Forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China

Allegations of forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners in the People's Republic of China have raised concern within the international community.

Initial reports of organ harvesting began with the Falun Gong-affiliated Epoch Times in 2006. In a subsequent report, former lawmaker David Kilgour and legal counsel David Matas estimated that over 41,500 organ transplants in China were unexplained between 2000 and 2005 and suggested that the source was Falun Gong practitioners. They updated their research in 2007 and released it as a book in 2009, receiving further media coverage. Journalist Ethan Gutmann began investigating the claims in 2006 and published his research in subsequent years. He estimated that 65,000 Falun Gong practitioners had been killed between 2000 and 2008 for their organs. In 2016 Gutmann, Kilgour, and Matas updated their research and estimated that 60,000 to 100,000 transplant surgeries were performed in China per year, far higher than its official figure. An informal, independent tribunal initiated by an advocacy group made a final judgment in 2019 that forced organ harvesting had occurred in China on a significant scale and continued to do so, and Falun Gong practitioners are the primary source. Since 2020 Gutmann has estimated that at least 25,000 and as many as 50,000 Uyghurs are being killed every year for their organs.

These reports cite a combination of statistical analysis, interviews with former prisoners, medical authorities and public security agents, as well as more circumstantial evidence, such as the rapid growth of organ transplantation industry in China after 1999, the short wait times for recipients, the low number of known donors, the large number of Falun Gong practitioners detained and persecuted, and the profits that can be made from selling organs.

A 2006 report by a U.S. congressional research staffer questioned the credibility of Kilgour-Matas's first report and stated that American officials in China were unable to verify organ harvesting allegations at a hospital in Shenyang. Dissenters have cited the allegations' inconsistency with other data, rejection by lawyers representing Falun Gong practitioners, and implausibility of the numbers.

The Chinese government has denied harvesting organs but admitted that executed prisoners were once used legally as well as illegally as a source of organs for transplantation. Its efforts to rely on voluntary donation exclusively have been met with skepticism.

Since 2006 U.N. Special Rapporteurs have called on the Chinese government to account for the sources of organs used in transplant practices. Since 2013, the European Parliament and the United States House of Representatives have adopted resolutions expressing concerns over credible reports of forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners and calling to end the practice. In 2021 U.N. human rights experts expressed alarm over credible information that minority detainees in China may be subjected to involuntary medical tests intended for organ registries. Countries have taken or considered measures to deter their citizens from travelling to China to receive transplanted organs.