‘Falun Gong Protection Act’ Targets Chinese Communist Regime’s Achilles Heel: Researcher

Joining us live for insights is Cynthia Sun, a researcher at the Falun Dafa Information Center. Cynthia, good to have you with us. Thanks for joining us. Tell us what's the significance of this bill and its timing. So for the first time in 25 years and after multiple resolutions, Congress is finally targeting the persecution of Falun Gong in a way that it has never done before. And H.R. 4132, like its namesake Falun Gong Protection Act, will protect the lives of Falun Gong practitioners inside China and will also aim to protect Americans from being complicit in forced organ harvesting. And about the timing, we're nearly one month away from the 25th anniversary of the persecution of Falun Gong. That's July 20th. So the fact that the bill is coming now is such a relief to people who have been doing advocacy for so many years, but haven't seen a legislation passed like this before. So fingers crossed for today. Yeah, 25 years is a long time. And as I understand it, the forced organ harvesting phenomenon has been going on for quite some time as well. And yet it's so hard to believe, it's so horrendous that it's almost too hard to believe. Could you explain the extent of it? Sure. So over the last 25 years, Falun Gong practitioners in China have been targeted for their faith. And 70 to 100 million people who practice Falun Gong have been persecuted and millions have been detained. And in detention, actually, a lot of them go through a very similar process of blood testing, electrocardiograms, x-rays, health checks. And this is despite the fact that they're undergoing very severe torture. And many of these practitioners, it's believed that they're serving as an organ bank. Because Jiang Zemin, when he started the persecution in 1999, he actually told Guo Xilai, who was the Chongqing Party chief, about his intention to have forced organ harvesting happen to practitioners who refused his decree. Wow, incredible. So used almost as a punishment, of course, it's the worst kind. But looking closer at this bill that's hoping to address it, what exactly is this bill proposing to do? So there's three main parts. The first, like you said, there's potential sanctions. So the president will have a list of perpetrators that he'll impose asset blocking or visa restrictions on. The second would be the secretary of state would make either a genocide or crimes against humanity designation. And Pompeo made a similar designation on the persecution, the genocide of Uyghurs a few years ago. The third one is interesting. It's a statement of policy, which says that the US will avoid any cooperation in the organ transplantation field as long as the CCP is in power. So organ harvesting, it's something clearly that nobody would want to take part in knowingly. How effective do you think this measure will be that's being voted on later in this evening at stopping all of that? Yeah, so this action really targets the Achilles heel because the last thing that CCP and the individuals involved in this heinous crime, the last thing they want is for the truth to be seen and publicly exposed. And this bill really does all of that. It's educating Americans about not going to China to get an organ unethically. It's telling people around the world about the crimes the CCP is committing. So it's also reminding businesses to step back and see the larger picture of is this pharmaceutical or is this business deal with China really for the best of humanity? Right. So this could potentially stretch into many areas and industries. What else do you think lawmakers can do to stop organ trafficking? So actually, a lot of statewide legislations have been passed. This was before H.R. 4132. And I think this should become a trend that continues because Texas, Arizona, Utah, a lot of states on their own have started a campaign and some sort of like pioneered to actually stop the complicity in their own state of insurance companies, of hospitals, of medical complexes. And I think that actually targets it more locally and more directly as well. It's good to have federal legislation, of course, because that guides legislation for all states. But for the states to have it on their own as well, it's a very, very strong stance that the CCP can't touch those states and they can't go on with this crime forever. Yeah. And we do need that. Thank you so much, Cynthia Sun, researcher at the Falun Dafa Information Center. Great to speak with you. Thank you for having me.