MK Feiglin: Moral duty of Jews to help Falun Gong in China
The State of Israel, the Knesset
”It is the moral duty of the Jewish people to rise up against the crimes against humanity occurring in China”, said MK Moshe Feiglin (Likud-Yisrael Beitenu), Deputy Speaker of the Knesset and Chair of the Liberal Lobby.
Feiglin spoke during Monday`s session of the Liberal Lobby dedicated to the victims of the persecution against the 100 million members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement by the Chinese regime. Falun Gong practitioners are held in prison camps and tortured. According to reports, China also conducts widespread and systematic organ harvesting of living Falun Gong practitioners.
The session, held at the Knesset`s Jerusalem Hall, was also attended by Israel Labor Party Secretary General MK Yehiel Hilik Bar, MK Nissim Zeev of Shas and MK Boaz Toporovsky of Yesh Atid.
The special session also featured an art exhibit titled ”Zhen Shan Ren” (Truth, Compassion, Forbearance in Chinese, the principles of Falun Gong). On display were paintings by Falun Gong practitioners depicting their experiences and the violence by the Chinese communist regime against them.
During the session, Shiping Lu, a victim who managed to escape Chinaeing imprisoned and tortured, described the ordeals she had gone through during her two years of incarceration. Lu said she was arrested four times, held in isolation and tortured with electric batons. During one of the incidents, her hands were tied behind her back and she was dangled from a window. ”What is happening there must be stopped, it is a disaster for the Chinese people; it is a crime,” she said.
Prof. Jacob (Jay) Lavee, director of the Heart Transplantation Unit at the Sheba Medical Center, presented the testimony of a doctor who harvested organs from executed prisoners on behalf of the Chinese regime. The doctor, Wang Guoqi, who testified before a committee of the US Congress, provided horrifying details from executions he took part in. The doctor testified that the ”donor,” after his kidneys, skin, and corneas were harvested, was thrown, while still alive, into a plastic body bag and dumped in an incinerator. The on-site commander of the execution, the doctor testified, told the guard: ”Save the bullet, he won`t survive anyway. ”
Prof. Lavee noted that the Israeli transplant law stopped the flow of Israeli patients to China and the funding of the illegal transplants there, but added that the Israeli Knesset ”must call upon other parliaments around the world to join the fight to stop this crime against humanity happening in China, which is sponsored by the regime there.”
David Kilgour, a former Canadian Secretary of State (Asia-Pacific) and Nobel Prize nominee for his research on the persecution of the Falun Gong, said that Israel is a leading country with regards to legislation aimed at fighting the organ harvesting phenomenon. Kilgour called on the Knesset to legislate a law that would allow Falun Gong members to gain refuge and assistance in Israel.
Author and journalist Ethan Gutman, nephew of renowned painter Nachum Gutman, published a number of books on the persecution against Falun Gong. He said during the session that China`s international economic activity should be limited, and also called on Israel and other countries to act against pharmaceutical companies that conduct clinical transplantation trials in China. According to Gutman, these companies contribute to financing the illegal transplants in China.