‘We can ensure that organ procurement is ethical and that no one profits illegally from the organs of Uyghurs, Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners,’ they wrote.
A group of House Republicans is urging the State Department to set up a reward to curb the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) horrific practice of forced organ harvesting, in which organs taken from living prisoners of conscience are used in transplant surgeries across China’s hospital system.
In an Aug. 7 letter addressed to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Reps. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), and Neal Dunn (R-Fla.) said there is an “urgent need” for the State Department to offer reward money under its “Rewards for Justice” program to obtain firsthand evidence to hold perpetrators in China accountable for the transplant abuse.
“The complicity of the Chinese government in forced organ harvesting … is deeply troubling and should be considered a ‘crime against humanity,’” the lawmakers wrote.
Smith is the co-chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China and a senior member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Moolenaar is the chair of the House Select Committee on the CCP. Dunn also sits on the panel.
“For far too long, China’s state-sanctioned organ trafficking empire has been overlooked and operated unchecked,” Smith said in an Aug. 7 statement.
“As a result, Uyghurs, Falun Gong practitioners, and other prisoners of conscience have suffered the consequences, having their organs brutally removed and sold for profit by CCP officials.
“The State Department already has the funds and the authority to offer rewards for actionable intelligence; it is time that we deploy them to dismantle this illegal and gruesome billion-dollar industry and deliver justice to those whose lives have been mercilessly stolen.”
In the letter, the lawmakers wrote that congressional hearings and independent investigations had presented an “extensive body of evidence” on the Chinese regime’s abuse. They referenced a 2022 study published in the American Journal of Transplantation, saying that Chinese surgeons “acted as executioners” because the prisoners were not declared brain dead before their organs were removed.
The regime came under media scrutiny for organ harvesting in 2006, the year two Canadian human rights lawyers released an investigative report confirming allegations that such atrocities were being committed in China.
In 2019, an independent tribunal in London, led by British barrister Sir Geoffrey Nice, concluded that forced organ harvesting had taken place in China for years “on a significant scale,” with Falun Gong practitioners being the primary victims.
By Frank Fang
