Protest against China’s harvesting of Falun Gong organs. (photo via)
Evidence has been brought to the United Nations that China has been illegally harvesting and selling organs. Taken from religious and ethnic minorities, this has been occurring on an industrial scale. The Falun Gong spiritual group have been victimised on the largest scale. Other targets have included various Tibetan and Christian sects, as well as the Uighur Muslim community. It is suggested this has been happening for twenty years.
Lawyer Hamid Sabi brought the findings of the China Tribunal to the UN. The tribunal found that the claims had been proved ‘beyond reasonable doubt’, saying that prisoners of conscience had been ‘killed to order… cut open while still alive for their kidneys, livers, hearts, lungs, cornea and skin to be removed and turned into commodities for sale.’
China denies the claims. Though in the past laws had been passed to allow organs to be taken from executed prisoners – if they had previously given consent, or no one claimed the body – they maintain this stopped in 2015. In fact, they accuse the tribunal of spreading ‘rumours’.
Who are the Falun Gong spiritual group?
A community that comes from the Chinese qigong discipline, the Falun Gong spiritual group is rooted in Buddhist tradition. The religious spiritual practice was banned twenty years ago after a silent protest against state persecution in Beijing. The Falun Gong spiritual group began to be persecuted at such an alarming rate in 1999, when the Communist Party started a campaign to eradicate them, seeing them as a potential threat.
Since the growing incarceration of practisers, organ ‘donation’ has increased. The tribunal found that there was an ‘impossibility of there being anything like sufficient “eligible donors”’, suggesting towards the claims of unlawful harvesting.
Reports of China harvesting the organs of the Falun Gong spiritual group first emerged in 2006. Since then, protests have been carried out across the country. Several other countries have condemned China’s actions. With the UN now involved, an end to the killings could be in sight.
