015, the Iraqi Ambassador to the United Nations alleged that the Islamic State was illegally harvesting organs from murdered civilians to finance their operations. According to a 2013 United Nations report from the Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children, the economic and social divisions within and among countries is notably reflected in the illicit organ trafficking market, in which the victims are commonly poor, unemployed, and more susceptible to deceit and extortion.