China forcibly collecting blood from Falun Gong adherents to boost its organ harvesting efforts
09/06/2020 / By Cassie B.
China has been forcibly collecting blood samples from Falun Gong practitioners, and given their track record, many believe organ harvesting is the motivation.
Falun Gong is a spiritual practice based on compassion, tolerance and truthfulness. Its adherents follow meditation exercises and moral teaching, and China has been suppressing them for the past two decades. During this time, hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been placed in detention centers, labor camps, “re-education” facilities and psychiatric hospitals, where they’re often tortured into renouncing their faith.
One 70-year-old woman who lives in Shanghai, Shen Fang, recently recounted her ordeal. After refusing to open her door to four police officers last month, they called a locksmith and broke into the apartment anyway, pinning her down and scratching her hand to draw blood.
They told her the blood sample was “required by the state.” An officer told her that “the law doesn’t apply to you guys” while covering his badge number. He also threatened that “we’re going to wipe you all out.”
She isn’t the only person who has been violated in this manner. Dozens of Falun Gong adherents across the country have dealt with similar situations according to U.S.-based clearinghouse Minghui.org, which tracks Falun Gong persecution by Chinese authorities. The police have been paying visits to some of their homes, while others have been forcibly brought to a police station to have their blood drawn. In Pudong, more than 10 practitioners had their blood drawn and were forced to provide fingerprints, recordings of their voice, and handwriting samples. They were threatened with arrest if they did not comply.
A Tianjin Falun Gong practitioner reported that police rushed in her home one day in March while she was doing laundry and confiscated her Falun Gong books and materials. She was brought to a local police station, where she was shackled to a chair before being locked in a metal cage. They forcibly collected her blood and released her on bail, and she is now under house surveillance.
CCP is committing crimes against humanity
Last year, an independent tribunal in London found that imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners were the main source of the for-profit organ harvesting industry in China. Their final judgment, which was released in March, said the crime against humanity was going on unchecked. They said: “If the accusations are proved, they will, inevitably, be compared to the worst atrocities committed in conflicts of the 20th century.”
Chinese trial lawyer Chen Jiangang told The Epoch Times that the Chinese Communist Party does not need the backing of the law when it persecutes people. He said the blood collection did not have anything to do with a routine physical collection and was instead an effort to acquire “people’s biological samples.” He added that the police officers’ behavior breached people’s personal rights and humiliated their character in an attempt to control them and psychologically terrorize them.
A former human rights lawyer who has defended Falun Gong practitioners in Chinese courts, Peng Yongfeng, said the actions were illegal and that police would be liable for causing intentional homicide if the blood samples prove to be an effort to fuel an organ data bank.
A group of 49 state lawmakers in Virginia recently sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asking him to raise awareness about the persecution of Falun Gong in China. Their letter contained descriptions of torture and abuse from survivors who now live in Virginia. Some of them said they were handcuffed and hung, subjected to high-voltage electrical shocks, deprived of sleep and violently force fed.
The letter also called attention to the forced organ harvesting that they are subjected to, pointing to the London tribunal’s finding that many people have died “horribly and unnecessarily” because of the practice.
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