[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 144 (Thursday, October 23, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H9479]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  ILLEGAL TRAFFICKING IN HUMAN ORGANS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Walsh). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentlewoman from Washington, Mrs. Linda Smith, is recognized 
for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. LINDA SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, last Friday 
Representative Pelosi, Representative Wolf, and myself, Linda Smith, 
asked the Attorney General, Janet Reno, to launch a formal inquiry and 
prosecute all violators of U.S. laws who have illegally trafficked in 
human organs.
  A little over a week ago, there was a documentary shown by ABC, and 
it showed footage of men and women of Asian descent in China lined up 
in rows, with one person holding them with their hands behind their 
back and another person with a rifle to their head. You watched then a 
military leader, I do not know what the rank, walk behind them and 
reposition the gun. It was so that the execution made sure that the 
organs were left in the best order for the person that was in the red 
army, the People's Liberation Army hospital run by the military just a 
short ways away, ready for the kidneys from these executed prisoners. 
It went on to show that this was a common practice, as testified by 
doctors in the United States and China. People that have been involved, 
it is reported that there are nearly 4,000 of them at least last year 
just for the harvesting, as they call it, of their kidneys.
  If these allegations are true, we are talking about men and women 
being treated like animals, no more than like cattle being lined up to 
be used for the benefit of someone else. I believe America is too good 
for this, but they are way too good for participating in it, because 
something more was revealed. I have known this for some time. Some of 
the tapes that were delivered to the administration a year ago asking 
them to defend, to do something, to speak out showed that Americans 
were involved. The tape goes on, though, and shows some things new, and 
it shows that the Chinese government or folks from China have been 
coming in on student visas and that they are actually the agents that 
market for $5,000 down a prisoner's vital organ. In this case it was 
kidneys. They say, though, that they can match anybody, because they 
have thousands, maybe millions of people, of whatever match and they 
can take blood type and tissue type and make sure that the rejection is 
low, because they have so many specimens to draw from in their prisons.
  The reports we get from American Amnesty and other groups is that the 
increase in the arrests is growing at a great rate in China for folks 
that just get together to pray in a church, or are of the wrong 
religion, not okayed by the government, coming together, like possibly 
Moslem in some cases, Catholic, and that this is what they fill their 
prisons with. So this is not people even who are hardened criminals.
  We have asked the Attorney General to go through all the American 
laws. We have found so far it is against the law to traffic in organs 
and to get consideration from them. So the people involved and the 
corporations that set up the dialysis and stayed involved and corporate 
heads who have testified to this, we have asked them to be deposed. We 
have asked the people that are selling, that we have identified and 
given the names and the visa numbers to the FBI, to be retained and not 
allowed to leave the country. But more than that, we have asked the 
President next week when he hosts a party for the President of China to 
ask him to put a stop to this atrocity carried off by his military in 
modern hospitals set up by American equipment, dialysis corporations. 
We need our President to speak out, because that has what has been good 
about America for many years. Often not foreign policy that is passed 
by Congress, but a leadership that speaks out and says we have a 
balanced approach to dealing with other countries. I plead with the 
President tonight to please speak out for people around the world, and 
I plead for this Congress to pass a resolution in the next few days, 
tomorrow, next week that calls for a united voice against this 
practice.

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