We reprint an August 6, 2024 letter to the editor by Alejandro Centurion intact but for the headline inserted by the Adirondack Daily Enterprise, which oddly refers to “forced organ donation.” A donation is voluntary.
To the editor:
For the past 20 years China’s thriving, billion-dollar forced organ harvesting industry has been operating under the auspices of the state and constitutes one of the greatest violations of human rights and medical ethics of this century, having been categorized as a crime against humanity and genocide. We want to thank the entire U.S. House of Representatives for unanimously passing H.R. 4132, the Falun Gong Protection Act, on June 25, which the aims to hold China accountable for these atrocities, described by human rights lawyer David Matas as “a form of evil we have yet to see on this planet.”
The international community first learned of state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners of conscience in 2006. The China Tribunal, led by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, examined all the accumulated evidence and in 2020 concluded that, “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.”
We ask Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand to support this bill (S. 4914), which would block Chinese doctors or CCP officials involved in involuntary harvesting of organs from prisoners of conscience from coming to the United States and ask the U.S. government to issue a comprehensive report on forced organ harvesting practices in China. It would be a strong deterrent to forced organ harvesting, and help protect U.S. citizens, American medical centers and patients from becoming complicit in these heinous crimes.
New Yorkers can help to end these atrocities by writing or calling Senator Schumer and Senator Gillibrand’s offices and asking them to support H.R. 4132, the Falun Gong Protection Act.
Alejandro Centurion, MD
Associate Director of Medical Affairs, Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting
Middletown
