Textul original în engleză și linkul rezoluției:
State of Arkansas
92nd General Assembly
Regular Session, 2019 HR 1022
By: Representative Sullivan
HOUSE RESOLUTION
TO ENCOURAGE THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS AND THE
ARKANSAS CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION TO WORK TO END
ORGAN HARVESTING FROM PRISONERS OF CONSCIENCE IN THE
PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA.
Subtitle
TO ENCOURAGE THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS
AND THE ARKANSAS CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION
TO WORK TO END ORGAN HARVESTING FROM
PRISONERS OF CONSCIENCE IN THE PEOPLE’S
REPUBLIC OF CHINA.
WHEREAS, extensive and credible reports have revealed mass killing of
prisoners of conscience in the People’s Republic of China, primarily
practitioners of the Chinese spiritual practice of Falun Gong, but also other
religious and ethnic minority groups, in order to obtain organs for
transplants; and
WHEREAS, the organ transplantation system in China does not comply with
the World Health Organization’s Guiding Principles On Human Organ
Transplantation regarding traceability and transparency in organ procurement
pathways, and the government of the People’s Republic of China has resisted
independent scrutiny of the system; and
WHEREAS, traditional Chinese custom requires bodies to be preserved
intact after death, which results in rare voluntary organ donation, but
China’s transplantation industry has increased significantly since 2000; and
WHEREAS, the 2017 Freedom House report, “The Battle for China’s
Spirit”, states that “available evidence suggests that forced extraction of
organs from Falun Gong detainees for sale in transplant operations has
occurred on a large scale and may be continuing”; and
WHEREAS, an investigative report published in June 2016 by human rights
attorney David Matas, former Canadian Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific,
David Kilgour, and journalist Ethan Gutmann, estimated that China is
performing sixty thousand to one hundred thousand (60,000-100,000)
transplants per year, as opposed to the ten thousand (10,000) transplants
which had been projected by the Chinese government for 2015, amounting to “an
industrial-scale, state-directed organ transplantation system, controlled
through national policies and funding, and implicating both the military and
civilian healthcare systems”, as Kilgour described these practices in his
speech to the European Parliment in 2016; and
WHEREAS, according to the China Organ Harvest Research Center, China’s
Liver Transplant Registry System indicated that more than twenty-five percent
(25%) of liver transplant cases were emergency transplants for which an organ
was found within days or even hours, and that wait time for nonemergency
liver transplants were usually quoted in weeks; and
WHEREAS, most patients in other countries have to wait years for a
transplant; and
WHEREAS, the Chinese government claims that ninety percent (90%) of
China’s organ transplant sources come from executed prisoners, but the number
of executions has dropped ten percent (10%) annually since 2002 and is far
less than the number of transplants taking place; and
WHEREAS, the Chinese government has never acknowledged the sourcing of
organs from prisoners of conscience; and
WHEREAS, Falun Gong, a spiritual practice involving meditative “qigong”
exercises and centered on the values of truthfulness, compassion, and
forbearance, became immensely popular in China in the late 1990s with
multiple estimates placing the number of practitioners at upwards of seventy
million (70,000,000); and
WHEREAS, in July 1999, the Chinese Communist Party launched an
intensive, nationwide persecution designed to eradicate the spiritual
practice of Falun Gong, including physical and mental torture, reflecting the
party’s long-standing intolerance of large independent civil society groups;
and
WHEREAS, since 1999, hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners
have been detained extralegally in Chinese reeducation-through-labor camps,
detention centers, and prisons, where torture, abuse, and unnecessary medical
exams and blood tests on Falun Gong practitioners are routine; and
WHEREAS, the 2017 Freedom House report states that in 2015, Falun Gong
practitioners comprised the largest portion of prisoners of conscience in
China and faced an elevated risk of dying or being killed in custody; and
WHEREAS, the United Nations Committee Against Torture and the United
Nations Commission on Human Rights Special Rapporteur on Torture have
expressed concern over the allegations of organ harvesting from Falun Gong
prisoners, and have called on the government of the People’s Republic of
China to increase accountability and transparency in the organ transplant
system and punish those responsible for abuses; and
WHEREAS, in June 2016, the United States House of Representatives
unanimously passed House Resolution 343, condemning the systemic, state29 sanctioned organ harvesting from practitioners of Falun Gong and other prisoners of conscience; and
WHEREAS, the killing of religious or political prisoners for the
purpose of selling their organs for transplant is an egregious and
intolerable violation of the fundamental right to live; and
WHEREAS, organ tourism to China should not be shielded by medical
confidentiality, but openly monitored; and
WHEREAS, no nation should allow its citizens to go to China for organs
until China has allowed a full investigation into organ harvesting of
prisoners of conscience, both past and present,
NOW THEREFORE,
BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE NINETY-SECOND GENERAL
ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ARKANSAS:
THAT the Unites States Congress and the Arkansas congressional
delegation:
(1) Call upon the government of the People’s Republic of China
to:
(A) Immediately end the practice of organ harvesting from
all prisoners and prisoners of conscience, including from Falun Gong
prisoners of conscience and members of other religious and ethnic minority
groups; and
(B) Immediately end the ongoing persecution of Falun Gong
and release all Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners of conscience;
and
(2) Support a full and transparent investigation by the United
States Department of State into organ transplant practices in the People’s
Republic of China and call for the prosecution of those found to have engaged
in such unethical practices.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT the State of Arkansas:
(1) Encourage the medical community of Arkansas to engage in
educating colleagues and residents of Arkansas about the risks of travel to
China for organ transplants to help prevent Arkansas residents from
unwittingly becoming involved in murder in the form of forced organ
harvesting from prisoners of conscience; and
(2) Agree to take measures to ban the entry of those who have
participated in illegal removal of human tissues and organs and seek
prosecution of such individuals should they be found in Arkansas.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT the Chief Clerk of the House of Representatives
provide copies of this resolution to the Speaker of the House of
Representatives of the United States, the Chair of the United States
Committee on Foreign Relations, the Chair of the United States House
Committee on Foreign Affairs, and all members of the Arkansas congressional
delegation with the request that this resolution be officially entered into
the Congressional Record.
