We were (virtually) visited by Dr. Wen Chen all the way from Pasadena. Wen was born in China at the end of the Great Cultural Revolution. Being victims of the horrific atrocity that killed two million intellectuals and destroyed traditional Chinese culture, Wen's parents had mixed feelings about her education. Despite their discouragement, Wen eventually won a national prize at a science competition when she was 16. Hence, she was accepted into a top university for undergraduate study. In 1994, Wen came to the U.S. for graduate school and ​received a doctorate in Biology at the California Institute of Technology in 2000. Because of her personal experience of being brainwashed in China, she decided to be a voice for the voiceless. Since 2012, she has given​ over 200 presentations to community organizations about Chinese culture, history, and human rights.
Dr. Wen Chen has been working for Caltech since 2000 as a biologist and information scientist on genomics and biological research. Part of her everyday work is to speak at scientific conferences and seminars in universities like UC San Diego and Harvard Medical School. In her personal life, she is an active member of the Amnesty International Chapter at Pasadena, a board member for Caltech Women in Biology and Biological Engineering, and a special event host for the Caltech Alumni Association. She lives in Pasadena with her husband and two daughters.

Dr. Chen showed us a very nice slide show starting with the rise of Falun Gong (a.k.a. Falun Dafa) movement which grew exponentially in the latter 1990’s. It is a body and mind practice based on traditional Chinese culture. It’s principles are truthfulness-compassion and tolerance. You can see proponents in parks doing exercises similar to Tai Chi. 100 million people practice Falun Dafa in more than 100 countries. You can find out about it by going to http://Faluninfo.net .

Then Chinese Communist party turned against Falun Gong and began persecuting them. To us and the rest of the world Falun Dafa seems like a rather benign or even peaceful and beneficial religion (if you can call it that), but to the CCP (Chinese Communist party, they were considered a dangerous growing threat. So they were and are persecuted by the CCP, rounded up and sent to concentration camps. Suddenly there was an “spiked” increase in organ donations in China, so that whereas the average wait for a donated organ in the U.S. and elsewhere is 2-3 years, the wait in China 1-4 weeks. People found out that many or most of the donated organs were coming from Falun Dafa prisoners. It was a very profitable business. See https://chinatribunal.com/   

At the end of this article there are graphics of two books and a documentary movie which were published on the subject. It was reported that in June 2016, there were 60,000 to 100,000 transplants annually in China – 90% from the Falun Gong. This practice invoked an international response as Israel (2008) would not cover organ transplants in China, Spain (2009) asserted that transplants in China breaks criminal law, Taiwan (2015) gives sentences of 1-5 years for organ tourism brokers, Italy-3-12years in prison, and in the U.S., H. Res. 343 condemned forced organ harvesting in China.

Wen went on to talk about CCP’s infiltration into the U.S. media. In February 2020, the U.S. State Dept. identified five Chinese Media as Foreign Missions – Xinhuya News Agency, China Global Television Network, China Radio International, China Daily and the People’s Daily. Dr. Chen went on to talk about the Confucius Institute that has been operating in 538 high schools and 106  universities offering courses on Chinese culture and spending 200 million dollars over 15 years, spreading propaganda and blocking topics about Tibet, Taiwan, the Tiananmen Massacre and blocking human rights speakers. China has also infiltrated Hollywood and influence and changed movies there. Wen makes the point that the CCP is powered by trade with cheap/slave labor, pollution for profit, currency manipulation, subsidizes on export against WTO rules and participates in intellectual theft of technology, reverse engineering our products and counterfeiting. Since then human rights lawyers have sprung up in China, one such person was lawyer Gao Zhisheng, he was harassed and “disappeared” , detained for 9 years and suffered severe torture. He was released on August 7, 2014, and kept in house arrest and then "disappeared" again in 2017. 

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/08/bravest-lawyer-china-gao-zhisheng Amnesty International is calling for his release.  

A backlash is that 363 million people have quit the CCP and it’s affiliated organizations.

Again more information can be found at:

http://stoporganharvesting.org                  http://www.theepochtimes.com

 

From left to right: George & Akash Abraham;Vicky & Jay Boatwright; Karen Munsterman; David Thorman;