Issue of Chinas Forced Organ Harvesting from Falun Gong Raised at UNHRC

The Chinese regimes macabre practice of killing Falun Gong practitioners for their organs was raised before the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva recently by the Vancouver-based Lawyers Rights Watch Canada.

Speaking at a session reviewing the UNHRCs report on Chinas human rights record, Vani Selvarajah of Lawyers Rights Watch Canada reiterated a recent European Parliament resolution demanding an immediate end to the forced harvesting of organs from prisoners of conscience in China, mainly Falun Gong practitioners.

She also condemned certain other U.N. member states approval of Chinas so-called progress on human rights.

In the face of systemic torture, killing for organ procurement, deprivation of independent legal representation and harassment of human rights defenders and lawyers, Lawyers Rights Watch Canada considers States comments welcoming Chinas human rights progress as cruelly inappropriate, Selvarajah said.

She also noted that China prohibits lawyers from defending Falun Gong practitioners, and courts from accepting lawsuits on their behalf.

Lawyers advocating for Falun Gong practitioners, including Gao Zhisheng, are intimidated, disbarred, imprisoned, and/or tortured, she said.

Gao, who has been referred to as Chinas conscience, was arrested, harassed, and tortured from 2005 onwards after defending persecuted practitioners of Falun Gong, a traditional spiritual discipline, and other groups targeted by the Chinese regime.

In late March, four prominent Chinese rights lawyers, Jiang Tianyong, Tang Jitian, Wang Cheng, and Zhang Junjie, were detained for attempting to free Falun Gong practitioners held in a brainwashing centre.

Since Falun Gong was outlawed by the Chinese regime in 1999, practitioners have often been subjected to various forms of torture and brainwashing in an attempt to transform them.

Selvarajah also brought up during her talk that Washington, D.C.-based Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting delivered a 1.5-million-signature petition to the High Commissioner for Human Rights last year calling for end to and an investigation of Chinas slaughter of prisoners of conscience for organ procurement.

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Issue of Chinas Forced Organ Harvesting from Falun Gong Raised at UNHRC