(Minghui.org) The fifth session of the World Summit on Combating and Preventing Forced Organ Harvesting on September 25, 2021, highlighted the impact of organ harvesting on society.
During the World Summit on Combating and Preventing Live Organ Harvesting from September 17 to 26, 2021, 38 speakers from 19 countries, including government officials, doctors, professors, judges, lawyers, and human rights activists, covered topics including the scope of the organ harvesting, news media’s self-censorship and global societal impacts resulting from the failure to confront China regarding its transplant practices, and how society can take steps to end this abuse.
Canadian Professor: Organ Harvesting a Form of Genocide
Dr. Maria Cheung, Professor and Associate Dean at the Faculty of Social Work, and Research Affiliate at the Centre for Human Rights Research, University of Manitoba, Canada, said that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has carried out genocide against Falun Gong practitioners, which has been hidden and lingering for over two decades without much notice.
The genocide is “a slow process of annihilation that reflects the unfolding phenomenon of mass killing of a protected group under disguise – the public don’t see an immediate unleashing of violent death.”
“In cultural genocide, the destruction of a common conscience is the true essence and definition of a group. In the case of the Falun Gong, the target is the mind or spiritual being of the group that the Chinese Communist regime wants to destroy,” she added.
She said the popularity and exponential growth of Falun Gong in the mid-90s in China was seen as a moral and cultural challenge to the CCP’s Marxist-based Lennin-style ideology, with the number of Falun Gong practitioners surpassing CCP membership. Jiang Zemin, the former leader of the CCP, ordered a comprehensive eradication of Falun Gong.
When the initial attempt to neutralize the group failed due to its resilience, the CCP then turned to “an extended phase through coerced recantation and physical destruction.”
She remarked, “For those subjected to forced organ harvesting or being tortured to death, it’s a bodily destruction. For those who signed the pledge, it is spiritual and social death. Claudia Card described social death as a loss of social vitality which is loss of identity, and thereby of the meaning for one’s existence.”
“The CCP’s systematic propaganda efforts in demonization and dehumanization of the Falun Gong subjected the victims to hate, and isolation from their families, neighbors, trusted friends, and colleagues. Social death and spiritual death, unlike physical massacre, are silent and bloodless, but they achieve a similar, profound effect in the pursuit of eradication. They are central to the understanding of the evil of genocide.”
She explained that the relentless propaganda “ensures mainstream society both ignores and rejects the existence of this group like a tumor or virus that they should get rid of. The result of such normalization is inattention from the public in China and the international community. It creates an environment in which a cold genocide, a genocide by attrition, can thrive and be sustained for over twenty years.”
She concluded that “a crime of this extent, in the scope of a genocide, puts humankind at a critical position. We can’t just discuss it as an academic interest without taking meaningful actions.”
President of CAP Freedom of Conscience: The CCP’s Cover-up of the Crime
Thierry Valle, president of the CAP Freedom of Conscience, shared his first-hand experience with NGOs and UN human rights experts yielding to the CCP’s pressure and turn a blind eye to its cover-up of the organ harvesting crime.
He said that during the UN human rights council meetings over the years, his NGO has seen how the CCP responded to NGOs and UN experts on human rights and how they tried to influence the Human Rights Council.
According to Mr. Valle, “in 2017, during the 3rd round of the Universal Periodic Review on China, 346 recommendations were submitted by 150 countries and dozens of submissions were made by NGOs to denounce the treatment of Falun Gong members and the Uyghur internment camps.”
He continued, “We have attended more than 10 sessions of the Human Rights Council. Session after session, the number of countries and NGOs denouncing human rights violations in China has increased dramatically. But China’s response of not interfering in its internal affairs has not changed.”
He added, “Another method used by China to undermine the credibility and effectiveness of NGOs is to have pro-China propaganda carried out by NGOs that they themselves have created. Members of these China-controlled NGOs are then sent to international meetings to issue false reports and raise irrelevant issues in order to distract the public from the sad human rights record of those in power.”
According to him, these government NGOs (GONGOs) presented the CCP’s state agenda by pretending to be non-partisan. Meanwhile, their actions also prevented the real voice of the people from being heard in the international community. He noticed that over the years, the number of these GONGOs has been increasing steadily.
Mr. Valle lamented that “Today, we can see that democratic states and international bodies seem wanting to act. But for the moment, these good intentions are not followed by binding acts against China.”
He emphasized that the CCP’s live organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners and Uyghurs is a serious violation of the universal ethical values and moral principles of human life and dignity. He urges the CCP, as a member of the UN Human Rights Council, to respect the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as the other conventions it has signed.
Argentina Researcher: The Role of Civil Society Critical in Stopping Atrocities
Antonella Marty, associate director of Atlas Network’s Center for Latin America in Argentina, noted that the CCP has started its killing history since the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. The killing has continued to this day, with its latest victims being practitioners of Falun Gong.
Ms. Marty pointed out that all forms of Communism tried throughout history “have been harmful… and that have never given a good result, because they go against the nature of the human being.”
She highlighted that “Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong, is an ancient Chinese discipline of the Buddha School to cultivate and refine body, mind, and spirit. It is based upon the three principles of truth, benevolence and tolerance – things that Communism has rejected and persecuted throughout its history.”
In persecuting the practitioners, the CCP has used most egregious torture methods, including brainwashing, forced labor, physical torture, beating, electric shocks, rape, and starvation, as well as the forced organ harvesting.
“Millions of Falun Dafa practitioners in that nation are being killed by a political party, by a communist system, which removes and sells their organs. A cornea is sold for $30,000, a lung for $150,000, a heart for $130,000, a liver for $100,000, and a kidney for $60,000. It is an abhorrent practice,” she said.
She believes each individual and every civilized society plays an important role in “defending the freedom of a country that is tormented by a bloodthirsty regime that lies to the whole world. From civil society organizations, think tanks, foundations, the media, meeting clubs - even in family gatherings, with friends, in every space where we can, we must carry the message of the suffering that is being endured in China and in dozens of countries around the world that are still clinging to life in the clutches of Communism.”
Family of Holocaust Survivor: My Responsibility to Stop the Forced Organ Harvesting
Larisa Vilsker is a retired civil engineer and human rights advocate in Israel. Her father was a survivor of the Holocaust. When the Nazis entered Poland, nearly all of her father’s large family were imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto, and most of them died, including young children. As a child, Vilsker heard horrific stories of the torture and experiments on prisoners in concentration camps.
“For me, born in the post-war period, it seemed that this was left in the past and would never happen again.” When she heard of “similar concentration camps in China, where people are illegally arrested, imprisoned, tortured [and] vital organs are forcibly removed,” she decided it was “my direct duty to call on the entire world community to stop this threat to all mankind.”
She admitted, “For many countries, China is a profitable economic partner; many countries have fallen under its economic dependence.” But instead of turning a blind eye to the monstrous things happening in China for the sake of business and political gain, she calls on the international community to pay attention to the human rights abuses happening there.
“All people have one common home – our planet, Earth. And today we are given the opportunity to make a feasible contribution by restoring justice on our planet,” she said.
Former Swiss MP: Have the Courage to Say “No”
Oskar Freysinger, former Swiss Member of Parliament and best-selling author, remarked, “The Chinese Communist Party ... cannot accept the mystical approach of Falun Gong. Since it has no control over anything beyond matter, it mercilessly hunts down anything that might transcend matter and thus escape its control.”
“This is why the system is so intent on dehumanizing the so-called ‘deviants’ and ‘pests’ who dare to say no to it. … Worse even, the CCP will take the organs of these ‘evil’ people for the benefit of ‘useful,’ ‘docile’ and therefore ‘deserving’ comrades. It will claim to transform evil into good by a barbaric harvest of individual organs for the benefit of the social body.”
He urged the general public not to remain silent out of cowardice or self-interest. He said that intellectuals have always been the last line of defense of human rights and human dignity against barbarity. They are like “the conscience of a people or a nation. They must have the courage, through their actions and words, to denounce any attack on the physical and moral integrity of their fellow human beings. They must know how to say NO.”
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