Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) 2022 Annual Report Includes Forced Organ Harvesting in China
November 14th 2022 (WASHINGTON, DC): U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and U.S. Representative James P. McGovern (D-MA), Chair and Cochair of the bipartisan and bicameral CECC, issued the Commission’s 2022 Annual Report on human rights conditions and rule of law developments in the People’s Republic of China.
The 2022 Annual report provides a detailed account of the systematic and often brutal efforts by the government of PRC to censor, torture, and detain critics of Chinese Communist Party policy, rights defenders and human rights lawyers, advocates of free speech, religious freedom and women’s rights, and ethnic minorities.
The report makes specific reference to Chinese forced organ harvesting, citing peer-reviewed studies published earlier this year by the American Journal of Transplantation.
Click HERE to view the full report.
“Authors of a 2022 study published in the American Journal of Transplantation concluded that it was highly likely that transplant surgeons in China had participated in the execution of prisoners “by organ transplant” as recently as 2015. They further concurred with the previous “anecdotal and textual” accounts provided by Falun Gong-affiliated organisations alleging organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience. There also continued to be accounts that Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities in the XUAR have also been targeted for forced organ removal.” (Page 96 of report)
“In a peer-reviewed study in the American Journal of Transplantation, two researchers shared their findings from ‘‘a forensic review of 2,838 papers drawn from a dataset of 124,770 Chinese language transplant publications’’ published between 1980 and 2015. Noting the common use of death row prisoners in China to harvest organs during this period, the authors of the study concluded that it was highly likely that transplant surgeons in China had participated in the execution of prisoners ‘‘by organ removal,’’ in violation of the medical field’s ‘‘dead donor rule.’’ They also described their findings as consistent with previous ‘‘anecdotal and textual’’ accounts provided by Falun Gong-affiliated organizations regarding alleged organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience. There also continued to be accounts that Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities in the XUAR have also been targeted for forced organ removal.” (Page 105 of report)
The report goes in to make a series of recommendation on how the Biden administration should respond, including a tougher sanctions regime and imposing further conditions on access to US capital markets for any Chinese companies shown to have provided services to or otherwise participated in the Chinese surveillance state, forced labour or other human rights abuses.
