With mounting frustration towards the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for its poor handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. federal government has stepped up its efforts in addressing China’s unethical behavior in many areas of international engagement as well as condemning China for gross human rights violations, including the forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners.
U.S. Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback highlighted China’s forced organ harvesting practices in an interview with the Epoch Times on August 31st. Brownback said, “For years, the world kind of turned a blind eye to what the Falun Gong was saying about organ harvesting. But now there is evidence available that supports its existence…I think it should be absolutely chilling to people to think that this is happening once they hear this.”
On September 23rd, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke to Wisconsin legislators about the dangers of China’s infiltration into all levels of U.S. federal, state and municipal governments. Pompeo’s visit was in response to an email Wisconsin State Senator Roger Roth received from Wu Ting, a CCP representative in China’s Chicago consulate, self-proclaimed as “responsible for China-Wisconsin relations.” The email included a draft resolution that Ting asked the Senator to pass that praised China’s response to the COVID-19 epidemic.
Pompeo noted that Ting’s request was another disturbing example of how the CCP is attempting to coerce U.S. politicians into supporting “Beijing’s form of authoritarianism…We watch the CCP campaigns targeting state-level officials, local interests. We’ve seen them at PTA meetings. They have been in full swing for years, and they’re increasing in intensity.”
Pompeo described how in 2017, the CCP successfully persuaded state legislators in California to shelve a resolution condemning the persecution and forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong. “The Chinese consulate – that is, Chinese diplomats – in San Francisco responded by writing a letter to the state legislature. It denounced Falun Gong as an ‘evil cult’ and claimed that the bill might ‘deeply damage the cooperative relations between the State of California and China, and seriously hurt the feeling of Chinese people and the vast Chinese community in California.’”
On October 1st, U.S. Representative Scott Perry introduced H.R.8491, a bill which designates the CCP as a transnational organized crime group. According to the Congressman’s website, the bill aims to include the CCP on the Top International Criminal Organizations Target List and “provide the United States law enforcement agencies a strategic directive to target the CCP’s malign activity.”
On October 2nd, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued a new policy manual with the following guidance. “In general, unless otherwise exempt, any intending immigrant who is a member or affiliate of the Communist Party or any other totalitarian party (or subdivision or affiliate), domestic or foreign, is inadmissible to the United States. Membership in or affiliation with the Communist Party or any other totalitarian party is inconsistent and incompatible with the Naturalization Oath of Allegiance to the United States of America, which includes pledging to ‘support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States.”
At a press conference on October 16th, Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Robert Destro called for joint efforts to stop modern slavery. When Epoch Times Taiwan journalist Ken Yang asked, “Would the Department of State step in and take specific actions to stop the forced organ harvesting by the Chinese Communist Party?” both Assistant Secretary Destro and Ambassador-at-Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons John Cotton Richmond replied that the State Department is indeed actively investigating China’s forced organ harvesting. Destro added, “And I encourage anybody who has information that we could use to nail this down to please be in touch with us.”
