WHEREAS, the People's Republic of China implemented regulations in l984 that permitted the harvesting of organs from executed prisoners; and

WHEREAS, due in part to traditional views on the importance of preserving the body intact after death, China has very low rates of voluntary organ donations; and

WHEREAS, the People's Republic of China performs more than ten thousand organ transplantations per year; and

WHEREAS, in June 2001, Chinese doctor Wang Guoqi testified before the United States House of Representatives' International Relations Subcommittee on International Organizations and Human Rights that hospitals worked in collusion with state security agencies to extract organs from executed prisoners without written consent of the organ donors, and that these transplants were a lucrative source of income; and

WHEREAS, the United States Department of State's Country Report on Human Rights Practices for China for 2013 stated that advocacy groups continued to report instances of organ harvesting; and

WHEREAS, in September 2012, experts testified before the United States House of Representatives' Foreign Affairs Committee that United States patients continue to travel to China for organ transplants and that the medical community continues cooperation and training with Chinese colleagues, creating the risk that they may be indirectly aiding abusive practices; and

WHEREAS, China's former Vice-Minister of Health and current head of the country's organ donation committee Huang Jiefu admitted publicly that approximately five years ago, more than ninety percent of transplant organs extracted from deceased donors stemmed from executed prisoners in China, and that organs from executed prisoners accounted for sixty-four percent of transplants in 2012 and fifty-four percent in mid-2013; and

WHEREAS, voluntary and informed consent is the precondition for ethical organ donation, and international medical organizations state that prisoners, deprived of their freedom, are not in a position to give free consent and that the practice of sourcing organs from prisoners is a violation of ethical guidelines in medicine; and

WHEREAS, Falun Gong is an ancient spiritual discipline that emphasizes moral teachings of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. Falun Gong also includes meditation and exercises and became immensely popular in the 1990s, reaching over seventy million practitioners in China; and

WHEREAS, in July l999, the Chinese Communist Party launched an intensive, nationwide campaign of persecution designed to eradicate the spiritual practice of Falun Gong, reflecting the party's long-standing intolerance of large and independent civil societal groups; and

WHEREAS, since l999, hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been detained illegally in reeducation-through-labor camps, detention centers, and prisons, where torture and abuse are routine; and

WHEREAS, the number of organ transplant operations in China increased significantly after 1999, corresponding with the onset of the persecution of Falun Gong; and

WHEREAS, this increase does not appear to be attributable either to an overall increase in the number of death row inmates or to an increase in voluntary donations, and, in fact, human rights groups and legal experts believe there has been a decrease in the number of executions in China in recent years; and

WHEREAS, Chinese hospitals have advertised waiting times of two to four weeks for kidney and liver transplants, and documented cases exist of scheduled heart transplantations with three weeks advance notice; and

WHEREAS, because organs have a very limited survival period outside the body, such short wait times are best explained by the existence of a large pool of donors whose organs can be harvested on demand; and

WHEREAS, interviews conducted with previously imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners suggest that, while in custody, they were targeted for medical exams, including blood and urine tests, x-rays, ultra-sound tests, and selective physical exams; and

WHEREAS, the targeted nature of these exams suggests they are intended to assess the health of the practitioners' vital organs and their potential candidacy for organ harvesting; and

WHEREAS, other prisoner groups are generally not subjected to such medical tests; and

WHEREAS, in 2006, doctors from seventeen Chinese hospitals admitted in phone calls with undercover investigators that they used or could obtain vital organs of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience for transplant, with some of the doctors implicating local courts and security agencies in the organ procurement process; and

WHEREAS, the United Nations Committee Against Torture and the Special Rapporteur on Torture have expressed concern over the allegations of organ harvesting from Falun Gong prisoners, and have called on the Government of the People's Republic of China to increase accountability and transparency in the organ transplant system and punish those responsible for abuses; and

WHEREAS, the killing of religious or political prisoners for the purpose of selling their organs for transplant is an egregious and intolerable violation of the fundamental right to life; and

WHEREAS, in December 2014, Huang Jiefu announced that as of January 1, 2015, organs from executed prisoners will no longer be used for organ transplants, and only voluntarily donated organs from civilians would be used in transplants; and

WHEREAS, the People's Republic of China has previously announced deadlines to end the practice of using organs of executed prisoners for organ transplants but has not met these self-imposed deadlines and the practice has continued; now, therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED by the House of Representatives of the Twenty-eighth Legislature of the State of Hawaii, Regular Session of 2015, the Senate concurring, that the Legislature urges the Government of the People's Republic of China to honor its promise and commitment to no longer harvest organs from prisoners, and particularly from Falun Gong prisoners of conscience and members of other religious and ethnic minority groups; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that if this practice is still state-sanctioned and continuing, that the United States Department of State is urged to issue a travel warning for United States citizens traveling to China for organ transplants informing them that the organ source for their operation may be a prisoner of conscience; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that certified copies of this Concurrent Resolution be transmitted to the Majority Leader of the United States Senate, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Hawaii's congressional delegation, the United States Secretary of State, and the Ambassador of the People's Republic of China to the United States.

	OFFERED BY:	_____________________________

Report Title:

China; Organ Harvesting; Falun Gong Practitioners

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES	H.C.R. NO.	28
TWENTY-EIGHTH LEGISLATURE, 2015
STATE OF HAWAII