PRESS RELEASE DAFOH: UN Must Condemn Forced Organ Harvesting in China

Rights group calls on world body to address crimes against humanity as it meets in New York

Washington, DC, September 23, 2021—Doctors, lawyers, and politicians from three continents called on the international community to ensure an end to China's practice of forced organ harvesting during the first half of the World Summit on Combating and Preventing Forced Organ Harvesting.

Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH) further calls upon the participants of the United Nations General Assembly to treat this issue like any other crimes against humanity that have been recognized and banned by the global community. The call comes as the General Assembly of the United Nations (UNGA) is gathered in New York this week.

These calls for high-level action are accompanied by widespread public support for the campaign against forced organ harvesting. The live video stream of the first three sessions of the World Summit gathered more than 200,000 views over the past weekend. A petition campaign to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights that ended in 2018 garnered over 3 million signatures across the globe.

After more than two decades of forced organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners of conscience, DAFOH believes the UN has fallen short in taking the lead in stopping these crimes against humanity.

According to a 2016 report by David Matas, Ethan Gutmann, and David Kilgour, an estimated 30,000-100,000 people are being killed for their organs in China per year.

“The failure of the United Nations to address and thoroughly investigate the forced organ harvesting from living people in China is an unacceptable omission that needs to be resolved,” said Dr. Torsten Trey, executive director of DAFOH.

“Given the scope of China’s organ harvesting crimes with an unknown number of victims and the nature of the crime itself, a commercialized murder for transplants, condemning this inhumane practice remains an unfulfilled task for the largest organization in the world,” Dr. Trey added.

In response to a growing momentum of concern for the victims and the critical impact on humanity, DAFOH and four other international NGOs are sponsoring the “World Summit on Combating and Preventing Forced Organ Harvesting," which will resume on Friday, Sept. 24 and end on Sunday, Sept. 26 with the global launch of a Universal Declaration on Combating and Preventing Forced Organ Harvesting.

For further information and registration: https://worldsummitcpfoh.info/

Contact: Dr. Ann Corson

Email: Ann.Corson@dafoh.org