AGENCIES: The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has said that the Chinese government is allegedly harvesting and selling organs from persecuted religious and ethnic minorities on an industrial scale.

Speaking at the council’s headquarters in Geneva on Tuesday, lawyer Hamid Sabi presented the findings of the China Tribunal, an independent tribunal on allegations of forced organ harvesting.

Sabi told the council that UN member states have a “legal obligation” to act after the tribunal’s final report in June found that “the commission of crimes against humanity against the Falun Gong and Uighur had been proved beyond a reasonable doubt”.

The China Tribunal chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC concluded that there was clear evidence China had been extracting organs from members of the Falun Gong spiritual group for at least 20 years and that the practice is ongoing until today.

Detainees were “killed, cut open while still alive for their kidneys, livers, hearts, lungs, cornea, and skin to be removed and turned into commodities for sale”, the tribunal’s final judgment said.

China, however,  has repeatedly denied the use of unethical organ transplant practices and said that it stopped using the organs from executed prisoners in 2015.

(Agencies)