(Minghui.org) Falun Gong practitioners in Sydney, Australia were featured on the front page of a suburban newspaper on Thursday, July 2, 2015, for their efforts in raising awareness about forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in China.
Two practitioners, the wife and son of a practitioner who is detained in China, were featured in an article in The Leader. Ms. Liu Chunli and Eric Jia described their concern, that their family member, Jia Ye, could disappear from the detention center in China at any time and become another victim of organ harvesting.
Liu and Jia have filed a lawsuit against former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin, who instigated the persecution of Falun Gong 16 years ago. In the last two months, 43,000 other practitioners have also mailed criminal complaints to China's Supreme Procuratorate and Supreme Court, seeking justice for Jiang's role in the genocide campaign against Falun Gong and his role in China's crimes against humanity.
The Leader newspaper is distributed in the southern Sydney region, with two different editions and a circulation of150,000 copies twice weekly.
The article also said that practitioners in Sydney hoped that the Australian government would legislate a ban on citizens getting illegal organ transplants overseas. The article also said that practitioners were calling on the United Nations to pressure Beijing to stop organ harvesting from living prisoners, most of whom are Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners of conscience, and to stop the persecution.
Australian newspaper The Leader featured a front-page article about the Chinese regime's crimes against Falun Gong practitioners, and the growing number of lawsuits against former Chinese dictator Jiang Zemin.
Ms. Liu Chunli and her son Eric Jia with other Falun Gong practitioners in Sydney, Australia
Narrow Escape from Organ Harvesting
Another practitioner in Sydney, Ms. Zhuang Wei, was interviewed for the article that ran in The Leader. Ms. Zhuang was held in Shanghai Women's Prison in 2012 and 2013. Before she was transferred to the prison, authorities in Pudong Detention Center subjected her to an extremely thorough physical examination. Only Falun Gong practitioners were subjected to such treatment, criminal prisoners were not. According to the article, Ms. Zhuang later realized that the examination was to build a donor database to be used for organ transplants.
Ms. Zhuang escaped from China, but her husband is forbidden from leaving China because he also practices Falun Gong.
Organ Harvesting Accusations
Dateline, a current affairs program on SBS in Australia, broadcast an investigative report on China's organ transplant business in April, titled “Human Harvest: China's Organ Trafficking.” The program said that the sources of organs used by the Chinese regime for transplants include prisoners of conscience, and that these prisoners may still be alive when their organs are harvested.
An investigation by former Canadian politician David Kilgour, and Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas, also resulted in the same conclusion. They determined that the source of organs for 41,500 transplants in China for the six-year period from 2000 to 2005 cannot be unexplained.
Ms. Asma Jahangir and Mr. Manfred Nowak, the United Nations Special Rapporteurs on Freedom of Religion or Belief and on the Question of Torture, in 2008, sent a joint request to the Chinese regime asking for a full explanation of allegations that vital organs were taken from Falun Gong practitioners, and were “the source of organs for the sudden increase in organ transplants that has been going on in China since the year 2000.”
Lucy Zhao, spokeswoman for the Falun Dafa Association of Australia, said Falun Gong practitioners in China often disappear without a trace. Sometimes families get their ashes, or are told that the practitioner committed suicide or died of a heart attack.
Zhao said that without an unlimited source of organs in China, it would be impossible to guarantee an organ transplant in the two to four weeks that hospitals in China promise at this time.
Background
In 1999, Jiang Zemin, then head of the Chinese Communist Party, overrode other Politburo Standing Committee Members and launched the violent suppression of Falun Gong.
For the last 16 years the persecution has led to the deaths of countless Falun Gong practitioners in China. Millions have been tortured for their belief, and tens of thousands killed for their organs. Jiang Zemin is directly responsible for the inception and continuation of the brutal persecution in China.
Under his personal direction, the Chinese Communist Party established an extralegal security organ called the 610 Office on June 10, 1999. The organization has the power to override China's police and the judicial system to carry out Jiang's directives regarding Falun Gong, “ruin their reputations, cut off their financial resources, and destroy them physically.”
Chinese law allows citizens to be plaintiffs in criminal cases, and many practitioners are now exercising that right to file criminal complaints against Jiang Zemin.
Category: Organ Harvesting
