Schiff Cosponsors Bill Targeting Forced Organ Harvesting in China

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has cosponsored S. 4009, the Falun Gong and Victims of Forced Organ Harvesting Protection Act, adding another Democratic name to a bipartisan bill targeting the Chinese regime’s persecution of Falun Gong practitioners and other victims of forced organ harvesting.The bill was introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and referred to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 5.The measure would require the president to impose sanctions on foreign persons determined to have knowingly and directly engaged in or facilitated forced organ harvesting in China. Those sanctions include U.S. property blocking, visa ineligibility, and revocation of existing visas, according to the bill text.The bill defines forced organ harvesting as the removal of one or more organs from a person through coercion, abduction, deception, fraud, or abuse of power or vulnerability.It would also require the secretary of state, in consultation with the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institutes of Health, to submit a report to Congress on China’s organ transplant policies and practices. The report would include known or estimated annual transplant numbers, known or estimated voluntary donor numbers, organ sources, organ procurement wait times, and whether forced organ harvesting in China constitutes an atrocity under the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act.Bipartisan PushCruz said when introducing the bill that the Chinese Communist Party operates “a brutal, state-sponsored organ harvesting industry” targeting people for their faith, with Falun Gong practitioners singled out in particular.“The United States should hold accountable those who have committed these atrocities,” Cruz said in a March 11 statement.Merkley said in the same statement that reports of forced organ harvesting from vulnerable groups in China were part of a broader pattern of repression and human rights abuses.“We must stand up for the victims of these crimes, and our bipartisan effort holds the Chinese government accountable for its abuses,” Merkley said.Schiff’s cosponsorship follows his 2024 introduction, while serving in the House, of the Transnational Repression Reporting Act. That bill called for U.S. reporting on foreign-government efforts to intimidate, harass, or harm people in the United States.Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) speaks at a press conference on Capitol Hill in Washington on Jan. 14, 2025. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch TimesIn its China section, Schiff’s 2024 bill cited “credible evidence” that China had targeted Falun Gong and hindered the operations of Shen Yun Performing Arts. It also called for federal reporting on China-linked harassment and intimidation targeting Hong Kong activists, Uyghurs, Falun Gong practitioners, Shen Yun, and Tibetan activists.Hearing Puts Focus on Senate ActionThe new cosponsorship comes after a May 14 hearing of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) titled “A Market Built on Victims: Stopping Illegal Organ Trafficking in China and Beyond.”The commission said forced organ harvesting and illegal organ trafficking remain among the gravest human rights concerns associated with the People’s Republic of China. It said researchers, human rights advocates, and medical ethics experts have raised concerns that Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims, and other political and religious prisoners have been targeted within a state-enabled transplant system.Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), co-chair of the commission, called on the Senate to take up his Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2025, a separate House-passed measure.“The Senate has not acted on the bill, but they must,” Smith said in a May 15 statement. “Delay is denial.”Smith’s bill passed the House 406–1 on May 7, 2025. It would require sanctions and reporting related to forced organ harvesting and trafficking in persons for organ removal.Witnesses at the CECC hearing included Ethan Gutmann, a senior research fellow at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation; former Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback; Jan Jekielek, author of “Killed to Order” and senior editor of The Epoch Times; and Kalbinur Sidik, a survivor of China’s detention camp system.Jekielek testified that Chinese prisoners of conscience are dehumanized, tissue-typed, and made available for rapid transplant matching. He said the title of his book, “Killed to Order,” describes organs delivered on schedule and extracted from living human beings.Brownback told lawmakers that disfavored religious communities are targeted by forced organ harvesting, saying Falun Gong practitioners have been systematically catalogued through biometric markers and killed for their organs.Jan Jekielek, Epoch Times senior editor and author of “Killed to Order,” testifies before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China during a hearing titled, “A market built on victims: stopping illegal organ trafficking in China and beyond,” on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 14, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch TimesFalun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline involving meditative exercises and moral teachings centered on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. First introduced to the public in China in 1992, the practice quickly spread by word of mouth to reach an estimated 70 million to 100 million practitioners by 1999.In July 1999, then-CCP leader Jiang Zemin, who deemed the practice’s popularity as a threat to the regime’s power, launched a brutal persecution campaign aimed at crushing the practice. Since then, many have suffered arbitrary detention, forced labor, torture, and even death by forced organ harvesting.The China Tribunal, an independent people’s tribunal chaired by British barrister Sir Geoffrey Nice, concluded in 2019 that forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience had been practiced in China for a substantial period and involved a very large number of victims. The tribunal said Falun Gong practitioners had been one—and probably the main—source of organs.The tribunal also said it found no evidence that the infrastructure associated with China’s transplant industry had been dismantled, and concluded that forced organ harvesting continued absent a satisfactory explanation for the source of readily available organs.S. 4009 remains before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.