On April 19, the day before President Bush's meeting with the head of the Chinese communist regime, Hu Jintao, the Illinois General Assembly passed a House Resolution urging Bush "to discuss with Hu Jintao the harvesting of organs from living Falun Gong practitioners" in China.
House Resolution 1113, which bears the short description "Falun Gong China Persecution" on the Illinois General Assembly's official webpage, is a timely response to the recent allegation by adherents of Falun Gong that organs are being harvested from living fellow practitioners in China and sold to transplant patients.
According to Hao Feng, a Falun Gong practitioner in Urbana, since news of China's killing of Falun Gong practitioners through organ harvesting reached the public on March 9, practitioners in Illinois have petitioned state Senators and representatives requesting the U.S. government to help start an investigation. Feng said their initial focus fell on a hospital in Sujiatun, a suburb in the Shenyang city of the Liaoning Province, which, according to the testimony of two witnesses, once detained around 6,000 practitioners.
The House Resolution mentions one of the two witnesses: "A witness … whose ex-husband, a surgeon, helped perform the organ harvesting, estimates that 4,000 Falun Gong practitioners have died in the past 5 years through this organ harvesting …"
According to Feng, after initially contacting the General Assembly, practitioners began calling for an investigation into all Chinese labor camps, rather than just Sujiatun. They received further information from a military doctor in China that Sujiatun was only one of 36 similar concentration camps. The doctor also asserted that all evidence in Sujiatun would have already been destroyed, and any remaining detainees would have been transferred.
Therefore, on April 14, U.S. consular officials reported that nothing was found after twice touring said hospital in Sujiatun.
Upon request from Falun Gong practitioners, an amendment was introduced to the resolution on April 19, which Feng explained calls for widening the investigation by looking into the harvesting of organs from living Falun Gong practitioners in China.
The resolution was drafted by Representative Arthur L. Turner (Deputy Majority Leader) and has 23 co-sponsors, including Representative Patricia Reid Lindner (Assistant Republican Leader), Representative Mary E. Flowers, Representative Kurt M. Granberg (Assistant Majority Leader), Representative Barbara Flynn Currie (Majority Leader), and Representative Renee Kosel (Assistant Republican Leader). The amended version was adopted on April 19 by the International Trade & Commerce Committee. On April 17 the Atlanta City Council passed a similar resolution urging Congress to investigate the live organ harvesting and President Bush to question Hu Jintao about it.
On April 12 and 13 the two houses of the Colorado state legislature passed a resolution condemning the concentration camps in China in which organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners takes place.
Feeds