News briefs

The lawyers for the Independent Tribunal Into Forced Organ Harvesting from Prisoners of Conscience In China (China Tribunal) have told the United Nations’ Human Rights Council that China is harvesting and selling organs from “persecuted religious and ethnic minorities”. Presenting the final report of the Tribunal last week, Mr Hamid Sabi told the Council the UN had a “legal obligation” to act because the Tribunal had found “the commission of crimes against humanity against the Falun Gong and [Uyghur minorities had] been proved beyond reasonable doubt”. According to a report in The Independent, the organ transplant industry is estimated to earn China more than $1 billion a year. Sir Geoffrey Nice, QC, chair of the China Tribunal, told a separate NGO‐hosted UN event that the international community “can no longer avoid what it is inconvenient for them to admit”. Mr Sabi concluded his speech to the Human Rights Council with: “Victim for victim and death for death, the gassing of the Jews by the Nazis, the massacre by the Khmer Rouge or the butchery to death of the Rwanda Tutsis may not be worse than cutting out the hearts and other organs from living, blameless, harmless, peaceable people.”