Social Stability - 30. page

On Wednesday, February 24, the “International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China” (ETAC) hosted a seminar on the CCP’s live organ harvesting. 117 people including legal experts and elected officials from the U.S., Canada, the UK, the EU, and Australia attended the seminar.

One of the keynote speakers was Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, a prosecutor at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the Chair of the China Tribunal (Forced Organ Harvesting from Prisoners of Conscience in China.) Nice said that forced organ harvesting is the worst crime since World War II. On June 17, 2019, after a five-day hearing with over 50 witnesses, medical experts, and investigators, the China Tribunal released a 60-page summary and confirmed that crimes against humanity, including forced organ harvesting, have been committed in China.

Sean Lin, former lab director for the viral diseases branch at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, said Falun Gong practitioners have been persecuted by the CCP for many years and they are the primary targets of organ harvesting. Dr. Lin said that, after the CCP started to suppress Falun Gong in 1999, the number of organ transplants in China saw a dramatic increase, from military hospitals to large size hospitals, across the country. The crime still continues today. When investigators contacted hospitals in China, they were told the wait time for organs is very short. Apparently, a large organ donor supply exists in China. For cultural reasons voluntary donations in China hardly exist at all. He said that “as indicated by the China Tribunal, the international community should demand the CCP take immediate actions to stop this atrocity instead of simply conducting more investigations. … Forced organ harvesting is not only a crime against humanity but it is also a form of genocide.”

International human rights lawyer David Matas proposed legal action such as the Magnitsky Act to sanction communist China. Wendy Rogers, a Professor of Clinical Ethics at Macquarie University in Australia proposed that more institutions and scientific organizations could press the CCP and ban doctors involved from attending international conferences or publishing papers. Overseas patients should also be restricted from going on medical trips to China to receive organs harvested from living Falun Gong practitioners.

A number of countries have spoken against the forced organ harvesting. The annual human rights report from the U.S. Department of State quoted the judgment from the China Tribunal and also recorded the deaths of 96 Falun Gong practitioners in China that year, caused by the suppression. On December 16, 2020, U.S. Senator Tom Cotton, together with House representatives Chris Smith and Tom Suozzi, introduced a bill to stop forced organ harvesting in China. Known as the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act, this bill aimed to prevent the Chinese Communist Party from harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience. According to Marilou McPhedran, MP from Canada a measure called S-240 had been introduced to amend the Criminal Code and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (trafficking in human organs). On February 22, Canadian MPs voted unanimously to pass a motion from the Conservative Party that designated communist China’s treatment of Uyghurs as genocide.

According to information from the Minghui, over 4,000 Falun Gong practitioners have lost their lives to the persecution in China. At least 84 died in 2020 alone. Due to information censorship, the real number of victims could be much higher. Furthermore, a large number of practitioners have gone missing in the 21-year-long persecution since 1999.

Source: Minghui.org, February 26, 2021
https://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2021/2/26/191136.html

China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported on February 21 that a document that the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the State Council issued on January 4 stated that the authorities would “step up the crackdown on illegal religions and overseas infiltration activities in rural areas.” The Xinhua report showed that there was an official instruction behind the campaign against “illegal religion” in a number of areas of China over the past two months.

The so-called “illegal religions” refers to Christian house churches, Catholic underground churches, or some Buddhist, Taoist, Islamic or other religious organizations that do not participate in official religious activities.

On February 8, a meeting of the CCP’s branch of the United Front Work Department in Shantou City, Guangdong Province asked that “all towns (neighborhoods) must … keep a close eye on religious and folk festivals” and “focus on investigations of and cracking down on illegal religious activities.”

On February 9, government officials in Duyun City, Guizhou Province carried out activities against “pornography and illegality” and “illegal religions.” Officials visited local communities to “prevent, in a timely manner, obscene and pornographic publications, illegal religious publications, and other cultural rubbish from appearing in the community .” In addition, authorities in Guiyang City, Guizhou Province, published an article on its official WeChat account on February 19, stating that a local neighborhood had organized staff and volunteers to “investigate illegal religions … and to find any illegal teaching of religious knowledge or any organization of religious activities.”

On February 20, a CCP official in Yunnan Province told local government officials to “resolutely combat the spread of illegal religious activities.”

On February 23, the branch of the CCP’s United Front Work Department in Nanchang City, Jiangxi Province established a task force to conduct a “special inspection” of local religious venues, to “focus on inspections for the existence of illegal religious publications,” and to “acquire detailed knowledge about the purchase or donation of religious publications in all venues.”

On February 23, a Christian venue in Liaoyang City, Liaoning Province received a “Notice of Banning Illegal Religious Activity Sites.” The local authorities had issued it and the venue was fined 200,000 yuan (US$ 30,870). Equipment and supplies related to religious activities were confiscated.

On February 24, in Fuyang City, Anhui Province, the police closed down two local religious assembly sites, including one Christian house church venue, in the name of “carrying out an illegal religious private assembly.”

Source: Radio Free Asia, February, 25, 2021
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/shehui/sc-02252021074232.html

On February 23, an explosion was reported at a restaurant 650 meters (0.4 miles) away from the CCP headquarters in the Zhongnanhai district in Beijing possibly causing one death, while six people were injured. The video and pictures from the scene showed that the restaurant had turned into rubble. Doors and windows of nearby residential areas and the windows of roadside vehicles were shattered. The drivers inside the nearby parked cars were injured. The official media reported that the explosion happened during the installation of a gas tank that had been delivered to the restaurant. The restaurant was still on Chinese New Year shutdown and was not open to public. The official media reports on the explosion included CCTV, Sohu, Sina and The Paper. However, as of February 24, the relevant media reports had been removed from the Internet.

The timing of the incident was also sensitive. Beijing will be holding the 2021 two sessions on March 4 and 5. At present, Beijing has entered a high-level security stage. There is tight security screening of pedestrians, vehicles, parcels and the mail. There is a visible police force deployed to guard the area surrounding the Zhongnanhai compound.

Sources:
1. China News, February 23, 2021
https://news.creaders.net/china/2021/02/23/2325014.html

2. Epoch Times, February 24, 2021
https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/21/2/24/n12771043.htm