Culpeper County, Virginia Passes Resolution Unanimously Condemning Forced Organ Harvesting in China

By a Falun Gong practitioner in Virginia
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On May 4, 2021, the Culpeper County Board of Supervisors in Virginia, U.S.A. unanimously passed a resolution to condemn the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) persecution of Falun Gong, as well as the atrocity of forcibly harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience.

This is the eleventh county in the State of Virginia to condemn forced organ harvesting by the CCP, with one county passing a motion in 2020 and the other ten passing similar resolutions in 2021.

Falun Gong practitioners were invited to speak at the meeting held to discuss the latest resolution. When they spoke, some county commissioners and county attorneys were in tears.

Jack Frazier, one of the board members who initiated the resolution, said that he hopes to raise awareness among residents of Culpeper County that they shouldn’t go to China for organ transplants, as it is murder.

In the resolution, he and other board supervisors “condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the persecution of Falun Gong and the state-sponsored organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience currently being carried out by the Chinese Communist regime.” They also urge “the United States government to thoroughly investigate organ transplant practices in China and take all reasonable steps to end the practice of nonconsensual organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners.”

The resolution further stated, “that the residents and the medical community servicing Culpeper and the immediate region be informed about the risks of travel to China for organ transplants to help prevent local citizens from becoming accomplices in the state-sponsored forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience.”

Below is the full text of the resolution:

 

To educate Culpeper residents and the medical community on the risks of traveling to China for organ transplant in light of recent reports of state-sponsored organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience

 

Whereas, extensive and credible reports have revealed mass killing of prisoners of conscience in the People’s Republic of China, primarily practitioners of the Chinese spiritual practice of Falun Gong, but also other religious and ethnic minority groups, in order to obtain organs for transplants; and

Whereas, The China Tribunal, an independent tribunal sitting in London chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice, who was a prosecutor at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, concluded on June 18, 2019, in a unanimous determination at the end of its year-long hearings, that the killing of detainees in China for organ transplants and victims include imprisoned followers of the Falun Gong movement; and

Whereas, the 2017 Freedom House Report, “The Battle for China’s Spirit,” 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”; and

Whereas, 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 transplants at a rate amounting to “an industrial-scale, state-directed organ transplantation system, controlled through national policies and funding, and implicating both the military and civilian healthcare system”; and

Whereas, Falun Gong, a spiritual practice involving meditative “qigong” exercises and centered on the values of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance, became immensely popular in China in the late 1990’s with multiple estimates placing the number of practitioners at upwards of seventy million (70,000,000); and

Whereas, in July 1999, the Chinese Communist Party launched an intensive, nationwide persecution designed to eradicate the spiritual practice of Falun Gong; Hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been detained extralegally in Chinese reeducation-through-labor camps, detention centers, and prisons, where physical and mental torture is common; and

Whereas, in June 2016, the United States House of Representatives unanimously passed House Resolution 343, condemning the systematic, state-sanctioned organ harvesting from practitioners of Falun Gong and other prisoners of conscience; and

Whereas, there has been little media coverage of this problem, yet dozens of Culpeper citizens petitioned the Culpeper Board of Supervisors to take up this matter; and

Whereas, Culpeper residents should be fully informed of the organ source in China before they make the decision to engage in organ transplant tourism in China and the Culpeper County Board of Supervisors wishes to assist in raising awareness in this regard;

Now therefore, be it resolved, by the Culpeper County Board of Supervisors, that we condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the persecution of Falun Gong and the state-sponsored organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience currently being carried out by the Chinese Communist regime; and

Be it further resolved, that we urge the United States government to thoroughly investigate organ transplant practices in China and take all reasonable steps to end the practice of nonconsensual organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners; and

Be it further resolved, that the residents and the medical community servicing Culpeper and the immediate region be informed about the risks of travel to China for organ transplants to help prevent local citizens from becoming accomplices in state-sponsored forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience; and

Be it further resolved, that copies of this resolution be provided to the Governor of Virginia, Virginia’s General Assembly, Virginia’s congressional delegation and two U.S. Senators, and the Virginia Department of Health.