Letter to the Editor - How we can help end crimes against humanity in China

We want to thank the U.S. House of Representatives, which unanimously passed H.R. 4132, the Falun Gong Protection Act, on June 25, which aims to end forced organ harvesting and the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China. This resolution will also protect U.S. citizens, institutions, the transplant community, and American medical centers from unknowingly supporting this crime against humanity.

In July 1999, then-Chinese Communist Party head Jiang Zemin decided that Falun Gong’s popularity and spiritual tenets threatened the atheist party’s power. He banned Falun Gong, a self-improvement practice with gentle exercises that benefit health and well-being, and launched a brutal campaign to eradicate it. According to reports from Amnesty International, Freedom House, and others, Falun Gong practitioners have been arrested on a large scale, tortured, and killed for the past 25 years.

The state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners of conscience has been going on since 2006. Independent investigations by Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas, human rights activist David Kilgour, and journalist Ethan Gutmann first exposed these crimes.

In 2018, The China Tribunal, led by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, was organized to further investigate these allegations. After examining evidence and hearing personal accounts, a full judgment was released in March 2020 concluding that, “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.” Similar conclusions were also stated in Freedom House reports.

We ask Sens. Jon Tester and Steve Daines to support this bill, which would impose sanctions on foreign persons who have taken part in the involuntary harvesting of organs from prisoners of conscience. It will save innocent lives, curtail forced organ harvesting, and help prevent American medical centers and patients from becoming complicit in these heinous crimes.

The people of Montana can help to end these atrocities by writing or calling Senator Tester and Senator Daines’ officesand telling them to support H.R. 4132, the Falun Gong Protection Act.

Katherine Combes

Kalispell