Sec. 2. Findings
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/bill/117/hr/6319/ih/section-2A research copy — for the controlling text, always check the official state or federal source. Not legal advice.
Congress finds the following: Falun Gong is a spiritual practice in the Buddhist tradition that espouses the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. The practice was introduced in China by Mr. Li Hongzhi in 1992 and aims to improve physical, psychological, and spiritual well-being through exercise, meditation, and moral improvement. On July 20, 1999, after years of escalating harassment by the government, then-General Secretary Jiang Zemin launched an intensive, nationwide persecution designed to eradicate Falun Gong. Since then, the People’s Republic of China
(PRC)has detained hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners. In its 2020 Report on International Religious Freedom, released on May 12, 2021, the Department of State stated in its entry on China, Prior to the government’s 1999 ban on Falun Gong, the government estimated there were 70 million adherents. Falun Gong sources estimate tens of millions continue to practice privately, and Freedom House estimates seven to 20 million practitioners. . Freedom House in its Freedom in the World 2021 report entry on China stated that the regime’s campaign to eradicate the Falun Gong spiritual group continued in 2020. Hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners have received long prison terms in recent years, and many others are arbitrarily detained in various . legal education facilities. Detainees typically face torture aimed at forcing them to abandon their beliefs, sometimes resulting in deaths in custody. In its 2021 report, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom stated in its key findings for China, according to reports, thousands of Falun Gong practitioners were harassed and arrested during 2020 for practicing their faith, and some likely died due to abuse and torture while in custody. Credible international reports also suggested that organ harvesting, including from Falun Gong practitioners, likely continued. . The widespread, systematic, state-sponsored persecution of the Falun Gong by the Chinese Communist Party leadership of the PRC constitutes a clear violation of Falun Gong practitioners’ basic human rights and may constitute genocide. The campaign against Falun Gong is overseen by central branches of the Chinese Communist Party, including the so-called Central Leading Group on Preventing and Dealing with Heretical Religions . On May 12, 2021, Yu Hui, a former Office Director of this group, was targeted for sanctions by the United States Government. Reports, such as those mentioned in this legislation, suggest that China’s organ transplantation system does not comply with the majority of the World Health Organization’s Guiding Principles on Human Cell, Tissue and Organ Transplantation, insofar as organs are said to be primarily sourced from prisoners without voluntary consent, organs are reported to be traded for payment, the level of transparency and traceability in the organ procurement process is low, and the Chinese Communist Party has prevented independent or impartial inspection, scrutiny and verification of its transplant system. On June 14, 2021, a joint statement by United Nations human rights experts expressed extreme alarm over reports of alleged . organ harvesting targeting minorities, including Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims, and Christians in detention in China Based on independent research and official statistics, it is clear that many organ transplants conducted in the PRC do not meet internationally accepted ethical standards. Freedom House in its Freedom in the World 2021 report entry on China stated that The government claims it has ended the transplantation of organs from executed prisoners. However, the scale of the transplantation industry and the speed with which some organs are procured far exceed what is feasible via the country’s nascent voluntary donation system and there is growing international attention to possible crimes against humanity in connection with the practice. . A 2019 forensic statistical analysis of organ donation data in the PRC, published in the BMC Medical Ethics journal, concluded the following: China’s apparent systematic falsification of national organ donation data severely undermines the good faith efforts being made to integrate China into the international transplantation community. . The United States had approximately 145 million registered organ donors in 2019: 19,257 persons donated their organs, resulting in 39,719 transplants; the ratio of actual donors to registered donors is approximately 0.00013. Similar ratios are observed in the United Kingdom, Canada and other countries. By contrast, the PRC claimed to have more than 900,000 registered organ donors by early 2019; data from China also indicates 5,818 organ donors and 19,454 transplants in 2019, resulting in a ratio of actual donors to registered donors of 0.0057. Although this comparison does not control for other possible variables, the fact that China’s nascent organ donation program yielded 44 times more organ donors from its organ donation pool than that of the United States in 2019 merits international scrutiny. Credible evidence suggests that Falun Gong practitioners are subject to widespread forced organ harvesting and are specifically targeted for this barbaric practice. In January of 2007, Canadian human rights attorney David Matas and former Canadian Secretary of State for the Asia Pacific region David Kilgour published findings confirming the likelihood that forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners was occurring in China. They also concluded that there was no evidence of a voluntary donation system in the PRC at the time and that, in spite of this, the Chinese Government reported a dramatic escalation in its organ transplantation infrastructure (a three-fold increase) between 1999 and 2004, parallel to the onset of the persecution of Falun Gong. In 2016, Matas, Kilgour, and investigative journalist Ethan Gutmann published an exhaustive report concluding that it is likely that between 60,000 and 100,000 organ transplants had been conducted per year since 2000, and that Falun Gong practitioners are the main source of organs for transplant in China. In its annual report for 2020, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China referenced reports raising concerns about the PRC falsifying organ donation data, casting additional doubt on the CCP’s claim to have ended forced organ harvesting. On March 1, 2020, the Independent Tribunal into Forced Organ Harvesting from Prisoners of Conscience in China, an investigative entity known as a people’s tribunal commissioned by the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China, composed of relevant legal, cultural, and medical experts and led by Sir Geoffrey Nice, released its final judgment, including— very large numbers of transplant operations have been carried out in the PRC. The Tribunal assessed as credible the numbers of operations being between 60,000 and 90,000 annually in the years 2000 to 2014. The number of eligible registered donors was reportedly 5,146 in 2017, leaving an incomprehensible gap; 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 ; Falun Gong practitioners in detention were systematically subjected to blood tests and organ examinations while other prisoners were not tested, suggesting that Falun Gong practitioners were specifically selected or targeted for these medical examinations; and … the PRC and its leaders actively incited the persecution, the imprisonment, murder, torture and the humiliation of Falun Gong practitioners with the sole purpose of eliminating the practice of, and belief in, the value of Falun Gong. . The international nongovernmental organization Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting presented a petition with over three million signatures collected worldwide between 2012 to 2018 to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, calling for an investigation into forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong that went unheeded. In June 2016, the House of Representatives passed its fifth resolution condemning China’s persecution of Falun Gong with H. Res. 343 114, Expressing concern regarding persistent and credible reports of systematic, state-sanctioned organ harvesting from non-consenting prisoners of conscience in the People’s Republic of China, including from large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners and members of other religious and ethnic minority groups and calling for an end to the eradication campaign of Falun Gong and forced organ harvesting.