DAFOH Receives Mother Teresa Memorial Award for Social Justice

In late October, the Harmony Foundation announced that DAFOH, as well as three other associations and eight individuals were selected as recipients of the 2019 Mother Teresa Memorial Award for Social Justice.  This year, the annual award celebrating the legacy of Saint Mother Teresa was awarded to those fighting modern forms of slaveryPrevious award recipients have included presidents, parliamentarians, human rights activists, Medicines Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders) and the Dalai Lama.

The Foundation praised DAFOH’s mission to uphold ethical practices in medicine during its decade-long fight to inform the medical community and raise awareness in society at large of the state-sanctioned forced live organ harvesting of Chinese prisoners of conscience, including Falun Gong practitioners, House Christians, Tibetans, Uyghurs and political activists.

Founder and Chairman Dr. Abraham Mathai praised DAFOH’s petition to the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights as both noteworthy and admirable. The petition, which gathered over 3 million signatures from over 50 countries and regions, called for an end to China’s forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience. Mathai also referenced the October 2018 report given by DAFOH member Dr. Harold King at the 3rd UK Round Table Briefing of Forced Organ Harvesting at Westminster Parliament, calling it a spine-chilling account of a new form of cold genocide.

In addition to the 2019 Mother Teresa Award, DAFOH received nominations for both the 2016 and 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.

Dr. Torsten Trey, DAFOH’s Executive Director, spoke at the Harmony International Conference on “Combating Contemporary Forms of Slavery” on November 3rd in Mumbai, India saying that those attending the conference in Mumbai and people around the world should raise their voices against the forced organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience in China. “It should concern you as a citizen of the world. These are crimes against humanity. If we just sit and watch it happen, saying it’s not occurring in my country, we are being complicit in these crimes. We need a shift in our thinking. We should discuss it and create awareness to bring about a change.”

Dr. Trey added, “The international medical community should reject any medical research knowledge about transplant medicine that comes from China as it is most likely acquired unethically by removing organs from thousands of prisoners forcibly. Ethical standards must not be watered down.”

“This is the killing of prisoners of conscience under the sponsorship of the state.” Unethically procured organs sold for profit under the eyes of the state is a “ practice that must not be tolerated by the international medical community,” he said.

The majority of prisoners of conscience subjected to forced organ harvesting are Falun Gong practitioners. Adherents of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which began in 1992, align their actions by the universal principles of Truth, Compassion and Forbearance. They have suffered more than twenty years from an unprecedented persecution, including brainwashing, torture deaths, and forced organ harvesting, at the hand of the Chinese Communist Party.  Dr. Trey told The Epoch Times, “Supporting Falun Gong and speaking up for the practice in public would reverse the purpose to silence and eradicate the practice.”

The China Tribunal published its judgment on June 17, 2019 after one year of deliberations, stating, “The Tribunal’s members are certain – unanimously, and sure beyond reasonable doubt – that in China forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience has been practiced for a substantial period of time involving a very substantial number of victims.”

newly published analysis suggests that organ donation numbers from China have been falsified and manufactured, and that transplant organs are not sourced from its public organ donation program but from a different, undisclosed source.

Dr. Trey urged all to help shine light on these crimes against humanity. He pointed out that one way the Chinese regime perpetuates forced organ harvesting is with its campaign to silence and eradicate the practice of Falun Gong.  He added that just by “sending a simple souvenir postcard to the Chinese President with the words: ‘Falun Gong is good. Stop forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners.’, the slow and occult eradication of Falun Gong, the characteristic of a cold genocide, would be defeated.”