(Minghui.org) A seminar to discuss the Chinese regime and its systemic human rights abuses was held in Portcullis House in Wilson Hall of the UK Parliament on July 8, 2026. Sir Iain Duncan Smith, former leader of the UK’s Conservative Party, pointed out in his opening speech at the Understanding the Chinese Leadership seminar that the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) is not only a threat to the Chinese people, but also to the free world. He stressed that the CCP ignores its promises made in international treaties, for example its treatment of Hong Kong. Recently, it introduced the Ethnic Unity Law, which carries extraterritorial effect and extended its repression outside of China. Sir Smith warned that the West should not ignore the CCP’s values and conduct, which are very different from the West.

The seminar was chaired by Sir Smith with guest speakers Dr. David Matas, Jan Jekielek, and Ethan Gutmann. The seminar was highly anticipated and attended by members of Parliament, representatives from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) China Team, Human Tissue Authority (HTA), British Medical Association (BMA), Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the BBC, as well as non-governmental organizations such as Hong Kong Watch (HKP), Stop Uyghur Genocide, and the Christian Medical Fellowship.

A seminar was held in Portcullis House in Wilson Hall on July 8, 2026, to bring attention to the forced organ harvesting atrocities in China. (Minghui.org)

The seminar started with a discussion of the CCP-controlled industry of organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience, which generates billions in revenue each year. The speakers disclosed new evidence of widespread, continual organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, and other ethnic minorities in China. They provided in-depth analysis of the CCP leaders’ way of thinking, which is very different from Western leaders.

Sir Smith Asks the Public to Recognize the CCP’s True Nature and Urges the UK to Strengthen Legislation

Sir Iain Duncan Smith, former chair of the UK Conservative Party: CCP poses not only a threat to Chinese people, but also to the free world. (Minghui.org)

Sir Smith said that over the past two decades, the CCP has built a massive and extremely lucrative organ trade industry through the mass killing of its citizens, in particular, prisoners of conscience. He stated that this practice is so horrendous that the West often subconsciously denies its existence. To this end, he brought up the Falun Gong Protection Act recently passed by the US House of Representatives as a positive example, and he urged the British Parliament to listen to the expert investigative evidence and take a firm step in legislation, sanctions and reporting mechanisms to ensure that Britain does not become an accomplice to these crimes.

Matas: Fix Legislative Loopholes and Take Comprehensive Preventative Measures

David Matas: Prioritize human rights issues in intergovernmental conversations. (Minghui.org)

David Matas, a prominent Canadian human rights lawyer who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, affirmed the recent legislative progress in the UK. He said, “The United Kingdom Parliament has enacted legislation in 2022 to render criminal complicity in commercial organ transaction abroad that applies to citizens and permanent residents, and in 2024 they enacted a regulation requiring transplant nurses to report cases of reasonable suspicion of transplants abroad.”

Matas stressed that the UK needs to take a more comprehensive approach to prevent organ transplant abuse. He proposed an immigration ban and denying entry to foreigners who come to the UK, but have been complicit in organ transplantation abroad. “Another is insurance, denying public or private insurance to people who are getting aftercare when they got a transplant abroad, in a situation where there is organ transplant abuse,” “cutting off supply chains to people who are supplying the building of transplant hospitals, or transplant wings, or providing transplant technology to China,” he said.

Matas said that the obstacles that prevent people from actively solving the problem include their disbelief that these atrocities exist, conflicts of interest, and the geopolitical weight of China, economically and politically.

Matas suggested the British government legislate sanctions and country reporting similar to that in the US Falun Gong Protection Act. He had two messages to the UK Prime Minister. One is that China under the CCP’s rule is very different from the UK, and it’s dangerous to extrapolate Western experience when dealing with China. The second is to “take seriously evidence of human rights violations and act on them, in terms of intergovernmental concerns about organ harvesting abuse.” He said that the abuse is sometimes raised in intergovernmental forums, “but not enough, not given enough priority.”

Jekielek: Forced Organ Harvesting is a Window into the Minds of CCP Leadership

Jan Jekielek said that in the eyes of the CCP leadership, a majority of its citizens are raw material for organ transplantation. (Minghui.org)

Jan Jekielek, New York Times best-selling author of Killed to Order, said that “two-thirds of the book is about how this monstrous activity is in fact a window into the minds of the CCP leadership and the CCP writ large.”

“[The Chinese leaders] view significant portions of their own populations as raw material for organ transplantation, so those leaders themselves can live longer, and also for massive profits,” Jekielek continued, “This is industrial scale. This is 60 to 90 thousand transplants a year.” He advised the public not to have an idealized view of the CCP.

Based on the current geopolitical realities, Jekielek offered suggestions and reminders to the future UK Prime Minister. He said that the Chinese authorities are still seriously considering building a giant Chinese embassy in London in a very strategically opportune place, which is a potential way for China to tap into the UK’s and all the Five Eyes nations’ data streams.

He advised the new Prime Minister that the Chinese regime is not a normal regime that one can negotiate with in a traditional sense. “The regime is not a government that believes in win-win. It’s a government that wants the UK and the US and Canada, my home country, and so forth as a vassal state, essentially.”

Ethan Gutmann: Medical Society Should Place an Academic Boycott on China

Ethan Gutmann (left) believes that state-sponsored organ harvesting that target prisoners of conscience is still rampant in China. (Minghui.org)

Ethan Gutmann, a senior human rights investigator and research fellow for China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, presented his new book, The Xinjiang Procedure, at the seminar. The book provides the latest and compelling evidence that state-sponsored forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience continues unchecked in China.

Gutmann said that there is a schism in the medical community on how to deal with organ harvesting in China, “The Transplantation Society, which doggedly has this belief that they can get China to change through engagement … at the same time the International Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation has placed an academic boycott on China.”

Gutmann advocated there be no contact with China until they change their policy. He said that Thermo Fisher once sold about 10 million DNA kits to Beijing to use on the Uyghurs, and that western commercial technology has unknowingly become complicit in China’s organ harvesting. He called on governments to mandate legislation to prevent the crimes from taking place. Gutmann urged Britain to avoid the Chinese market and build a strong US-UK alliance in the face of energy and geopolitical crises.

Human Tissue Authority: Cases Involving China Will Be Transferred to the Highest Police Force

A Royal Counsel (KC) and board member of Human Tissue Authority (HTA), a regulator of human tissue and organs under the UK Department of Health and Social Care, spoke at the seminar. The representative clarified that according to the new regulation enacted in 2024, the UK’s mandatory reporting of overseas organ transplantation is more prevalent than most people know. Healthcare workers who come into contact with a British citizen or permanent resident who receives an organ transplant overseas is legally obligated to report it to HTA. He told attendees that HTA currently receives several overseas transplant reports every month.

He assured them that HTA was fully aware of the hidden criminal risks behind forced organ harvesting abroad. “Based on the reports, if we find or suspect serious crimes involving forced organ harvesting in China or other countries, HTA will not stand idly by. We will report directly to the highest level of the UK police force and urge it to launch an urgent and thorough criminal investigation.”

Uyghur Representative: UK Government Should Acknowledge Ongoing Genocide in China

Rahima Mahmood from the World Uyghur Congress London Office is also the leader of the Stop Uyghur Genocide campaign in the UK. She talked about the CCP’s systemic human rights violations from the victim’s perspective, and asked the UK government to take two critical steps. First, to “acknowledge the severity of the crimes, especially organ harvesting, that the Chinese government is committing against the people.” Second: the government must take measures to prevent the crimes and sanction the entities that are responsible for the crimes.

Heated Discussion

The participants actively engaged in conversations and in-depth discussions during the Q&A sessions. They talked about how to advance cross-party legislation in the UK and disrupt supply chains for complicit criminals, and they expect the introduction of robust countermeasures.

Practitioners held an event outside Parliament to expose the Chinese regime’s ongoing persecution of Falun Gong (Minghui.org)

Practitioners displayed posters and banners to tell officials and the public about the persecution. Their actions echoed the voices inside Parliament, and sent a strong message to end the CCP’s human rights calamity and transnational repression of Falun Gong.