China’s Forced Organ Harvesting Under Scrutiny at UN Human Rights Council Meeting

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Mar 7, 2025 - 10:55 Updated: Mar 7, 2025 - 10:50
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China’s Forced Organ Harvesting Under Scrutiny at UN Human Rights Council Meeting

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Two Falun Gong practitioners spoke at the U.N. body’s meetings, raising awareness of the plight of their faith group under the CCP’s relentless persecution.

The Chinese regime’s practice of forcibly harvesting human organs for sale and transplant was highlighted at a recent U.N. Human Rights Council meeting, at which two Falun Gong practitioners raised awareness of the regime’s ongoing persecution of their faith.

During a council meeting on March 4, Berlin resident Ding Lebin said that 164 people are known to have died in China in 2024 as a result of the persecution, and 764 people are documented to have received new prison sentences.

He called for the release of his father, Ding Yuande, who was sentenced to three years in prison in December 2023.

Last year, Ding Lebin told The Epoch Times that he feared for his father’s safety and was worried that he could be tortured, subjected to forced labor, or even killed for his organs.

Speaking at the meeting, Ding Lebin said, “We want to call upon the United Nations Human Rights Council to appoint a special rapporteur on forced organ harvesting in China; to strongly urge the Chinese government to release [my father], all Falun Gong practitioners, and all other prisoners of conscience; and to investigate China’s transnational repression against Falun Gong practitioners and all human rights defenders abroad.”

He made the remarks on behalf of the Society for Threatened Peoples, a human rights organization based in Germany.

The U.N. Human Rights Council’s 58th regular session began on Feb. 24 and is scheduled to end on April 4. Every year, nongovernment organizations, intergovernmental organizations, and national human rights institutions can choose to participate in a session alongside the council’s member states.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a meditation discipline based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. In China, 70 million to 100 million people had taken up the practice by 1999, according to estimates at the time.

Seeing the spiritual discipline’s popularity as a threat, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched a nationwide campaign to eradicate the group in July 1999. Since then, millions of Falun Gong practitioners have been detained inside prisons, labor camps, and other facilities, with hundreds of thousands tortured while incarcerated, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center.

Evidence of the CCP’s forced organ harvesting first emerged in 2006.
In 2019, the China Tribunal, a London-based independent people’s tribunal, concluded that the Chinese regime had “beyond reasonable doubt” been forcibly harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience for many years, with the primary victims being Falun Gong practitioners.
The tribunal stated that medical tests performed on Falun Gong and Uyghur detainees but not on other prisoners were “highly suggestive of methods used to assess organ function.”
During the U.N. body’s 55th regular session, in 2024, the Society for Threatened Peoples urged diplomats stationed in China at the embassies of U.N. member states to visit the regime’s prisoners of conscience.
At a separate council meeting on March 5, Wong Kayan, spokesperson for the Falun Gong community in the Netherlands, said in a speech that China’s transplant industry has benefitted from the regime’s barbaric practice.

“Chinese Communist Party systematically conceals and denies these crimes, manipulating transplant data and misleading international institutions,“ Wong said. ”This practice violates fundamental human rights, medical ethics, and international law, as per the Genocide Convention.”

Wong made the remarks on behalf of the Stichting Global Human Rights Defence, an NGO based in The Hague.

She urged governments worldwide to support the Falun Gong community by signing the Universal Declaration on Combating and Preventing Forced Organ Harvesting, an initiative launched by five NGOs, including the U.S.-based Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting.
In the United States, a bicameral bill targeting the CCP’s forced organ harvesting was reintroduced earlier this month. The legislation, officially known as the Falun Gong Protection Act, would require sanctions on those responsible for or complicit in the abuse.

Under the act, the secretary of state would be required to compile a report on China’s organ transplant policies for the relevant congressional committees.

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