Two senators and two prominent rights advocates are calling on the Canadian government to apply Magnitsky sanctions against Chinese officials for forced organ harvesting and other human rights atrocities in China.
Conservative senators Thanh Hai Ngo and Leo Housakos, along with former Liberal cabinet minister David Kilgour and prominent rights lawyer David Matas, sent a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urging Magnitsky sanctions to help end the “gruesome and systematic forced organ harvesting perpetrated by China” that is “longstanding, substantial and has been taking place on a large scale.”
The letter notes the groups most targeted for illegal organ harvesting by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are “prisoners of conscience, religious and ethnic minorities, most notably, Falun Gong practitioners,” as well as Uighur Muslims and other groups.
“The CCP has and continues to commit these heinous acts with absolute impunity. Its rogue behaviour poses a significant threat not only to our own nation but to the entire global order,” says the letter dated July 16.
“At this defining moment in history, it is therefore critical that we make use of this effective foreign policy instrument against the Chinese Communist regime, for the integrity of the very principles on which this great country was founded.”
Last year, an independent tribunal in London, England, found that the CCP continues to kill Falun Gong adherents and sell their organs for profit.
Among its conclusions, the tribunal found that “Forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale and that Falun Gong practitioners have been one—and probably the main—source of organ supply.”