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National Republican Coalition Passes Resolution Against Forced Organ Harvesting

Published: October 13, 2021
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On the afternoon of Feb. 24, 2021, the International Federation to End Abuse of Transplants in China held a seminar on live organ harvesting in China, with experts and parliamentarians from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Australia and other countries attending. (Image source: SecretChina)

The National Federation of Republican Assemblies (NFRA), a political organization dedicated to promoting conservative principles and candidates in the Republican Party, passed a resolution calling for an end to the Chinese Communist Party’s religious persecution and organ harvesting of prisoners, mainly Falun Gong practitioners, during its national convention in Scottsdale, Arizona, on October 9.

The resolution calls on the U.S. Congress and state legislatures to pass legislation condemning and stopping forced organ harvesting by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and called on the Chinese government to immediately release all Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners of conscience, and to oversee the U.S. Department of State’s ban on granting visas to those involved in forced organ harvesting.

The resolution states that Falun Gong is a qigong practice centered on the values of “truth, kindness, and forbearance.” It gained popularity in the 1990s. However, in July 1999, the CCP launched an intensive nationwide persecution campaign to eliminate Falun Gong. It reflects the party’s long standing intolerance of large independent civil society groups. Since 1999, hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been detained extrajudicially in reeducation-through-labor camps, detention centers, and prisons, where torture and abuse are commonplace.

The resolution also said that according to a 2015 report by Freedom House, an international NGO, Falun Gong practitioners are the most prominent prisoners of conscience in China and face a high risk of death or murder in custody. Wheras, the United Nations Committee Against Torture and the Special Rapporteur on Torture have expressed concern about allegations of organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners. 

They called on the Chinese government to strengthen accountability and transparency in the organ transplant system and to punish those responsible for abuses. Killing religious or political prisoners to sell their organs for transplantation is an egregious and intolerable violation of the fundamental right to life. Therefore, the National Republican Coalition calls on the United States Congress and state legislatures to pass legislation that would;

(1) Reprimand the People’s Republic of China for its state-sanctioned practice of forced organ harvesting.

(2) Call on the government of the People’s Republic of China and the Communist Party of China to immediately stop the practice of harvesting organs from all prisoners of conscience.

(3) Demands that the government of the People’s Republic of China and the Communist Party of China immediately cease the 22-year persecution of Falun Gong practitioners and immediately release all Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners of conscience.

(4) Calls on the People’s Republic of China to allow a credible, transparent, and independent investigation into the abuse of organ transplants; and

(5) Calls on the U.S. Department of State to include in its annual human rights reports a more detailed analysis of state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience and to report annually to Congress on the implementation of Section 232 of the State Department Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2003, which prohibits the granting of visas to Chinese and other nationals who engage in a coercive organ or body tissue transplants.

The Solano County chair of the California Republican Assembly, Norman Reece, sponsored the resolution and introduced a similar resolution at the California Republican Alliance in 2018, which was passed unanimously.

This year, he hopes to reintroduce the resolution to the National Republican Coalition convention to “draw more attention to the atrocities taking place in China.”

I think it’s essential to continue to hold the CCP accountable for the atrocities it’s committing, “and this is the most brutal of them all – the persecution of religion, the live organ harvesting, the whole thing is disgusting, it’s abominable,” he said in a phone interview with The Epoch Times on Oct. 10.

Independent investigators have accused the Chinese government of systematically harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience on a large scale for organ transplants and soliciting “organ tourism” for profit. The victims have primarily imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners and members of other religious and ethnic minority groups. David Jogow conducted the most significant independent investigation in his work titled, “Report on the Allegations of Organ Harvesting by the Chinese Communist Party.”

Many governments and agencies have adopted resolutions and policies against forced organ harvesting

The allegation has been included in reports by the United Nations, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Congress, and other agencies for years. The Republic of China, the European Parliament, the Senate of Australia, the Senate of Italy, the Irish Parliament, and the U.S. Congress have all passed resolutions condemning the forced harvesting of organs from Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners of conscience. The European Union has also adopted the European Council Convention against Trafficking in Human Organs, and Israel, Spain, and Taiwan have completed legislation to ban organ transplant tourism to China.

On June 17, 2019, in London, the China Tribunal, established by the International Coalition to End the Abuse of Organ Transplantation in China (ETAC), and handed down its final verdict in the case of forced organ harvesting by the Chinese government. The tribunal’s chairman, Sir Geoffrey Nice, QC, who served as a prosecutor in the war crimes trial of former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic at the International Court of The Hague, convicted the Chinese government in the forced organ harvesting case. A key witness in the trial was Dr. Enver Tohti, who was himself asked to harvest the organs of a prisoner alive.

‘The US has reached an inflection point, and we can no longer be onlookers’

Mr. Reece said that the National Federation of Republican Coalitions holds a national convention every two years and proposed this resolution at the last convention in 2019, but it was ignored. This time, with the support of his colleagues in the California Republican Coalition, they made sure the resolution was voted on and passed by a majority.

“A lot of people are starting to realize that the mainstream media doesn’t cover things like this, so the more attention we raise to this, the better. Reece believes the mainstream media ignores news like this because the Chinese Communist Party threatens them: “There’s a lot of investment by the Chinese [government] and people feel threatened by that. The CCP may have something on them, and they are afraid of being exposed.”

That’s why he hopes grassroots organizations like the National Republican Coalition will play a more significant role in waking people up: “The professional politicians and consultants, who get paid whether they win or lose, don’t have that sense of urgency. Volunteers don’t get paid; they work to make things happen. So we’re trying to work with grassroots volunteers to emphasize that America is at an inflection point , so we need to act, we need to get involved, and we can’t be spectators anymore.”

The National Federation of Republican Alliances (NFRA) is a grassroots movement of Reagan conservatives who believe in small government, low taxes, free-market capitalism, strong national defense, the right to life, and a decent America. “The California Republican Coalition is the oldest chapter of the organization. Notable current and former members include President Reagan, Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly, Americans for Tax Reform founder Grover Norquist, former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, and current U.S. Senators Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), among others.”