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The Congressional-Executive Commission on China was created by the U.S. Congress in 2000 "with the legislative mandate to monitor human rights and the development of the rule of law in China, and to submit an annual report to the President and the Congress. The Commission consists of nine Senators, nine Members of the House of Representatives, and five senior Administration officials appointed by the President." (CECC About). It tends to serve as an excellent barometer of the thinking of political and academic elite sin the United States about issues touching on China and the official American line developed in connection with those issues. As such it is an important source of information about the way official and academic sectors think about China. The CECC FAQs provide useful information about the CECC. See CECC Frequently Asked Questions. They have developed positions on a number of issues: Access to Justice; Civil Society; Commercial Rule of Law; Criminal Justice; Developments in Hong Kong and Macau ; The Environment ; Ethnic Minority Rights; Freedom of Expression; Freedom of Religion ; Freedom of Residence and Movement ; Human Trafficking ; Institutions of Democratic Governance ; North Korean Refugees in China; Population Planning ; Public Health ; Status of Women ; Tibet ; Worker Rights ; and Xinjiang. As one can imagine many of the positions of the CECC are critical of current Chnese policies and institutions.
CECC has turned its attention again to organ harvesting and the human rights implications of current programs in China. The issue has been a focus of political bodies in the US and elsewhere; e.g. here, here, and Chinese reporting here). In a Press Release it announced a hearing to give fresh attention to the issue:
Stopping the Crime of Organ Harvesting—What More Must Be Done?
Wednesday, March 20, 2024
1334 Longworth House Office Building
10 am-12 pm
The issue of the systematic, widespread, and nonconsensual removal of human organs for transplantation, or “organ harvesting,” in the People’s Republic of China (PRC or China) is a global concern that has grown since the publication of the final judgment of the Independent Tribunal into Forced Organ Harvesting from Prisoners of Conscience in China in 2020. Medical journals, bar associations, human rights groups, United Nations Special Rapporteurs, and U.S. state legislatures are all grappling more robustly with the legal, ethical, and human rights issues associated with organ harvesting.
The concerns of Members of Congress about the harvesting of organs from ethnic and religious minorities in the PRC prompted a bipartisan coalition to introduce the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2023 in the House and Senate. That bill passed the House on March 27, 2023 and awaits Senate action.
This hearing will evaluate the evidence of organ harvesting from formerly detained Uyghurs, Falun Gong practitioners, and political prisoners; assess the PRC’s denials that it is complicit in transplant abuse and its assertion that the PRC has stopped sourcing organs from executed prisoners and look more broadly at how the scientific and medical research communities are addressing the amassed information about organ harvesting. The hearing will also look at the Texas law prohibiting health coverage for organ transplants performed in, or using organs from, China or other countries engaged in organ harvesting. Witnesses will provide recommendations for addressing organ harvesting, the complicity of U.S. corporations in the PRC’s transplant abuses, and the issue of “organ tourism,” which often fuels transplant abuse.
The hearing will be livestreamed on the CECC's YouTube channel.
Witnesses:
Ethan Gutmann: China Studies Research Fellow, Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, and author of ‘‘The Slaughter.’’
Matthew Robertson: Doctoral candidate, Australian National University (Canberra) and co-author, “Execution by Organ Procurement: Breaching the Dead Donor Rule in China,” American Journal of Transplantation.
Maya Mitalipova, Ph.D.: Director of the Human Stem Cell Laboratory at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, MIT.
Tom Oliverson, M.D.: Texas State Representative, Chair of the Insurance Committee, Texas House of Representatives.
Additional witnesses may be added
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