Republican National Committee (RNC) member Shawn Steel (CA) led an effort to formally recognize and condemn the state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong adherents and other prisoners of conscience in China, which has been taking place for the last 20 years.
On August 2nd, the RNC unanimously passed a resolution condemning the “vile practice.” The resolution came just several weeks after the independent China Tribunal announced its final judgement that forced, on-demand organ extraction for profit was indeed taking place under the direction of the Chinese Communist Party and described the acts as “unmatched wickedness, even compared—on a death-for-death basis—with the killings by mass crimes committed in the last century.”
Steel told the Epoch Times that for years he and other committee members viewed the issue of forced organ harvesting as something just too hard to comprehend or believe. But after the China Tribunal’s conclusion was released to the world in June, he came to understand that these horrific acts were actually taking place.
The resolution recognizes that China has experienced a large increase in “transplant tourism,” that the number of transplants performed each year far exceeds the number of voluntary donors, and that organs in China are promised within two weeks, something unheard of in countries like the U.S. where people wait years for organs. The resolution concludes that “the Republican National Committee strongly condemns the practice of China’s involuntary organ harvesting.”
Steel said the resolution is just the first step in bringing these horrors to light, and called on all American institutions and foundations to be held accountable for working with Chinese medical entities in the areas of organ transplantation and research. Steel says that the United States should also pass legislation to prevent its citizens from traveling to China for organs, as several other countries have done.
