VOC Praises the Introduction of the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2023

Today, the United States Senate joined the House of Representatives to take action to protect U.S. citizens and to stop a horrifying trade in China that claims the lives of innocent victims with the bipartisan introduction of the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act. The Billis sponsored by Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Senator Chris Coons (D-DE).

“There is growing evidence that the Chinese Communist Party has and continues to harvest organs from persecuted religious groups, prisoners of conscience, and inmates,” said Senator Cotton. “This bill will identify and punish CCP members involved in forced organ harvesting. It’s past time to hold Beijing accountable for these heinous acts.”

“Forced organ harvesting is inhumane, immoral, and cruel, and the United States must do everything we can to fight this despicable practice,” said Senator Coons. “As co-chair of the Senate Human Rights Caucus, I’m proud to support this bipartisan, bicameral bill to hold those involved in harvesting and the international trafficking of organs to account.”

The House bill H.R. 1154 authored by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), Co-Chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China and co-sponsored by Reps. Michael McCaul (R-TX), Bill Keating (D-MA), and Kathy Manning (D-NC) cleared a major hurdle in Congress last week as the Foreign Affairs Committee voted unanimously to advance the bill to the House Floor.

“What has become apparent through open-source investigation and witness accounts, is that there is one country—one country in particular—which is engaged in state-sponsored harvesting of human organs from otherwise healthy human beings, on a systematic and industrial scale in absolute violation of ethics governing transplantation,” said Smith, who has chaired 77 congressional hearings on the CCP’s egregious human rights abuse. “That country is the People’s Republic of China under Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party.”

This bipartisan legislation seeks to fight the global organ trafficking trade and to specifically address the CCP’s practice of forced organ harvesting. The Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2023will expand the US government’s powers to combat organ harvesting, prohibit the export of organ transplant surgery devices to entities responsible for human organ trafficking, impose sanctions on individuals and government officials in countries who support human organ trafficking and forced organ harvesting, and introduce mandatory reporting on human organ trafficking in foreign countries and on US institutions which train organ transplant surgeons.

VOC President Amb. Andrew Bremberg said: “The introduction of the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act is an incredibly important step forward to hold perpetrators of the horrific crime of forced organ harvesting accountable. We call on the U.S. Congress to support swift passage of this legislation to combat organ trafficking and trafficking in persons for organs around the world. Our organization’s research has shown the shocking depravity of the Chinese Communist Party’s system of organ harvesting and the unprecedented scale of China’s organ transplant system—the United States must take action to examine, condemn, and help stop these blatant human rights violations.”

The introduction of the ‘Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2023’ is an important and necessary response to the damning judgment of the China Tribunal, which unanimously concluded that, “in China forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience has been practiced for a substantial period of time involving a very substantial number of victims.”

Susie Hughes, Executive Director of ETAC, the human rights NGO that initiated the China Tribunal, which is chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice and whose Judgment was released in 2020, stated: “The Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2023 is one of the most significant international responses to the China Tribunal’s Judgment to date. We hope that more governments will be inspired to follow in the footsteps of the United States, to ensure their own citizens are not caught up in the mass murder of innocents for their organs in China.” 

The Victims of Communist Memorial Foundation calls on both the House and Senate to pass these bills quickly and unanimously.

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For further information, please contact Kristina Olney, VOC’s Director of Government Relations at Kristina.Olney@victimsofcommunism.org or (202) 629-9500.