During UN Review, Canada’s UN Representative Addresses China’s Persecution of Falun Gong
Canada’s United Nations representative has criticized China for its persecution of Falun Gong practitioners along with its other various human rights abuses during a recent human rights record peer review session.
Leslie Norton, Canada’s ambassador and permanent representative of Canada to the United Nations in Geneva, put forth several recommendations regarding human rights in China. Among them was the call for the communist regime to “end all forms of enforced disappearances, targeting human rights defenders, ethnic minorities, and Falun Gong practitioners.”
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice rooted in Buddhist traditions that involves meditative exercises and moral teachings based on the tenets of “truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.” For the past 24 years, practitioners of this discipline have been consistently targeted by brutal persecution initiated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
During the U.N. peer review, Ms. Norton also raised concerns about Beijing’s “increasing extraterritorial repression” of human rights defenders.
Organ Harvesting
The CCP’s practice of forced organ harvesting gained public attention through a study conducted by Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas and former Canadian Secretary of State and human rights activist David Kilgour. Their investigation began after a March 2006 testimony from a Chinese woman living in Washington, D.C., who disclosed that her former husband had extracted corneas from Falun Gong practitioners at a Sujiatun hospital in Liaoning Province, China.
The experts urged all U.N. member states to scrutinize China’s human rights record during the peer review session. Additionally, the experts called for the establishment of a special rapporteur on forced organ harvesting of living prisoners of conscience in China and an International Criminal Tribunal for Forced Organ Harvesting in China.
“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a cornerstone of global ethics, underscores the inviolability of human life and the security of the individual,” the letter stated. “These principles are not mere political positions, they are fundamental rights that every citizen of the world inherently deserves.”