Strasbourg 18.01.2024 The European Parliament adopted three resolutions on human rights issues in China, Sudan and Tajikistan. The ongoing persecution of Falun Gong in China, notably the case of Mr Ding Yuande:
MEPs demand the immediate and unconditional release of Mr Ding Yuande and all Falun Gong practitioners imprisoned. They strongly condemn the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners, and other minorities, including Uyghurs and Tibetans by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). They call for the PRC to end its domestic and transnational surveillance, control and suppression of religious freedom.
MEPs call on the EU and member states to support and facilitate an international investigation into the persecution of Falun Gong, and to raise the persecution of religious minorities with the Chinese authorities. The Resolution calls to suspension of the extradition treaties with the PRC, the Members add, and use national sanctions regimes and the EU Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime (EUGHRSR) against all perpetrators, as well as entities that have contributed to the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China and abroad.

MEPs also want EU measures to include visa refusals, the freezing of assets, expulsion from EU territories, criminal prosecution, including on the basis of extraterritorial jurisdiction, and the initiation of international criminal charges against the perpetrators. The text was adopted by a show of hands.

Forced organ harvesting is a state-sanctioned Chinese programme in which prisoners of conscience are executed for medical purposes. Every year, an estimated 60,000 to 90,000 transplants are carried out as part of a nationwide industry worth more than £800 million.

In June 2021, the United Nations stated that the victims were religious minorities, including Falun Gong practitioners and Uyghurs, who are held in numerous detention centre across China.

These people “are arbitrarily arrested, detained in camps, tortured, face sexual violence, disappear while in detention and are murdered on a vast scale for their organs,” Lord Hunt of Kings Heath told British politicians a year later.

Much of what we suspected about forced organ harvesting was officially confirmed by a UK-based independent people’s tribunal, called the China Tribunal, which was formed in 2019.