Legislator Describes Forced Organ Harvesting as Massacre in China
There’s ‘no act more heinous than taking a political prisoner, strapping them to a medical bed, and stealing their body parts from the inside out.’
WASHINGTON—The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting is “wholesale slaughter,” said a lawmaker at a congressional hearing highlighting the issue.
The gruesome practice, according to experts, happens routinely in China as part of a billion-dollar industry.
An independent London-based people’s tribunal concluded in 2019 that forced organ harvesting has happened for years in China “on a significant scale.” According to the tribunal’s findings, adherents of Falun Gong—a spiritual practice that has faced harsh persecution in communist China since 1999—have been identified as a major source of organ supply.
“The time for the madness—the wholesale slaughter of a population—has to stop, particularly when it’s used under the guise of doing science,” Mr. Nunn said at the hearing.
![Rep. Zachary Nunn (R-Iowa) speaks at a hearing about the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP's) forced organ harvesting before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China in Washington on March 20, 2024. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)](https://www.theepochtimes.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimg.theepochtimes.com%2Fassets%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F03%2F20%2Fid5611382-03202024-DSC08918-Zachary-Nunn-1200x800.jpg&w=1200&q=75)
‘Choke Off the Demand’
Texas and Utah have recently enacted laws barring health insurance funding from going into organ transplants linked to China.
He told NTD he was horrified when he “saw images from hospital websites in China that were advertising in English and Mandarin” promoting heart transplants while live donors were “standing by.”
“You can be standing by to donate your heart unless you’re standing by to surrender your life,” he continued.
“When I found out these were prisoners of conscience, these were people who were being persecuted for their religious beliefs, that made it even worse.”
![Rep. Tom Oliverson (R-Texas), chair of the Insurance Committee, testifies during a hearing about the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP's) forced organ harvesting before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China in Washington on March 20, 2024. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)](https://www.theepochtimes.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimg.theepochtimes.com%2Fassets%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F03%2F20%2Fid5611303-03202024-DSC08805-Tom-Oliverson-1200x800.jpg&w=1200&q=75)
The idea of the health insurance blockade is to “choke off the demand,” he pointed out.
“It’s clear that in a communist regime, people aren’t people; people are just a natural resource to be exploited by the government,” Mr. Oliverson said.
“So that’s where we hit upon the idea of, okay, if there [is] a natural resource to be exploited, let’s make sure that the demand for that resource is as small as we can possibly make it by choking off the ability of Texans to be able to go over there and get an organ transplant,” he added.
The congressman said he’s contemplating another legislation in the near future to block funding of research connected to organ transplantation in China.
Appeal for Senate Action
Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, led an anti-forced organ harvesting House bill that passed near-unanimously in March last year in a bid to create criminal penalties for people facilitating the abuse.
“How many more victims [might we have deterred from] victimhood, but we didn’t?” Mr. Smith said. “This has to become a really serious human rights action plan on the part of the administration, and the law will give them that,” he told The Epoch Times.
![Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, after a hearing about the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP's) forced organ harvesting in Washington on March 20, 2024. (York Du/The Epoch Times)](https://www.theepochtimes.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimg.theepochtimes.com%2Fassets%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F03%2F21%2Fid5612138-DSC01715-Chris-Smith-LSedit-1200x802.jpg&w=1200&q=75)
In January 2023, Mr. Smith was in the ICU for physical ailments.
As he lay there, he couldn’t help picturing the Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners of conscience who were “brought in against their will” to hospitals for their organs.
“They’re laying there, maybe semi-conscious, knowing that this doctor is not there to cure them but to kill them as an executioner,” he said. “That is right out of Nazi Germany.”
After much vetting and waiting, he said, the bill is “ready for passage.”
“I started like four years ago on this particular initiative, and it took that long to convince my colleagues, but now people seem to get it,” he said. “While we all get it, let’s do something about it.”