(Minghui.org) Before the International Human Rights Day (December 10), two pieces of news from America and Taiwan have drawn public attention. The first is that on December 2, 2012, Arthur L. Caplan, professor and head of the Division of Bioethics at New York University Langone Medical Center, launched a petition on the White House’s We the People website, calling on the U.S. government to “Investigate and publicly condemn organ harvesting from Falun Gong believers in China.” (http://wh.gov/5Jmn) If the petition receives at least 25,000 signatures by January 1, 2013, the U.S. government is obligated to take a stand on the issue—something it has not done to date. The second piece of news is that as of December 3, 2400 doctors and 1800 nurses from Taiwan have signed a petition calling for the end of the organ harvesting in China.

The organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners was first exposed in March 2006. In November 2011, Professor Manfred Nowak of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute, Vice-President of the Austrian UNESCO-Commission, renowned international human rights expert and former U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, gave a speech entitled, “The Right to Stop Torture – Viewpoint and Experience of a Former U.N. Special Rapporteur” at National Taiwan University on Nov. 8, 2011. He said that China was the most difficult country in which to investigate torture. In answering a question about the investigation report on the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) crime of harvesting organs from living Falun Gong practitioners from an attorney of the Taiwan Falun Gong Human Rights Lawyers Working Group, Professor Nowak said the allegations were credible.

In Nowak's report to the United Nations in 2006, two thirds of the torture cases by the CCP were against Falun Gong practitioners. The 2007 report listed many Chinese organ transplantation centers and detention centers implicated in harvesting organs from living Falun Gong practitioners.

In February 2012, Wang Lijun, the deputy mayor of Chongqing overseeing public security, fled to the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu in February 2012, seeking protection. It is believed that he turned over a series of classified documents to the American government, including evidence of organ harvesting. Since then, organ harvesting in China has become a focus of the international community.

From September 10 to 28, 2012, the 21^st meeting of United Nations Human Rights Council was held in Geneva, Switzerland. The Chinese Communist Party's atrocities of organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners were exposed during the meeting. Mr. Marc Falquet, President of the Human Rights Commission, issued a statement condemning the crimes of forced organ harvesting and calling on Chinese officials to take action to stop them.

On October 3, 2012, 106 U.S. Congress members signed a “Dear Colleague Letter” addressed to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, expressing their concerns about the forced organ harvesting in China, and requesting that the State Department release the information they had received on this very important matter. The letter was co-sponsored by Representative Robert Andrews (D-NJ) and Representative Chris Smith (R-NJ), and circulated in the House. The letter to Secretary Clinton stated: “We therefore ask that the State Department release any information it may have that relates to transplant abuses in China, including any documentation that Wang Lijun may have provided to our Consulate in Chengdu.”

Open letter to the Secretary of State signed by 106 US representatives asking the department to make public information related to organ harvesting

David Norris, a senior Irish senator, has spoken out several times in the Senate to condemn the CCP’s atrocities of harvesting organs from living Falun Gong practitioners. In July 2012, he once again expressed his deep concern about live organ harvesting in China, and his hope that the evil practice will not happen again.

On November 7, the International Society of Human Rights located in Germany held a press conference in Dusseldorf, calling upon the German media and public to pay more attention to human rights violations in China. The speakers pointed out that the solution is to end the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) tyranny. The speakers condemned the CCP's harvesting organs from living Falun Gong practitioners. The International Society of Human Rights has offices in more than 30 countries. This was the first time that a European human rights organization has publicly condemned the organ harvesting in China.

From left to right: Manyan Ng, a trustee of the International Society of Human Rights; Zhang Erping, a Falun Gong practitioner; a spokesman for the International Society of Human Rights

Søren Espersen, member of the Presidium of the Danish Parliament, the second deputy speaker, and member of the central board of the Danish People's Party, expressed that organ harvesting is an international human rights crime.

During an interview with NTDTV in September, 2012, Mr. Espersen expressed that he has been concerned about the organ harvesting in China. He said he has read articles about it in the International Herald Tribune, an American newspaper. “It is hard to imagine that such crimes exist in the world,” he said.

Mr. Espersen said, “I am convinced that there is so much evidence now, it must be true. If it is true, it is a terrible international human rights crime that the Chinese government is committing.”

On May 24, 2012, the U.S. State Department published the 2011 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. For the first time, the report noted that media and human rights groups had been consistently reporting cases of live organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners. The report was also the first time that the United States mentioned this issue in an official government publication. In the meantime, when the U.S. State Department renewed its DS-160 application form for non-immigrant visas, it added six questions to the “Security and Background” section, one of which was: “Have you ever been directly involved in the coercive transplantation of human organs or bodily tissue?”

The persecution of Falun Gong is one of the darkest pages of human history, and organ harvesting is a human rights disaster. American congressman Christopher H. Smith said, “This probability pushes us into the horrific beyond--beyond the challenge of our language, making the word barbaric too common of a word. If this is true, even the powerful legal term of ‘crime against humanity’ seems inadequate…This barbaric human rights abuse must be stopped!”

Falun Gong practitioners' 13-year long peaceful resistance has gained a lot of support all over the world. In China, more and more people have recognized the evil nature of the communist party. We hope that more people will stand on the side of justice and compassion, and help to end the persecution as soon as possible.