House Approves Legislation to Combat Beijing’s Forced Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Members
The legislation reads, ‘The widespread, systematic, state-sponsored persecution of the Falun Gong by the Chinese Communist Party … may constitute genocide.’
The House has passed a bill with the goal of forcing an end to the Chinese regime’s long-running campaign persecuting the spiritual group Falun Gong.
The bipartisan Falun Gong Protection Act (H.R. 4132), introduced by Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) with 18 co-sponsors, passed by a voice vote on June 25. It is the first U.S. legislative bill to address Beijing’s brutal suppression of the faith to advance through the chamber.
Falun Gong, a meditation discipline based on the values of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, has been subject of a relentless campaign in communist China designed to eradicate the faith.
For the past 25 years, the 70 million to 100 million adherents of the practice have faced risks of lengthy imprisonment, harsh labor and torture, as well as forced organ harvesting.
The bill, which still needs Senate approval, calls for “an immediate end” of the persecution. If signed into law, it will require the United States to shun any cooperation with China in the organ transplantation field and deploy targeted sanctions and visa restrictions to address the persecution of Falun Gong on the international stage.
It would also mandate sanctions on Chinese officials, military leaders, or others “knowingly responsible for or complicit in, or have directly or indirectly engaged in, the involuntary harvesting of organs” in China.
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Anyone on the sanction list would be unable to enter the United States or engage in U.S.-based transactions, and have their current visas revoked. The bill also carries a civil penalty of up to $250,000 fine and a criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years in prison for offenders.
‘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 legislation’s text reads.
The bill singles out the forcible-harvesting-for-organs scheme, which, the London-based China Tribunal concluded in 2019, is taking place on a significant scale with Falun Gong practitioners as likely the main source of organ supply.
In 2006, The Epoch Times first reported on the issue after eyewitnesses came forward alleging the killing-for-organs was taking place in Chinese hospitals and underground facilities. One witness, using the alias Annie, said her husband removed corneas from living Falun Gong practitioners while working as a neurosurgeon at a hospital in northeastern China.
After doctors removed organs, some bodies were directly thrown into incinerators, leaving no trace of the crime, according to Annie.
‘The lives of Falun Gong practitioners are not protected by the government. Their lives were deemed cheap by the authorities,’ she said at that time. ‘It’s a national crime.’
