It is shocking, but human trafficking for the purpose of organ removal and organ trafficking persist around the world, with primary victims being political prisoners, ethnic and religious minorities, and other vulnerable people.
Organ trafficking hotspots include China, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Brazil, Nepal, the Philippines, Kosovo, Iran, and former Soviet states in eastern Europe. Alarmingly, globally only seven countries have passed legislation to combat these horrific crimes. Today, we demand more countries follow suit to stop forced organ harvesting and organ trafficking once and for all.
Forced organ harvesting and organ trafficking are interlinked crimes where organs are taken from victims through coercion or without informed consent and sold illegally, often making their way into the organ tourism transplant market. This means unknowing tourists undergoing organ transplants abroad are at-risk of receiving organs linked to organ trafficking and forced organ harvesting.
In many countries, impoverished people are targeted and coerced to sell an organ from which the traffickers make a significant profit. The ‘donor’ is left without medical care and with significant health risks.
The Government of China faces damning allegations of orchestrating a grotesque system of forced organ harvesting and organ trafficking. Freedom United initiated a global campaign asking UN Human Rights experts to keep holding the Chinese government accountable.
Serious allegations of state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting have been made against China’s government as far back as 2006, leading UN human rights experts to raise the issue with authorities last year.
In China, minorities rounded up by government crackdowns –political prisoners, ethnic Uyghurs, and Falun Gong (Buddhist Qigong) practitioners — are known to be victims of forced organ harvesting. An international people’s tribunal in London found that some of China’s 1.5 million detainees in prisons camps have been killed for the state-sanctioned organ transplant trade worth over $1 billion.
“Forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale,” said the China Tribunal, calling the crimes “of unmatched wickedness – on a death for death basis.”
In 2012, China pledged to phase out harvesting organs from prisoners, but the international tribunal, researchers, and human rights activists stress that the practice continues to this day.
An academic research analysis of organ donation data in China uncovered “highly compelling evidence [the numbers] are being falsified” and that tracking the sources of organs in the country remains difficult.
However, lack of sufficient data from the Chinese government has shrouded this alleged practice in secrecy preventing the effective identification and supportof potential victims trafficked for the purpose of forced organ removal.
That’s why Freedom United is asking UN human rights experts to keep up the pressure on China’s government and push Chinese authorities to issue a meaningful response to the joint communication as soon as possible.
