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HOUSE RESOLUTION

 
2    WHEREAS, July 20, 2021 will mark 22 years since the
3Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched a systematic and brutal
4campaign to "eradicate" the spiritual discipline of Falun
5Gong, a traditional Buddhist-based meditation practice whose
6core principles are truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance;
7and
 
8    WHEREAS, When this persecution first began in 1999, there
9were 70 to 100 million people from all walks of life practicing
10Falun Gong in China according to the Chinese government's own
11estimate; persecution of Falun Gong is not limited to a
12specific region; it is in every province, every city, and
13every county throughout China; and
 
14    WHEREAS, A 2007 U.S. State Department Human Rights Report
15states, "[the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred] Nowak
16reported that Falun Gong practitioners accounted for 66
17percent of victims of alleged torture while in government
18custody"; and
 
19    WHEREAS, Since July 1999, there have been 4,609 documented
20cases of Falun Gong practitioners dying as a result of torture
21and abuse in police custody, yet due to the danger and
22difficulties of verifying each case and sending that

 

 

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1information overseas, the true death toll is widely believed
2to be many times higher; and
 
3    WHEREAS, On June 17, 2019, an independent tribunal in
4London, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC who worked at the
5International Criminal Tribunal and led the prosecution of
6Slobodan Milosevic, released its final judgment and concluded:
7"Forced organ harvesting has been committed for years
8throughout China on a significant scale and that Falun Gong
9practitioners have been one - and probably the main - source of
10organ supply"; and
 
11    WHEREAS, The U.S. Department of State Country Report on
12Human Rights for China in 2014 stated, "Advocacy groups
13continued to report instances of organ harvesting from
14prisoners"; and
 
15    WHEREAS, In 2015, Freedom House reported that Falun Gong
16practitioners comprise the largest portion of prisoners of
17conscience in China and face an elevated risk of dying or being
18killed while in custody; and
 
19    WHEREAS, The ramifications of such atrocities are beyond
20the Chinese border, as many organ recipients are westerners,
21and there has been much collaboration between the Chinese
22transplant industry and western medical professionals and the

 

 

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1pharmaceutical industry; and
 
2    WHEREAS, As the current pandemic shows, a lack of
3international censure to these horrific crimes has not only
4cost the lives of innocent Chinese but also those of many in
5the West; and
 
6    WHEREAS, One of the lead investigators of the CCP's
7killing of Falun Gong practitioners for their organs, David
8Matas, explained: "…if China had faced global pressure for
9transparency and accountability in its health system in
10dealing with organ transplant abuses, we wouldn't have this
11coronavirus now. And we are suffering the consequences now of
12turning a blind eye to organ transplant abuse"; and
 
13    WHEREAS, The CCP's mass campaign to vilify and eradicate
14Falun Gong and its core values of truthfulness, compassion,
15and tolerance is also an attack on the conscience of humanity
16and corrupts the moral fabric of Chinese society; and
 
17    WHEREAS, This less visible yet more profound damage can
18have consequences in the West too, as immigrants from such a
19Chinese society are more likely to act as the CCP's surrogates
20and conduct technology thefts or espionage activities; and
 
21    WHEREAS, A Chinese population with more access to free

 

 

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1information and more exposure to western values will be less
2likely to become the CCP's accomplice or advance its agenda in
3the international community; and
 
4    WHEREAS, The Washington Post reported in 1999 that many
5influential people in the party, the government, and the
6military practiced Falun Gong at that time, and Falun Gong
7practitioners have a deep understanding about the CCP and know
8best how to disintegrate it; and
 
9    WHEREAS, Falun Gong practitioners have been operating
10200,000 or more underground printing houses to produce such
11material across China in what likely constitutes the largest
12non-violent, grassroots resistance in the world; and
 
13    WHEREAS, It was Falun Gong practitioners who spearheaded
14international media companies that broadcast uncensored
15information to China via satellite TV and shortwave radio; and
 
16    WHEREAS, It was Falun Gong practitioners who developed
17free ground-breaking internet freedom software, Freegate and
18Ultrasurf, which allow millions in China to bypass the Great
19Firewall and reach entire sectors of the Internet that are
20blocked by the CCP, as reported by the New York Times, Wall
21Street Journal, and many other media outlets; and
 

 

 

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1    WHEREAS, As a result, to date, over 371 million Chinese
2people have withdrawn from the CCP and/or its affiliated
3organizations (most used pseudo-names to avoid the CCP's
4retaliation), a phenomenon similar to what happened right
5before the collapse of the Soviet Union; and
 
6    WHEREAS, The killing of religious or political prisoners
7for the purpose of selling their organs for transplant is an
8egregious and intolerable violation of the fundamental right
9to life; therefore, be it
 
10    RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ONE
11HUNDRED SECOND GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that
12we condemn the persecution of Falun Gong, a traditional
13Buddhist-based meditation practice whose core principles are
14truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, as it reaches the 22
15year mark since the Chinese Communist Party launched a
16systematic and brutal campaign to "eradicate" the spiritual
17discipline of Falun Gong; and be it further
 
18    RESOLVED, That we encourage the medical community in the
19United States to help raise awareness of unethical organ
20transplant practices in China; and be it further
 
21    RESOLVED, That we condemn the practice of state-sanctioned
22forced organ harvesting in the People's Republic of China.