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1
HOUSE RESOLUTION

 
2    WHEREAS, July 20, 2020 will mark 21 years since the Chinese
3Communist Party (CCP) launched a systematic and brutal campaign
4to "eradicate" the spiritual discipline of Falun Gong, a
5traditional Buddhist-based meditation practice whose core
6principles are truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance; and
 
7    WHEREAS, When this persecution first began in 1999, there
8were 70 to 100 million people from all walks of life practicing
9Falun Gong in China according to the Chinese government's own
10estimate; persecution of Falun Gong is not limited to a
11specific region; it is in every province, every city, and every
12county throughout China; and
 
13    WHEREAS, A 2007 U.S. State Department Human Rights Report
14states, "[the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred] Nowak
15reported that Falun Gong practitioners accounted for 66 percent
16of victims of alleged torture while in government custody"; and
 
17    WHEREAS, Since July 1999, there have been over 4,300
18documented cases of Falun Gong practitioners dying as a result
19of torture and abuse in police custody, yet due to the danger
20and difficulties of verifying each case and sending that
21information overseas, the true death toll is widely believed to
22be many times higher; and
 

 

 

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

 

 

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1    WHEREAS, As the current pandemic shows, a lack of
2international censure to these horrific crimes has not only
3cost the lives of innocent Chinese, but also those of many in
4the West; and
 
5    WHEREAS, One of the lead investigators of the CCP's killing
6of Falun Gong practitioners for their organs, David Matas,
7explained: "…if China had faced global pressure for
8transparency and accountability in its health system in dealing
9with organ transplant abuses, we wouldn't have this coronavirus
10now. And we are suffering the consequences now of turning a
11blind eye to organ transplant abuse"; and
 
12    WHEREAS, The CCP's mass campaign to vilify and eradicate
13Falun Gong and its core values of truthfulness, compassion, and
14tolerance is also an attack on the conscience of humanity and
15corrupts the moral fabric of Chinese society; and
 
16    WHEREAS, This less visible yet more profound damage can
17have consequences in the West too, as immigrants from such a
18Chinese society are more likely to act as the CCP's surrogates
19and conduct technology thefts or espionage activities; and
 
20    WHEREAS, A Chinese population with more access to free
21information and more exposure to western values will be less
22likely to become the CCP's accomplice or advance its agenda in

 

 

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1the international community; and
 
2    WHEREAS, The Washington Post reported in 1999 that many
3influential people in the party, the government, and the
4military practiced Falun Gong at that time, and Falun Gong
5practitioners have a deep understanding about the CCP and know
6best how to disintegrate it; and
 
7    WHEREAS, Falun Gong practitioners have been operating
8200,000 or more underground printing houses to produce such
9material across China in what likely constitutes the largest
10non-violent, grassroots resistance in the world; and
 
11    WHEREAS, It was Falun Gong practitioners who spearheaded
12international media companies that broadcast uncensored
13information to China via satellite TV and shortwave radio; and
 
14    WHEREAS, It was Falun Gong practitioners who developed free
15ground-breaking internet freedom software, Freegate and
16Ultrasurf, which allow millions in China to bypass the Great
17Firewall and reach entire sectors of the Internet that are
18blocked by the CCP, as reported by the New York Times, Wall
19Street Journal, and many other media outlets; and
 
20    WHEREAS, As a result, to date, over 300-million Chinese
21people have withdrawn from the CCP and/or its affiliated

 

 

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