Mr. Ethan Gutmann:

I understand that. I am rooting for Ireland to get the contract on the Rugby World Cup.

Four years ago, I gave testimony to the committee on how the forced organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience evolved from a handful of Uighur political prisoners being exploited for party cadres into a medical procedure employed in every province of China. Back then - it is wonderful to see familiar faces - I also gave the committee casualty estimates, including 65,000 dead Falun Gong, several thousand Uighurs, Tibetans and house Christians. In the passion of that moment the committee released a spontaneous statement condemning China for this procedure. Just outside these doors, people hugged and cried that day.

However, my testimony contained an error. My casualty estimates and those of my colleagues David Matas and David Kilgour were too conservative. In 2013, we spoke of tens of thousands murdered by the Chinese state. Today, we count the deaths in the hundreds of thousands. In 2013, we accepted Beijing’s claim of 10,000 organ transplants per year. Today, we know that is a lie; our 700-page update published last year presented explicit evidence that annual Chinese transplant volume is 60,000 to 100,000 per year.

In Washington DC, three Chinese researchers from the Congressional-Executive Commission on China act as sentries, warding off false information from reaching the US Congress. After examining our report for six weeks, the researchers delivered the verdict that Congress should hold a hearing. On the eve of that hearing, the House of Representatives passed a detailed and explicit resolution condemning China’s practice of harvesting prisoners of conscience. Two weeks later the European Parliament passed an identical resolution. Over the past year, every major Western newspaper has broken their silence on this issue. TheNew York Timeshas had seven articles and counting. Given this global momentum, why am I in Ireland today? The answer is that history is not changed by resolutions, but by actions.

Back in 2008, one man, a heart surgeon and son of a Holocaust survivor, challenged the Israeli Parliament to ban Israeli citizens from going to China for organ transplants and that parliament did so. Spain followed. In 2015 Taiwan did so. In 2016 Italy did so. One might ask what these countries have in common. Integrity is one aspect, as is a highly developed sense of tragedy and the historical wisdom to know that the big players - the US, UK and so forth - may not interfere with an ongoing crime against humanity. We cannot leave it up to them. None of these states paid any measurable price in terms of contracts with China or even in their relationships with China. I would be happy to answer questions on that.

This is an ongoing slaughter. In two high-profile conferences, including at the Vatican itself, Beijing pushed the line that Chinese harvesting of prisoner organs is pretty much over and done with. Neither attempt persuaded the conference, the press or, at the Vatican conference, the Pope, because he did not address the conference as he was scheduled to do.

David Matas, David Kilgour and I see no reform. Instead, we see an $8 billion to $9 billion Chinese transplant industry engaged in business as usual. We see a British architectural firm, TFP Ryder Healthcare, intending to build an organ-harvesting centre in Dalian, one of the most notorious organ harvesting locations in China. It is also the origins of the body show that is currently in Dublin. Human Rights Watch sees a comprehensive Chinese attempt to gather the DNA of the entire Uighur population of Xinjiang. Those DNA samples can then be used for tissue matching the organs of 15 million highly vulnerable people. We can no longer rule out the unthinkable. My name is Gutmann, so I do not take comparisons to the Holocaust lightly, but the phrase “Final Solution” persistently enters my mind and I suspect that phrase also occurred to many of the committee members just now.

What does this mean for Ireland? It means that if it is going to act, this is the critical moment to do so. I ask the committee members to seriously consider introducing some sort of ban regarding organ tourism to China or anywhere else we suspect illegal organ transplants are taking place. I look forward to a frank discussion and any questions or concerns on members' minds.