Letter from the Editor

The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is an intergovernmental body whose mission is to promote and protect human rights around the world.Yet one of its members, the People’s Republic of China, has throughout its history seemed to have violated all 30 articles detailing specific human rights that the council is charged to protect. Additionally, China’s spokesperson on transplant issues Huang Jeifu, a liver transplant surgeon who has been the subject of an international controversy over unethical organ procurement and transplant practices, was appointed to the World Health Organization Task Force on Organ Trafficking.

Given this undermining of the basic ethical tenets and mission of the United Nations, it is no surprise that the United States recently withdrew from the UNHRC. The same concerns led DAFOH to end our petition to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights that called for an end to China’s forced organ harvesting of all prisoners of conscience.

Kierkegaard put it succinctly, “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” In regards to the human rights abuses being perpetrated in China, especially by its transplant industry, it appears that the United Nations is acting with willful blindness to avoid accountability for the wrongful acts of its member by intentionally keeping itself unaware of facts that could render the organization liable. By remaining silent, not only has the United Nations failed in its efforts to ensure human rights for all people but has also become an accomplice to mass genocide.