GOP lawmaker introduces bill to sanction those who promote organ harvesting
Rep. Chris Smith, R-New Jersey, introduced a bill to combat the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) organ-harvesting industry, which is used in a prolific and profitable transplant business.
Rep. Chris Smith, R-New Jersey, introduced a bill to combat the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) organ-harvesting industry, which is used in a prolific and profitable transplant business.
Experts say China uses incarcerated prisoners of conscience as an organ donor pool to provide compatible transplants for patients. These prisoners are reportedly executed, and their organs are harvested against their will.
Smith told Fox News Digital that he has raised the issue of forced organ harvesting for years. While trafficking in human body parts happens around the world, "no one does it more egregiously than [China does with] up to 100,000 victims every year who are murdered to get their organs," Smith said.
"They're mostly from the Falun Gong practitioners, Christians, Uyghurs, and Muslims. It is a barbaric practice that is reminiscent of the Nazis in terms of using medicine in an absolutely unethical way. "
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USA Today reported that an estimated 25,000 to 50,000 inmates are allegedly murdered each year to harvest 50,000 to 150,000 organs.
Falung Gong advocates demonstrate across from the U.N. (Adam Shaw/Fox News)
"Our bill will not only require the State Department to do robust reporting on this egregious practice, but even it has sanctions in it so that any part of that supply chain, anybody who's a part of it, is barred entry to the United States, and they can't do business here in any way, shape or form," said Smith, who co-chairs the Congressional-Executive Commission on China.
The Foreign Affairs Committee voted unanimously on Wednesday to advance the bill to the House Floor.
Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute, says China had a rapid increase in the transplant medical sector starting in the late 1990s, and transplants can be given out on demand.
"The reason why they target Falun Gong practitioners and Uyghurs is that they were rounded up in very large numbers and detained. And when you're detained in China, it's open-ended. There's no due process whatsoever. Huge numbers of [religious minorities] were detained. Nobody knows [how many] because there are no records and there was no human rights group documenting it, because it's such a closed society," she said.
Ethnic Uighurs pray inside a mosque in Urumqi in China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region. REUTERS/ Nir Elias.
Shea says there must be a record on the state of the organs and blood types, but it's difficult to ascertain the source of organs beyond testimony from doctors and prison guards.
"The surgeons don't know, the nurses and the guards don't necessarily know where these people are coming from, and they're killed at some point. I've heard that they're killed sometimes in prisons. I've heard that they're killed sometimes in the hospitals" she added.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) created a Task Force on Donation and Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues in 2018.
In this photo taken on September 30, 2022, an immigration detention center, where human rights activists believe that a group of Uyghurs are being detained, is pictured in the Sathorn area of Bangkok. Almost a decade after fleeing from China, more than 50 Uyghurs are languishing in Thai immigration centers facing an uncertain future as the kingdom strives to strike a balance between Beijing and Washington. (Photo by JACK TAYLOR/AFP via Getty Images) (JACK TAYLOR/AFP via Getty Images.)
"Path-breaking researchers on this issue told me that the WHO Task Force dismissed their evidence out of hand. It gave cover for the WHO to ignore these grave concerns about China’s transplant sector," said Shea.
The WHO told Fox Digital that the task force is no longer active.
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