Taiwan, Japan, and Korea Reject Cooperation With CCP on Organ Sharing

Following China’s desire to strengthen transplant organ sharing and cooperation with Taiwan and other countries, opponents of the plan have expressed alarm and condemnation in Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, pointing to China’s practice of forced organ harvesting from living persons. The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) unofficial spokesperson on organ transplant, Huang Jiefu said in January 2023 that mainland China should “actively promote the organ sharing mechanism with Taiwan,” and establish “organ donation and transplant cooperation [with other countries] through the One Belt One Road program.” Huang, 77, was the Deputy Minister of Health from 2001 to 2013. A liver transplant surgeon, Huang is now the head of the China Organ Transplant Development Foundation. He made the statement at a scientific committee meeting of the China Organ Transplant Response System (COTRS). The CCP has been accused of forcefully harvesting organs for transplant from living prisoners of conscience, especially imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners, since 2000. According to the final judgment of an independent People’s Tribunal held in London in 2019, “forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale and that Falun Gong practitioners have been one—and probably the main—source of organ supply.” Falun Gong is a spiritual practice that consists of meditative exercises and moral teachings based on truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. Due to its health benefits, the practice had close to 100 million followers in China in 1999, the same year when the CCP launched a brutal campaign against the group due to fear of losing its control over the Chinese people. Falun Gong practitioners in China have since been subject to prison terms, torture, and forced organ harvesting. During the COTRS meeting, Hong Kong health secretary Lo Chung-mau, who is also a member of the COTRS Committee, said that Hong Kong and the mainland had a successful case in organ sharing last year. He said that the city is ready to move forward with the organ-sharing program. Reject Cooperation With the CCP Theresa Chu, the chair of the Universal Declaration on Combating and Preventing Forced Organ Harvesting (UDCPFOH) and a human rights lawyer based in Taiwan, told the Chinese edition of The Epoch Times on March 13 that transplant organ sharing and cooperation with other countries would “whitewash the stolen, forcefully removed organs from living people.” She called it inhumane.