www.theepochtimes.com Open in urlscan Pro
151.139.128.11  Public Scan

Form analysis
1 forms found in the DOM

GET https://www.theepochtimes.com/search/

<form action="https://www.theepochtimes.com/search/" class="search_form" method="get">
  <label for="searchtext">Search Text</label>
  <input id="searchtext" itemprop="query-input" type="text" name="q">
  <a class="search_icon" href="javascript:void(0);">SEARCH</a>
</form>

Text Content

MENU ABOUT US MAKE A DONATION

SEARCH
SHARE 662
CLOSE
Help Center subscribe newsletter Newsstands Epoch Shop Gift
 * TOP NEWS
 * SPECIAL SERIES
 * SPECIAL COVERAGE
 * LATEST ARTICLES

 * US
   * US News
   * US Features
   * Politics
   * Crime and Incidents
   * New York
   * San Francisco
   * Los Angeles
 * Opinion
   * Thinking About China
   * Viewpoints
   * Unbridled Evil: The Corrupt Reign of Jiang Zemin in China
   * The Reader’s Turn

 * China News
   * US-China Relations
   * Chinese Regime
   * Business & Economy
   * Chinese Culture
   * China Human Rights
   * Social Issues
   * Organ Harvesting in China
 * World
   * Africa
   * Americas
   * Asia & Pacific
   * Canada
   * Europe
   * UK
   * Australia
   * International
   * Middle East
 * Business & Markets
   * Companies
   * Economy
   * Markets
   * Real Estate
   * Gold and Commodities

 * ARTS & CULTURE
   * Fine Arts & Craftsmanship
   * Performing Arts
   * Books
   * Traditional Culture
   * Shen Yun Special Coverage
   * Film & TV
 * Science
   * News
   * Space
   * Environment
 * Tech
   * Tech News
   * Tech Products & Reviews
   * Social Media
 * Sports
 * Video
   * American Thought Leaders
   * China Insider
   * Crossroads

 * Bright
   * Lifestyle
   * Inspired
   * Family & Education
   * Personal Finance
   * American Essence
 * Entertainment
   * Film & TV
   * Entertainment News
 * Health
   * Experts
   * Conditions
   * Life & Wellness
 * Special Topics
   * Battlefields

Search Text SEARCH

Congress


HOUSE OVERWHELMINGLY PASSES 1ST EVER US BILL TO PUNISH CCP’S FORCED ORGAN
HARVESTING

The U.S. Capitol building in Washington on Feb. 28, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The
Epoch Times)
By Eva Fu
Eva Fu
Reporter
Eva Fu is a New York-based writer for The Epoch Times focusing on U.S. politics,
U.S.-China relations, religious freedom, and human rights. Contact Eva
at eva.fu@epochtimes.com
View profile
March 27, 2023Updated: March 30, 2023
biggersmaller
Print
0:009:55

1




The House of Representatives on March 27 overwhelmingly passed a bill to punish
communist China for its forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience,
marking the first nonsymbolic legislative measure in the United States to
counter the atrocity.

H.R. 1154, dubbed the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2023, passed by a vote
of 413–2. It would sanction anyone involved in the act and require annual
government reporting on such activities taking place in foreign countries. Sens.
Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) were among more than a dozen
lawmakers leading the measure’s companion version in the Senate.

Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), the principal sponsor of the bill, called attention
to the penalties in the bill for those found to be involved in forced organ
harvesting: a civil penalty of up to $250,000 and a criminal penalty of up to $1
million and 20 years in prison.



“It’s got real teeth. We’re not kidding,” Smith told The Epoch Times ahead of
the floor vote. “This is an atrocity, this is a crime against humanity, and it’s
a war crime, because this is a war on innocent people in China, and [Chinese
leader] Xi Jinping is directly responsible. Those who willingly engage in this
will be held responsible.”

Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) at the Policy Forum on Organ Procurement and
Extrajudicial Execution in China on Capitol Hill on March 10, 2020. (Samira
Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

On the House floor, Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.) highlighted the annual reporting
requirement in the bill, which she said would ensure that the United States
makes “an informed assessment regarding the magnitude and prevalence of this
problem.”

“Given the ongoing genocide, we cannot take Beijing at its word about what it is
and is not doing,” she said. “We need to investigate and we need to verify.



“We should never look away from injustice and repression wherever it takes
place.”




HAUNTING MEMORIES

The news of the bill’s passage was heartening for many survivors of the regime’s
persecution who have escaped to the United States for refuge, as in the case of
Han Yu, an adherent of Falun Gong. Practitioners of the spiritual discipline
have been named as the primary victims of the regime’s illicit organ trade.

Falun Gong practitioners in Vienna, Austria, stage a demonstration of organ
harvesting of imprisoned practitioners in China during a protest against the
importing of human organs from China to Austria, on Oct. 1, 2018. (Joe
Klamar/AFP via Getty Images)

The spiritual practice, which includes moral teachings based on the principles
of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, along with five meditative
exercises, enjoyed significant popularity for its health and moral benefits in
China in the 1990s, eventually attracting an estimated 70 million to 100 million
practitioners by the end of the decade.



Perceiving this popularity to be a threat to its control, the Chinese Communist
Party (CCP) started an elimination campaign in 1999, resulting in millions of
adherents being detained and an unknown number of deaths from slave labor,
torture, and other abuses over the past 23 years.

In 2019, an independent tribunal in London concluded, after a year-long
investigation, that forced organ harvesting had taken place in China for years
“on a significant scale,” with detained Falun Gong practitioners being the
principal source of organs. Its final judgment, released in March 2020 and
including 300 pages of witness testimony and submissions, found “no evidence of
the practice having been stopped.”

A native of Beijing, Han was 19 when she lost her father to persecution in 2004,
two years before the first reports of the regime’s secretive organ trade
industry. More than a decade would pass before the issue became more widely
recognized.



The last image she has of her father, Han Junqing—who died just a little more
than two months after his arrest for practicing Falun Gong—still haunts her to
this day.

Han Yu at a Falun Gong rally at the United Nations Plaza on Sept. 24, 2019. (Eva
Fu/The Epoch Times)

Han Yu’s breathing grew heavier as she recounted those memories from nearly two
decades ago.

Extremely thin, with a face bruised green and purple, her father’s body lay cold
in a forensic center room surrounded by dozens of uniformed officers.

There was tissue missing from under the man’s left eye. A long knife incision,
sewn together with black thread, extended down from his throat. The police
forced her out when she tried to unbutton his shirt to see where the stitches
ended.

Later, Han’s aunt and uncle tore open his shirt before the police could stop
them. They found that the incision reached all the way to his abdomen. There
were no organs inside, only ice.




‘A CRIME NEVER SEEN BEFORE’ 

Han for a long time struggled to accept the loss of her father. She dreamed of
him often and would wake up in tears, she told The Epoch Times.

In 2006, multiple whistleblowers came to The Epoch Times to shed light on the
dark scheme. In 2007, while surfing social media, she came across an article
describing forced organ harvesting, and what happened to her father fit the
description.

That night, Han cried for hours.

The story of Jiang Li, the daughter of a persecution victim in southwest China’s
Xishanping Labor Camp, is similar.

Her father, Jiang Xiqing, a retired official at a local tax bureau in the
megacity Chongqing, was arrested after a house raid in May 2008—three months
before Beijing hosted its first Olympics—and was given a one-year sentence to a
labor camp without trial.


Jiang Li in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens, N.Y., on Nov. 1, 2015, holds a
photo of her father, who was killed by the Chinese Communist Party in China for
practicing Falun Gong. (Benjamin Chasteen/The Epoch Times)

He died in late January the following year, less than 24 hours after a family
visit during which he appeared healthy.

After seven hours in the freezer, the man’s face and chest were still warm, but
when Jiang Li and other family members tried to call attention to the matter,
police pushed them out of the morgue. Police cremated the body days later and
threatened and harassed the family when they sought to get to the bottom of the
matter, at one point telling Jiang Li to “name any price” to settle the case. A
Chongqing procuratorate official, Zhou Bailin, told them that all of Jiang
Xiqing’s organs had been “removed and turned into medical specimens.”

They never sought the Jiang family’s approval, nor was there any explanation.

“Harvesting organs from living people is a crime never seen before on this
planet, and it’s still happening,” Jiang Li, who now lives in New York, told The
Epoch Times. Her hope, she said, is to see the U.S. government help “immediately
stop such crime against humanity, hold the Chinese Communist Party and all
perpetrators accountable, and purge the state-run machinery that’s still
committing the crime.”

Falun Gong practitioners walk in a parade highlighting the Chinese regime’s
persecution of their faith, in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Feb. 26, 2023. (Larry Dye/The
Epoch Times)



‘MAJOR STEP FORWARD’

Torsten Trey, executive director of the medical ethics group Doctors Against
Forced Organ Harvesting, welcomed the bill as a “major step forward” in helping
to “raise critical awareness” about forced organ harvesting but believes that
more measures are necessary to curb medical tourism to China.

“The bill takes advantage of our legal system and applies existing mechanisms to
demonetize or ban those who participated in these crimes against humanity,” he
told The Epoch Times in an email.

What is missing, he wrote, is a requirement for all who enter the United
States—whether immigrants or U.S. citizens—to answer whether they have
“‘imported’ a newly transplanted organ from countries that are known to procure
organs through forced organ harvesting” and the amount of money paid for the
organs.

“Organ harvesting is a crime,” he wrote. Although patients have the right to
privacy, that privacy “should end at the crimes of forced organ harvesting: If
Falun Gong practitioners or other prisoners of conscience have been killed for
their organs in China, we should not cover up these crimes under the umbrella of
health care privacy.”

Smith, the New Jersey congressman, said the bill could cover anyone who
participates in forced organ harvesting, including patients who receive the
organs.



“If there’s willful knowledge that is being stolen from a Falun Gong
practitioner, or anyone else, then they could be held criminally and civilly
liable,” he said.

“How do you know on a certain date, you’re going to have a liver all ready to
go? That’s because they kill the individual in order to get that. They murdered
them,” he added, referring to instances of Chinese hospitals promising to
deliver vital organs on a specified date—something impossible in voluntary organ
donor systems.

Smith emphasized that there’s also a moral onus on Americans going to China for
organ transplants to find out more about the source of the organs.

Israel, Taiwan, Italy, and Spain have already banned organ transplant tourism.

The European Parliament, U.S. Congress, and various local bodies have also
publicly censured the regime’s forced organ harvesting but have yet to adopt
legislative means.

But if the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act becomes law, that would be one step
toward that change, according to Levi Browde, executive director of the Falun
Dafa Information Center.



“With this bill, our Congress is joining lawmakers from several other countries
who have passed laws aimed at stopping the horrific practice of murdering
innocent people for their organs, and punishing those who continue to do so,”
Browde said in a statement to The Epoch Times.

He urged the Senate to pass the companion legislation.

“Despite all the economic and political pressure exerted by the CCP over the
years, through this act, the U.S. government is officially, on the world stage,
calling out the CCP for murdering people for organs,” he said.

Related Topics
 * forced organ harvesting
 * Falun Gong
 * Chris Smith
 * congress

1445Epoch Share
Friends Read Free Copy Facebook Tweet
662 Comments
Popular News


 * HOUSE OVERWHELMINGLY PASSES 1ST EVER US BILL TO PUNISH CCP’S FORCED ORGAN
   HARVESTING

 * 1
   
   
   THE PEOPLE REACT AT TUCKER CARLSON FORUM WITH 2024 CANDIDATES

 * 2
   
   
   EXCLUSIVE: JAN. 6 PRISONER TAKES HIS OBSTRUCTION CHARGE TO THE SUPREME COURT

 * 3
   
   
   KARI LAKE'S LEGAL TEAM ORDERED TO PAY $122,200 IN SANCTIONS

 * 4
   
   
   BILL SLASHING $1 BILLION FROM FBI BUDGET ADVANCES IN HOUSE

 * 5
   
   
   AMERICANS CELEBRATE 415 MILLION PEOPLE QUITTING THE CCP AT FALUN GONG PARADE
   IN NEW YORK


HEALTH
 * 1
   
   
   WHY WE LOSE OUR NEAR VISION AND HOW WE CAN RETRIEVE IT

 * 2
   
   
   THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO COLORECTAL CANCER: SYMPTOMS, CAUSES, TREATMENTS, AND
   NATURAL APPROACHES 

 * 3
   
   
   NEARLY 1 IN 10 AMERICAN KIDS HAVE DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES, SAYS CDC

 * 4
   
   
   21 INTERNATIONAL EXPERTS DISPUTE PREVAILING US GENDER TRANSITION METHODS

 * 5
   
   
   HERE’S HOW ONE DOCTOR IS REVERSING MENTAL ILLNESS

EPOCH TV
 * 1
   
   
   HERE’S HOW ONE DOCTOR IS REVERSING MENTAL ILLNESS

 * 2
   
   
   PSYCHOLOGIST EXPLAINS WHY SOCIETIES GO MAD

 * 3
   
   
   10 PRODUCTS THAT ARE SPARKING (THE MOST) JOY!

 * 4
   
   
   [PREMIERING AUG. 4TH AT 8PM ET] WU DE | MARTIAL VIRTUES

 * 5
   
   
   THE PEOPLE REACT AT TUCKER CARLSON FORUM WITH 2024 CANDIDATES


LOGIN TO COMMENT
FINISH YOUR LOGIN TO COMMENT
VERIFY YOUR ACCOUNT TO COMMENT

SHARE SHOW COMMENTS
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR YOU
Featured Channels


Popular News
 * 1
   
   
   THE PEOPLE REACT AT TUCKER CARLSON FORUM WITH 2024 CANDIDATES

 * 2
   
   
   EXCLUSIVE: JAN. 6 PRISONER TAKES HIS OBSTRUCTION CHARGE TO THE SUPREME COURT

 * 3
   
   
   KARI LAKE'S LEGAL TEAM ORDERED TO PAY $122,200 IN SANCTIONS

 * 4
   
   
   BILL SLASHING $1 BILLION FROM FBI BUDGET ADVANCES IN HOUSE

 * 5
   
   
   AMERICANS CELEBRATE 415 MILLION PEOPLE QUITTING THE CCP AT FALUN GONG PARADE
   IN NEW YORK

Share this with everyone!

Copy link
Email
Facebook
Twitter
Friends read free
1445
Email Share
Copyright © 2000 - 2023 The Epoch Times Association Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Back Top
We use cookies to understand how you use our site and to improve your
experience. This includes personalizing content and advertising. By continuing
to use our site, you accept our use of cookies, revised Privacy Policy and Terms
of Use. More informationI accept×