(Minghui.org) The Hawaiian Gardens City Council passed a proclamation on March 13, 2018, joining in solidarity with Falun Gong practitioners in China to condemn the practices of forced and non-consenting illegal organ harvesting in their country.
This happened after the California Republican Assembly recently passed a resolution calling on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to stop its state-sanctioned harvesting of organs from prisoners of conscience on March 3.
From left: Hawaiian Gardens City Council Members Hank Trimble and Mariana Rios, Falun Gong practitioner Ke Ye, Deputy Mayor Barry Bruce, and City Council Member Myra Maravilla.
The proclamation reads: “Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong, is a peaceful, traditional spiritual practice based on the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance for achieving physical and spiritual well-being through meditation exercises.
“Falun Dafa practitioners, for 19 years, have been systematically detained and tortured for their beliefs by the Chinese Communist regime, as condemned and documented by the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China, the U.S. Commission in International Religious Freedom, the European Parliament, the United Nations Special Report on Torture, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and many other governmental and third-party organizations.
“The U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed H.Res.343 in 2016, the California State Legislature introduced SJR-10 on July 20, 2017, condemning the Chinese Government's persecution of Falun Dafa practitioners, the U.S. Senate introduced S. Res. 220 on July 13, 2017, condemning the persecution of Falun Gong and the systematic, state-sanctioned organ harvesting from non-consenting prisoners of conscience in China, including from large numbers of Falun Dafa practitioners imprisoned for their beliefs.”
The proclamation “calls on the President of the United States to undertake a full and transparent investigation by the United States Department of State in organ transplant practices in the People's Republic of China, and to prosecute those found to have engaged in such unethical practices.”
The Hawaiian Gardens proclamation
Falun Gong practitioners made a special presentation February 27 on the CCP's persecution and forced live organ harvesting. The 20-minute presentation explained why the CCP persecutes Falun Gong.
Appalled at what they heard and saw, city council members asked many questions about the forced organ harvesting. They also asked for the link to the YouTube documentary film. They expressed their admiration for the practitioners' efforts to raise awareness about the persecution.
Hawaiian Gardens Mayor Reynaldo Rodriguez speaks in the city council meeting.
At the meeting, Mayor Reynaldo Rodriguez gave an example of the impact of the CCP's forced organ harvesting. He said if someone needed a kidney or a heart and was rich enough to go to China, a prisoner would be killed for the necessary organs. “That is the CCP has been doing,” he said.
Hawaiian Gardens Deputy Mayor Barry Bruce speaks in the meeting.
Deputy Mayor Barry Bruce said that local citizens needed to know about this issue, as well as officials at the state and national levels, because “this is genocide.”
He said that it was unbelievable that the International Olympic Committee chose to ignore this outrage and selected China as the host country for the next Winter Olympics.
He encouraged the U.S. President to pay attention to this issue and to penalize the CCP.
