On the occasion of an event for the 25th Day of the Falun Dafa practitioners in Munich, Jasna Causevic, STP expert on genocide prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, sends greetings to the participants. The event will take place on Saturday, May 11, 2024, on Karlsplatz in Munich, starting at 11:30 am. After that, there will be a parade, starting at 1:30 pm. Falun Dafa Day is celebrated worldwide on May 13.

Dear Falun Dafa practitioners,

Dear ladies and gentlemen,  

Last year marked the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). This document, which was announced on December 10, 1948, states that all people are born free and equal in dignity and rights. Human rights are universal; they apply everywhere and to everyone. They are inalienable and they are indivisible, so it is not possible to exercise one of these rights at the expense of another. These universal human rights and the freedom rights of minorities such as the Falun Dafa practitioners are seriously threatened by China. On the occasion of the 25th World Falun Dafa Day, I would like to express my deepest respect for your courage in standing by your values of truthfulness, kindness, and compassion. These values are not only the values of Falun Dafa, but also universal human values – values that everyone who believes in human dignity and freedom appreciates and supports. As a human rights organization, we are demanding an end to the persecution and repression by China, which has been going on for decades under the CPC. In China, Falun Dafa practitioners live in fear of systematic persecution, arrests, brainwashing, torture, and even extrajudicial killings. Violence and repression are also increasing abroad.

We are speaking about decades of unprecedented persecution, harassment, and violence – committed by China against its own people – but also decades of peaceful resistance and ongoing educational work by Falun Dafa practitioners, who respond to violence with peaceful methods. Despite the ongoing persecution, the number of Falun Dafa practitioners is growing. This should encourage you to continue to fight for your human rights and citizen rights. For this, support by the international community is essential. We, the STP, are on your side!

Falun Dafa practitioners are becoming victims of unprecedented crimes: In its final statement (June 17, 2020), the “China Tribunal”, led by the well-known British human rights advocate Sir Geoffrey Nice, who also led the prosecution against Serbian war criminal Slobodan Milošević at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), stated that China has been carrying out forced organ removals on a large scale for years. The statement also clarifies that Falun Dafa practitioners are one – and probably even the largest – group of people who are affected by these transplantations.

The Society for Threatened Peoples calls on the European Commission, the German Federal Government, and all other European governments to – in accordance with the requirements of the EU resolution regarding the ongoing persecution of Falun Dafa (January 18, 2024) – to advocate for the release of all detained Falun Dafa practitioners, including the prisoner Ding Yuande, to show solidarity with this marginalized and hardly noticed religious community, and protect it by all possible means. We are calling on the German Federal Government to address the persecution of Falun Dafa practitioners on the bilateral and multilateral level. 

It is important to take decisive action against these human rights violations – as the more than 100 different methods of torture that were originally used against Falun Dafa practitioners are also used against Uyghurs, Tibetans, civil rights activists, dissenters, and human rights lawyers in China.  Selective compassion towards some, but not all oppressed minorities, is insincere and prohibitive. The international community must advocate for all persecuted minorities, if it aims to stick to the principle of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

China’s regulations on human organ donation and transplantation, which came into force on May 1, 2024, do not comply with international transparency standards to prevent forced organ harvesting, and they are contrary to international transplantation principles and guidelines.

The STP demand the European Union and the EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, to

(1) advocate for an end to the EU’s medical cooperation with China in the field of organ transplantation. At the same time, EU institutions should neither support nor encourage forced organ harvesting;

(2) demand alignment of the Chinese organ transplantation legislation to the WHO guiding principles for the transplantation of human cells, tissues, and organs, and the Istanbul Declaration (DoI) on Organ Trafficking and Transplant Tourism;

(3) exclude China from the WHO Task Force on Human Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplantation as well as the Istanbul Custodian Group Declaration if China continues to violate the WHO and DoI protocols;

(4) demand redress for the historical injustice of forced organ harvesting from persecuted minorities in China.

Best regards,

Jasna Causevic, expert on genocide prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, 
Society for Threatened Peoples
Email: j.causevic@gfbv.de
Phone: +49 551 49906-16