Arkansas House of Representatives Passes Resolution Condemning Forced Organ Harvesting in China

The resolution points out that there exists mass killing of prisoners of conscience in China, primarily practitioners of the Chinese spiritual practice of Falun Gong in order to obtain organs for transplants.

The organ transplantation system in China does not comply with the World Health Organisation’s Guiding Principles On Human Organ Transplantation regarding traceability and transparency in organ procurement pathways, and the Chinese government has resisted independent scrutiny of the system.

Moreover, the 2017 Freedom House report states that “available evidence suggests that forced extraction of organs from Falun Gong detainees for sale in transplant operations has occurred on a large scale and may be continuing.”

Meanwhile, an investigative report published in June 2016 by human rights attorney David Matas, former Canadian Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific, David Kilgour, and journalist Ethan Gutmann, estimated that China is performing sixty thousand to one hundred thousand transplants per year, as opposed to the ten thousand transplants, which had been projected by the Chinese government for 2015, amounting to “an industrial-scale, state-directed organ transplantation system, controlled through national policies and funding, and implicating both the military and civilian healthcare systems”, as Kilgour described these practices in his speech to the European Parliament in 2016.

The House resolves that the U.S. Congress and the Arkansas congress call upon the Chinese government to immediately end the organ harvesting from all prisoners, and immediately end the ongoing persecution of Falun Gong and release all Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners of conscience.

The resolution supports a full and transparent investigation by the U.S. Department of State into organ transplant practices in China and call for the prosecution of those found to have engaged in such unethical practices.

Furthermore, the resolution encourages the medical community of Arkansas to engage in educating colleagues and residents of Arkansas about the risks of travel to China for organ transplants to help prevent Arkansas residents from unwittingly becoming involved in murder in the form of forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience.

The state representatives agree to take measures to ban the entry of those who have participated in illegal organ harvesting and seek prosecution of such individuals should they be found in Arkansas.

A copy of House Resolution 1022 is available here .