A Market Built on Victims: Stopping Illegal Organ Trafficking in China and Beyond

The systematic, widespread, and nonconsensual removal of human organs for transplantation—often described as forced organ harvesting or illegal organ trafficking—remains one of the gravest human rights concerns associated with the People’s Republic of China. Reports by researchers, human rights advocates, and medical ethics experts have raised serious concerns that prisoners of conscience, including Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims, and other political and religious prisoners, have been targeted within a state-enabled transplant system.

Three new books have been published recently that provide fresh perspectives on this issue, drawing renewed attention to evidence of forced organ harvesting in China, the relationship between religious persecution and transplant abuse, and how international medical, academic, commercial, and government actors have failed to confront or prevent these atrocities. This hearing will further explore what the United States and its allies can do to address this heinous global crime and examine additional steps that can be taken to hold both PRC officials and organ traffickers accountable for their roles in perpetuating it.

The hearing will be livestreamed on the CECC’s YouTube channel.