PRESS RELEASE – January 1, 2013

Doctors Worldwide and American Citizens Demand U.S. Act Now: White House Petition to Investigate and Publicly Condemn Organ Harvesting from Falun Gong Believers in China Breaks 29,000 Signatures on New Years Day Amidst a Cry for Help Coming From Inside Chinese Prison.

January 1, 2013 –  The world felt smaller this week as U.S. media was abuzz with a report that a woman in Oregon found a written, heart wrenching plea for help from a Chinese prison inmate in a box of Halloween decorations she purchased a year ago, describing forced labor and human rights violations in a prison factory sweatshop. The letter highlights the harsh and excessive persecution of imprisoned Falun Gong believers in particular and the news is being widely discussed in the U.S. A press release by the Huffington Post U.S. garnered almost 600 comments posted on New Years Eve on the site’s blog and most major media outlets around the world covered the story.

The U.S. government has been aware of the specific persecution and crisis situation of forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong spiritual adherents for many years. Despite collaborative evidence including first hand reports coming out of China, two Congressional hearings to illuminate expert testimony that China’s labor camps are body organ pools, over 200,000 signatures worldwide endorsing a Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH) petition this fall to investigate these crimes against humanity, and EU hearings on this crisis in Brussels this fall, the administration has yet to address public concern in the U.S. and the outcry from China.

There is a growing number of emboldened human rights defenders inside China breaking through the armor and utilizing the Internet on a daily basis to tell the stories of brutal persecution of the Falun Gong and the ongoing reality of murder and crime against humanity by way of organ harvesting for profit within China’s military prison and hospital systems. The prison system in China is now facing global attention after the CCP leadership transition this fall that has created a new opportunity for potential reform of the brutally corrupt system. If  the 1.3 billion Chinese people knew about the crime against humanity of their own innocent people, they too would condemn these crimes and demand investigation and justice.

Three American doctors, Arthur L. Caplan, PhD, head of Bioethics at New York University Langone Medical Center, and two members of DAFOH board of directors, Dr. Alejandro Centurion, MD, and Jianchao Xu, MD, PhD, authored and submitted the new White House Petition on the government website in early December 2012. This landmark petition is now poised for President Obama’s response to the public whose concern and demand for investigation is now heard globally.

Please consider endorsing this important petition on the White House website today: https://wh.gov/5Jmn.