Announcements by two Australian delegations that they are ready to enter China to investigate claims of forced organ harvesting from imprisoned Chinese Falun Gong practitioners has positioned Australia as the first country to step forward on the issue.
The leaders of two delegations from the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong in China(CIPFG), Phil Glendenning Director of the Edmund Rice Centre(NSW) and Peter Westmore(Vic) the head of the National Civic Council in Australia, say their teams are prepared.
Both men said they have sent letters to the Chinese consulates in Melbourne and Sydney requesting visas to investigate the claims made in a report co authored by Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas and former secretary of State David Kilgour.
The detailed Kilgour-Matas report, released in July this year, concluded that a large but unknown numbers of Falun Gong practitioners, who are illegally incarcerated as prisoners of conscience in China, have been killed to supply body parts for a billion dollar organ trade.
"There needs to be, must be... onsite investigations [in detention centres, labour camps and hospitals],"Mr Glendenning told a press conference held in the NSW Parliament on Tuesday November 28. "There needs to be open policy whereby people can see exactly what is happening in China."
He added that a CIPFG team into China would consist, "of non-government organisations, politicians and serious professional people within Australia and internally to participate in this process of investigation."
Included in the Victorian delegation is Mayor of Maribyrnong, Janet Rice, who said she agreed to attend the Melbourne press conference, despite it being the day before Victorian state elections, because it was something everyone should be concerned about.
"I think it's important that it is not just an issue of people from Chinese background and not just an issue for Falun Gong practitioners," she said, "it is an issue for anybody who is concerned about human rights in the world to take action on."
"I think given the strength of the case that was outlined in the report by David Matas and David Kilgour, to not take action is actually being complicit," she added.
Mr Westmore said it was no excuse to think that because it was not happening in Australia it was not our problem.
"People in China are entitled to live with the same human rights that people enjoy in Australia," he said. "One part of that is a willingness by the Chinese Government to have its practises open to international review and criticism, as should happen with governments like Australia's."
Pressure is mounting on the Chinese regime to opens its doors to international scrutiny. Statements were made recently in both the upper and lower houses of the Australian parliament calling on Beijing to allow an independent investigation to determine either way, the veracity of the claims.
Mr Glendenning added that "this may go without saying, that the Christian churches in this country and internationally are strongly behind this process, they well understand persecution in China."
Jane Sun, a Falun Gong practitioner who is a part of the CIPFG told reporters that the Australian investigation team hopes to visit the region of Hebei Province and the cities of Beijing and Tianjin City.
Once in China she said that the teams would also "follow up on missing persons reports and also try to help their relatives of some of the Australian residents and citizens [held in labour camps]."
Community concern is increasing around Australia with forums and rallies on the issue reported in Sydney, Canberra, Adelaide, Melbourne and Brisbane.
President of the Queensland Vietnamese Association Dr C.T.Bui told a crowded community hall in Brisbane last Saturday that he had personally treated two patients in Australia that had gone to China for an organ transplant. After reading the Kilgour and Matas report, Dr Bui understood that organ harvesting was happening on a massive scale and felt he had to do something about it.
In conjunction with the Edmund Rice Centre in Sydney, Dr Bui organised a forum under the banner "Will we stop the massacre in time: some facts about the Chinese Communist regime".
Guest speaker Ross Daniels, a lecturer in human rights at QUT and former chairman of Amnesty Queensland, referred to the level of interest in the present stem cell debate saying politicians were calling for "absolute respect for human life even if it is just one or two cells".
"Everybody knows that debate but we don't seem to be able to have the same respect and fight for human rights, for living human beings who are Falun Gong practitioners in China," he said, "and that is a very bad contradiction between what we say in parliament one day and what we do in real life the next day".
Both Dr Bui and Mr Daniels called on the community to help stop the organ harvesting in China.
They suggested a number of ways to do so, which included raising the issue with local state and federal government representatives, telling friends and family, and speaking out where possible.
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