April 4, 2006

Tonight I draw honourable members' attention to the shocking human rights abuses that are occurring in China while the world stands by and does nothing to condemn the Chinese Government, and countries such as Australia fall over themselves to trade with this oppressive regime. This speech is timely as Australia is currently hosting a visit by the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao. It has been documented for a number of years that the Chinese Government has been persecuting practitioners of Falun Gong. I have been provided with information by the Falun Dafa Information Centre detailing horrifying accounts of death camps in China.

On 8 March the Falun Dafa Information Centre received detailed information from a Chinese Communist regime insider documenting a concentration camp that has been set up in Shenyang City, Liaoning Province for practitioners of Falun Gong. The camp is said to hold more than 6,000 Falun Gong practitioners, and apparently nobody has yet come out alive. According to the internal source, the camp's practices involve killing prisoners and harvesting their organs. Organ sales are said to be a profitable business in China. The source also said that the camp contains a crematorium and employs a large number of doctors. The camp, which has been dubbed the Sujiatun Concentration Camp, is allegedly surrounded by walls three metres high that are topped with electrified barbed wire. It is heavily fortified and the locals know very little about it. It is said that those inside are Falun Gong adherents from other provinces in China, some of whom have been transferred from various labour camps. It is said that while the camp has held up to 6,000 people only 2,000 are left. The remainder have had their hearts, kidneys, retinas and skin harvested and the rest of their bodies disposed of.

The persecution of Falun Gong members has been stepped up in the lead-up to the 2008 Olympics. It is alleged that in June last year Chinese authorities held a meeting in which China's Deputy Minister of Public Security, Liu Jing, was assigned the job of stamping out Falun Gong before the Olympic Games in 2008, according to Paris-based Intelligence Online. These allegations do not come from a single source. Various human rights agencies have been reporting that concentration camps exist in China. In October 2000 a report by Agence France-Presse told of two concentration camps having been built specifically for Falun Gong detainees, each with the capacity to hold 50,000 people. The United States of America Department of State 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices reported continued systematic abuse of the Falun Gong in China. Justice Michael Kirby's speech on Sunday night is timely, with the message that it is crucial not to forget the haunting memories of the Holocaust so that history does not repeat itself. Justice Kirby said:

If it could happen in one of the most civilised countries on Earth, it could happen anywhere. Even in Australia. We have been warned. We must heed the warning.

Bystanders of the Holocaust have been judged by history. Will the world now stand by and allow persecution and death camps in China? With China as a major emerging economic power, it seems that governments, including Australia, are hesitant to raise human rights issues with the Chinese Government. It is absolutely appalling that trade interests are viewed as more important than abhorrent human rights abuses. While our politicians discuss potential uranium exports, people are dying in concentration camps for the crime of practising a spiritual discipline that the Chinese Government disapproves of.

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I will conclude with a quote from Reverend Martin Niemoller, a German Protestant pastor, who spent seven years in a concentration camp. He said:

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a communist. Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the labour leaders, and I did not speak out because I was not a labor leader. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me.

I think Australia's headlong rush to sell uranium to China and to tighten economic ties, ignoring the human rights record of that country, is despicable.