The head of the nursing program in a B.C. college is calling for greater awareness about the issue of state-backed forced organ harvesting in China, saying that it is a “moral obligation” to do so.

Tony Chacon, head of the Nephrology Nursing Specialty Program at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT), said he became aware of the issue as some of the patients at the BCIT, who had been waiting for a donor organ, would decide to travel overseas and would return with an organ within a relatively short time.

“Sometimes what happens is if patients are waiting a long time … for donor kidneys, sometimes they will go abroad [for transplants],” Chacon told NTD, a sister company of The Epoch Times. “We have an obligation, we look after them when they come back. They are followed by the transplant program, but we sometimes find out through them or [their] family that they have actually bought the transplant in China.”

“It’s a hard topic, but I do think it’s important to raise awareness and recognize [forced organ harvesting.] And I just think we need to do a better job on that,” he added. “I think it’s a moral obligation.”

Chacon made the comment on July 4, during the 2023 Congress of the International Nurses Council (INC), held in Montreal, Quebec. The convention for professional nurses, held from July 1 to July 5, was hosted by the INC and the Canadian Nurses Association.

Chacon noted that the patients who travelled abroad for transplant usually go to China or India. He said, in India, the organ sources are often from the poor who had to sell their organs, whereas in China, the organs are often “bought and harvested from a prisoner.”

Investigations by international human rights organizations further raised alarms about China targeting prisoners of conscience, as well as members of religious or ethnic minority groups.

“I have friends that were formally citizens of the People’s Republic of China, and they actually told me that … ‘I didn’t want to talk about it too much,’ because they’re afraid of persecution,” Chacon said.

Organ harvesting in China can be traced back to 1984, when a law was implemented in the country to allow such practice, according to Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH), an international organization comprised of doctors and medical professionals aimed at stopping this illegal and inhumane practice. The public, however, first became aware of this issue after Dr. Wang Guoqi, from China’s General Hospital of Armed Police of Tianjin, testified at the U.S. Congress in 2001, providing inside stories of the organ extractions being carried out on execution grounds.

A 2006 report, co-authored by late Canadian MP David Kilgour and human rights lawyer David Matas, also confirmed that Falun Gong adherents have been a primary victim of Beijing’s state-sponsored organ harvesting. Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice rooted in Buddhist traditions. Falun Gong adherents have been targeted by an ongoing persecution campaign launched by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999.

Deborah Collins, director of nursing affairs for Nurses Against Forced Organ Harvesting, which is a division of DAFOH, echoed these investigations, saying that Falun Gong adherents are “the number one victims at this point in time.”

“We want 30 million nurses in the world to know that we’re advocating for medical ethics and nursing ethics and human rights,” she told NTD during the INC Congress in Montreal.

“Our message includes, too, though, that organ harvesting from living people may occur in some regions of the world, but it is only in the People’s Republic of China that it is state-sanctioned and under military control. The primary victims being prisoners of conscience of different religions, ethnicities, and cultural beliefs in China.”

Collins is an advanced practice registered nurse (APRN) based in the United States.

In December 2022, Canada passed legislation to create new offences related to forced organ harvesting and trafficking abroad. The law, previously known as Bill S-223, makes it a criminal offence for a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident to travel abroad to receive an organ taken from someone who did not give informed consent to the removal of the organ.

With the legislation, Canada joined the ranks of countries such as the UK, Italy, Israel, Belgium, Norway, Spain, South Korea, and Taiwan that have passed similar legislation to combat forced organ harvesting, organ transplant tourism, and organ trafficking.

Isaac Teo and Tanya Du with NTD contributed to this article.