The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) of Pakistan on Monday arrested seven people believed to be trafficking in human organs with close links to China, which has over the past decade become a worldwide hub for live organ harvesting.

The Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported that the FIA in Lahore received a tip-off of activity by a transnational organ trafficking gang in the region that led to a passport office there, where police arrested seven suspects. Those arrested reportedly included suspected agents that matched potential sellers to potential organ donors, scheme financiers, and those seeking to sell their organs themselves.

According to Dawn, the agents would allegedly take advantage of poverty-stricken yet healthy individuals and encourage them to sell one of their organs via an operation in China.

Speaking to the Pakistani daily, FIA Punjab Zone-I Deputy Director Sardar Mavarhan Khan said that, during their investigations, they discovered that the agents were in close contact with Chinese traders and doctors carrying out the operations.

“This is the first time that such a gang has been unearthed which was involved in illegal human organ transplants in China,” he explained. According to Khan, the agents allegedly pay around 400,000 Pakistani rupees ($2,405) to a donor that they use to reach China. Khan estimates the individuals tied to this particular sell recruited 30 donors.

China has become notorious for its organ transplant trade amid the growth in “organ tourism,” where sick individuals travel to the country for a comparatively cheap transplant operation. Overwhelming evidence has mounted in the past decade indicating that, in addition to impoverished foreigners, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is harvesting organs from non-consensual “donors” who belong to persecuted religious minorities including Uyghur Muslims and Falun Gong practitioners.

This process of an “endless supply of organs” is detailed by the charity EndTransplantAbuse.org:

In countries with advanced healthcare capabilities and well-organized organ donation systems, patients usually wait many months or even years for a donor organ to become available. Yet, in China, where organ donation is culturally taboo and there is no effective organ donation system as of yet, patients can find matching organs whenever needed, suggesting that there is a large number of readily available organ sources waiting to be matched to patients.

Since 2018, an independent tribunal known as the China Tribunal has held evidentiary hearings into the illegal harvesting of organs. Its final report was released in February and found, among other things, that “forced organ harvesting has happened in multiple places in the [People’s Republic of China] and on multiple occasions for a period of at least 20 years and continues to this day.”

“In the long-term practice in the PRC of forced organ harvesting, it was indeed Falun Gong practitioners who were used as a source — probably the principal source — of organs for forced organ harvesting,” the report noted.

In March, a doctoral researcher provided Breitbart News with the testimony of a Chinese labor camp survivor who claimed authorities were carving out the organs of political prisoners to help supply patients suffering from lung failure caused by the Chinese coronavirus.

“The authorities would say they [the lungs used for the transplants] were obviously donated, but one can raise reasonable objections as to whether that was in the least plausible,” explained researcher Matthew Robertson of the Victims of Communism Foundation.

“World governments have not publicly challenged China as to the source of its organs, and international medical and human rights organizations have also failed to raise public concerns as to the scale of the PRC [People’s Republic of China] transplant system and the real source of organs,” he added in his report.

Follow Ben Kew on Facebook, Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart.com.