A new bill that would sanction perpetrators of forced organ harvesting could have tremendous implications, creating ripple effects for the Chinese and American people that result in a sea change, and perhaps even a free China, according to Jan Jekielek, author of “Killed to Order” and senior editor of The Epoch Times.
Jekielek’s new book, released March 17, tells the full story of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) state-run, industrial-scale organ harvesting program—how the regime turned millions of people of faith into a living organ bank and drew the West’s complicity.
On March 11, the Falun Gong and Victims of Forced Organ Harvesting Protection Act was reintroduced as a bipartisan bill by Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas). It would enable sanctions against perpetrators of forced organ harvesting and require an investigation into whether forced organ harvesting should be legally designated an atrocity.
Similar bills have been introduced before, first by then-Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), then Cruz, but never making it through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for a floor vote. Multiple such bills have also been introduced in the House and, in the last two years, passed overwhelmingly.
“This is a very important piece of legislation. It sanctions individuals involved. It asks to assess whether what’s happening is an atrocity under the Elie Wiesel Act. That’s a very important designation … To have the U.S. government officially say that would be incredibly powerful,” Jekielek said, adding that it was encouraging to see bipartisan support in the new version of the Senate bill.
“In China, among the Chinese super elites, they understand this is very real. In fact, they have unlimited access to organs on demand, right? That’s what the system facilitates for them. This is what the hot mic moment revealed,” he said, referring to CCP leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s conversation during a military parade event in Tiananmen Square in Beijing on Sept. 3, 2025.
The heads of state discussed transplanting human organs “continuously,” with a goal of extending life to “150 years” or even reaching “immortality.”
Extending longevity has long been a goal of the CCP elite, who statistically have a much longer lifespan than the average Chinese citizen, but to most Chinese, the CCP’s organ harvesting program is a threat or a rumor.
To have the United States say in a statute that forced organ harvesting is happening under the CCP and may be an atrocity would break illusions the Chinese people may have about their regime, Jekielek said.
“For the Chinese people to realize that their government, in effect, this Communist Party that, in a sense, is a parasite on the government itself, is running this horror show on the backs of innocent people … it might even bring down the Communist Party,” Jekielek stated.
A 2019 independent tribunal concluded that forced organ harvesting had taken place “on a significant scale” and that Falun Gong practitioners were the primary victims.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice centered on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. Introduced to the public in the early 1990s, it spread rapidly through word of mouth, with about 1 in 13 Chinese practicing Falun Gong by the end of the decade, according to state estimates.
In 1999, then-CCP leader Jiang Zemin ordered a violent persecution against Falun Gong, instructing the newly formed, Gestapo-like, 610 Office to “ruin” the practitioners physically, financially, and socially. Millions of Falun Gong practitioners refused to renounce their faith and were subjected to illegal detention, torture, and brainwashing. The persecution continues to this day.
By the early 2000s, as recounted in Jekielek’s book “Killed to Order,” reports were emerging of Falun Gong practitioners receiving blood and other medical tests while illegally detained. Then, in 2006, several game-changing pieces of evidence came to light that Falun Gong practitioners were being killed by the CCP for the purposes of selling their organs for profit.
Jekielek said that if the bill passes, it would align with the Freedom.gov portal, the United States’ new efforts to break through authoritarian firewalls and give people access to information regimes that may otherwise be censored.
“There also seems to be an element of facilitating that kind of freedom of speech and thought for people in regimes, and the Chinese regime is very brittle. Its economy is in very rough shape,” Jekielek noted.
The economic downturn in China is already seeding unrest, and Jekielek said that destroys an important pillar of the CCP’s power.
“There’s been this unwritten pact between the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese people … To be rich is to be glorious—that was [former CCP leader Deng Xiaoping’s] statement, and the idea was ’stay out of politics or we’re going to crush you, but you can actually make a little money for yourself,’” he said. “That pact is now broken.”
Combined with the CCP’s internal struggles, as seen with top brass being removed, “it’s a very volatile reality for the regime,” Jekielek said.
“For the Chinese people to understand what their regime, what their government, is doing, would be incredibly helpful to them, and perhaps have them find the will,” he stated.
“A free China would be an incredible boon to the world, and people have to make those decisions themselves.”
