Idaho Gov. Brad Little has signed legislation into law aiming to ensure that residents are not unknowingly complicit in China’s state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience.
As of July 1, it will be illegal in Idaho for health insurers to cover an organ transplant or post-transplant care performed in China or any country known to have participated in forced organ harvesting. The legislation (H 670), which was passed unanimously by the state Senate and House earlier this month, was signed by Mr. Little on April 10.
The new law will also ban medical and research facilities in Idaho from using genetic sequencing machines or software that come from foreign adversaries such as China’s communist regime.
Idaho is not the first state to take up the issue. Texas is the first state to enact such a law, which went into effect on Sept. 1, 2023, while Utah’s law will come into force in two weeks.
For over a decade, China has been a top destination for medical tourists who seek organ transplants, as Chinese hospitals have consistently offered short waiting times for matching organs, significantly shorter than in developed nations with public organ donation programs.
It turns out that Chinese hospitals can offer organs on demand to paying clients because the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has built a living organ bank. In 2019, an independent expert panel in London, known as the China Tribunal, concluded that the CCP had been forcibly harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience for years “on a substantial scale,” with Falun Gong practitioners being the “principal source” of human organs.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice introduced to the Chinese public in 1992 that encourages its adherents to live by the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. By 1999, 70 million to 100 million people had taken up the practice, according to official estimates at the time.
The CCP deemed the huge following a threat and launched a brutal campaign in July 1999 to eliminate the practice. For over 24 years, millions have been detained inside prisons, labor camps, and other facilities, with hundreds of thousands tortured while incarcerated, according to the Falun Dafa Information.
In 2023, there were 209 new reported cases of Falun Gong practitioners being persecuted to death, according to a report from Minghui.org, a U.S.-based website that tracks the persecution in China. The report included the case of 30-year-old radio show host Pang Xun, who was allegedly beaten to death in December 2022 while serving a five-year prison sentence.
Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH), a Washington-based nonprofit nominated for the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize, said Beijing has deliberately concealed information about its transplant industry, according to its 2023 report.
“The lack of transparency and traceability is part of China’s strategy to cover up and conceal,” the report reads.
“It is difficult to assess the actual number of Falun Gong adherents who have been killed in detention. According to some estimates, 50,000 to 100,000 members are being killed for their organs per year; although this number appears unfathomable, the actual number may be even larger.”
The DAFOH report also included several accounts from family members of victims of forced organ harvesting, including Jiang Li and Han Yu.
There have been efforts in Congres to address the CCP’s forced organ harvesting.
In March last year, the House passed a landmark bill (H.R. 1154) that would sanction anyone involved in forced organ harvesting and require annual government reporting on such activities taking place in foreign countries. The Senate version of the legislation (S.761) has not advanced out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee since it was introduced in 2023.
Levi Browde, executive director of the Falun Dafa Information Center, took to X, formerly Twitter, in March, urging the Senate to take up the legislation.
“One year ago, the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act, H.R.1154, was referred to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations after passing the House,” Mr. Browde wrote, tagging Sens. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and James Risch (R-Idaho), the top Democrat and Republican of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
“Let’s keep pushing for action against forced organ harvesting.”
From The Epoch Times