A US lawmaker said her biggest worry is that the world is not paying attention to human rights abuses by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) during a human rights forum on Washington Capitol Hill.
Young Kim said that “there are not enough people on the Hill listening” during the human rights forum which she helped put together on Human Rights Day, Dec. 10.
Human rights, she said, should be a lever for the US in any conversation with China, “especially in the trade areas.”
She told The Epoch Times, “We need to keep on raising our voices. We need to be united.”
Human rights and freedom are “non-negotiable.”
“It needs to be talked about around the clock, all the time,” Young added.
At the forum, many shared stories of long Chinese prison sentences imposed on people for their spiritual and political beliefs.
Numerous people wrote on a large signboard “We Support Human Rights in China.”
Remaining silent about the human right abuses is a signal for the CCP to double down and for the abuses to spread to other regions, foundation’s policy coordinator Francis Hui and other activities at the forum said.
John Neville of the International Campaign for Tibet mentioned Chinese official Chen Quanguo as an example.
The first Trump administration sanctioned Chen, who oversaw the destruction of the books of the teachings of Falun Gong, and the ouster of government officials who practiced Falun Gong, a spiritual practice based on the principles of truthfulness-compassion-forbearance which persecuted by the CCP since 1999, while he was a senior official in his hometown province Henan.
Chen replicated the persecution to other parts of China such as Tibet and Xinjiang.
Steven Wang, a China-born US citizen, is a professional dancer for Shen Yun Performing Arts, the world’s premier New York-based classical Chinese dance and music company who received rave reviews for its performances in 300 cities yearly, said he worried for his elderly mother Liu Aihua who is imprisoned in China for refusing to give up her faith.
Liu, in her 70s, was sentenced to a 4-year imprisonment in 2022, after having spent 8 years in detention facilities from 11 arrests previously.
Wang has access to her mother only once a month.
Economically and politically, the perpetrators of the abuses seem powerful, but “just ensuring that the dissident voices are not forgotten is already a victory,” Louisa Greve, director of global advocacy for the Uyghur Human Rights Project, told The Epoch Times.
Years ago, CCP’s forced labour camp Masanjia in Liaoning province was exposed by Julie Keith after she had purchased a box of Halloween decorations in a local K-mart in Oregon, US. In the box was a hand-written letter by Sun Yi, a prisoner from the Masanja forced labour camp who is also a Falun Gong practitioner, highlighting the torture and abuses. Yi had risked his life by writing the letter and concealing it in the box.
Following Sun’s letter that exposes forced labour in China, the West is more active in steering clear of goods tainted with forced labor, with the US adopting a law to bar imports from China’s Xinjiang over abuse concerns targeting Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities.
“China cannot shut that down and cannot stop a democracy like the US from having laws that say, ‘No, we refuse to have our markets open to these forced labor goods.’ That’s already a victory, considering that civil society voices are volunteers, almost no money, small staff and no diplomatic power,” Greve said.
Hong Kong has around 2,000 political prisoners, including Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai, since the implementation of the National Security Law in 2020 by the CCP to tighten control over the once semi-autonomous region, according to the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation. Some have been released but an estimated hundreds still remain in prison.
Human rights abuses in China affect more than the persecuted communities, said Jessica Russo, clinical psychologist and mental health adviser for Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting at the forum.
The UK-led China Tribunal exposed the CCP’s forced organ harvesting in 2019 after extensive investigation.
China Tribunal stated in its report titled, China tribunal: Final Judgement 17th June 2019, “Within the Chinese transplant system, waiting times are said to be ‘extremely short by international standards and at times, transplants of vital organs (hearts, full livers) can be ‘booked’ in advance. The alleged victims of forced organ harvesting are primarily people who follow the Buddha School meditation practice of Falun Gong, possibly along with Uyghur Muslims (a Turkic ethnic group currently being detained in vast numbers in the Xinjiang region) and some Tibetan Buddhists and House Church Christians.”
“These concerns have been raised with Chinese officials and Chinese medical practitioners on numerous occasions, each time with results that have been doubted by some. Those supporting China’s medical practices claim that issues to do with unethical organ procurement have been resolved but have offered no clear evidence to support their claims,” the report added.
People living outside of China are at risk of complicity, Russo said.
“We are all involved in some way or another,” she told The Epoch Times. “We have pharmaceutical companies in the US who are doing clinical trials in China, and transplant and medical supply companies that are supplying materials for China’s transplant, and then we have patients who are lured by the short wait times. So we are heavily involved in so many levels in this crime.”
Kim said she hopes the human rights event is the first of many positive steps to come.
“Just one venue, one event, bringing all of the different organisations and individuals that are fighting for people’s freedom. … It’s just not enough,” she said.
“We need to turn all of these stories into action, and we can always do more.”
