HR0881 101ST GENERAL ASSEMBLY

HR0881 LRB101 21859 MST 72818 r

HOUSE RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, July 20, 2020 will mark 21 years since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched a systematic and brutal campaign to "eradicate" the spiritual discipline of Falun Gong, a traditional Buddhist-based meditation practice whose core principles are truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance; and

WHEREAS, When this persecution first began in 1999, there were 70 to 100 million people from all walks of life practicing Falun Gong in China according to the Chinese government's own estimate; persecution of Falun Gong is not limited to a specific region; it is in every province, every city, and every county throughout China; and

WHEREAS, A 2007 U.S. State Department Human Rights Report states, "[the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred] Nowak reported that Falun Gong practitioners accounted for 66 percent of victims of alleged torture while in government custody"; and

WHEREAS, Since July 1999, there have been over 4,300 documented cases of Falun Gong practitioners dying as a result of torture and abuse in police custody, yet due to the danger and difficulties of verifying each case and sending that information overseas, the true death toll is widely believed to be many times higher; and

WHEREAS, On June 17, 2019, an independent tribunal in London, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC who worked at the International Criminal Tribunal and led the prosecution of Slobodan Milosevic, released its final judgment and concluded: "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"; and

WHEREAS, The U.S. Department of State Country Report on Human Rights for China in 2014 stated, "Advocacy groups continued to report instances of organ harvesting from prisoners"; and

WHEREAS, In 2015, Freedom House reported that Falun Gong practitioners comprise the largest portion of prisoners of conscience in China and face an elevated risk of dying or being killed while in custody; and

WHEREAS, The ramifications of such atrocities are beyond the Chinese border, as many organ recipients are westerners, and there has been much collaboration between the Chinese transplant industry and western medical professionals and the pharmaceutical industry; and

WHEREAS, As the current pandemic shows, a lack of international censure to these horrific crimes has not only cost the lives of innocent Chinese, but also those of many in the West; and

WHEREAS, One of the lead investigators of the CCP's killing of Falun Gong practitioners for their organs, David Matas, explained: "…if China had faced global pressure for transparency and accountability in its health system in dealing with organ transplant abuses, we wouldn't have this coronavirus now. And we are suffering the consequences now of turning a blind eye to organ transplant abuse"; and

WHEREAS, The CCP's mass campaign to vilify and eradicate Falun Gong and its core values of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance is also an attack on the conscience of humanity and corrupts the moral fabric of Chinese society; and

WHEREAS, This less visible yet more profound damage can have consequences in the West too, as immigrants from such a Chinese society are more likely to act as the CCP's surrogates and conduct technology thefts or espionage activities; and

WHEREAS, A Chinese population with more access to free information and more exposure to western values will be less likely to become the CCP's accomplice or advance its agenda in the international community; and

WHEREAS, The Washington Post reported in 1999 that many influential people in the party, the government, and the military practiced Falun Gong at that time, and Falun Gong practitioners have a deep understanding about the CCP and know best how to disintegrate it; and

WHEREAS, Falun Gong practitioners have been operating 200,000 or more underground printing houses to produce such material across China in what likely constitutes the largest non-violent, grassroots resistance in the world; and

WHEREAS, It was Falun Gong practitioners who spearheaded international media companies that broadcast uncensored information to China via satellite TV and shortwave radio; and

WHEREAS, It was Falun Gong practitioners who developed free ground-breaking internet freedom software, Freegate and Ultrasurf, which allow millions in China to bypass the Great Firewall and reach entire sectors of the Internet that are blocked by the CCP, as reported by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and many other media outlets; and

WHEREAS, As a result, to date, over 300-million Chinese people have withdrawn from the CCP and/or its affiliated organizations (most used pseudo-names to avoid the CCP's retaliation), a phenomenon similar to what happened right before the collapse of the Soviet Union; and

WHEREAS, The killing of religious or political prisoners for the purpose of selling their organs for transplant is an egregious and intolerable violation of the fundamental right to life; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ONE HUNDRED FIRST GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we condemn the persecution of Falun Gong, a traditional Buddhist-based meditation practice whose core principles are truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, as it reaches the 21 year mark since the Chinese Communist Party launched a systematic and brutal campaign to "eradicate" the spiritual discipline of Falun Gong; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we encourage the medical community in the United States to help raise awareness of unethical organ transplant practices in China; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we condemn the practice of state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting in the People's Republic of China.