(CNSNews.com) - [...]

Chen Yonglin, who has been in hiding with his wife and daughter since leaving the Chinese consulate-general in Sydney last month, caused a stir when he made an appearance at a weekend rally marking the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

He claimed Beijing had up to a thousand spies in Australia and that it also had kidnapped some Australia-based dissidents, returning them to China.

He said his job as first secretary at the consulate for four years had involved monitoring dissidents and adherents of Falun Gong, a meditation movement China has outlawed and is trying to stamp out.

Chen also complained that the Australian immigration authorities had not taken his case seriously, which he said prompted his decision to go public.

The government's handling of the case came under fire, with critics charging that it was reluctant to grant Chen asylum for fear of antagonizing the notoriously sensitive Chinese regime in the light of negotiations for a lucrative free-trade agreement (FTA) with the region's fastest-growing economy.

In his first public remarks on the issue, Howard said in Sydney that Chen's request for a special visa allowing him to stay in the country was "not going to be influenced by the amount of iron ore or coal that we sell to China."

He compared the situation to an earlier one in which Australian farmers complaining about American trading policies had urged the government to use its strategic relationship with Washington to demand changes to U.S. trade practices. The government refused to allow the matter to affect the military alliance.

"In relation to the United States we separated trade and economics from politics and strategy," he said. "Now we adopt the same approach with the Chinese."

[...]

China is Australia's third-largest trading partner, after Japan and the U.S.

Torture'

Since Chen made his high-profile bid, another Chinese defector has come forward to support his spying claims.

Former state security official Hao Fengjun, who is also seeking asylum, said a network of spies and informants did exist in Australia. He said they reported directly to the state security bureau in China, rather than to Chinese diplomatic missions.

Hao said he was a member of the 610 Office, a unit which human rights researchers say was set up in 1999 specifically to tackle the Falun Gong. Named for its date of inception (June 10), its official title is "Office of the Leadership Team to Handle the Falun Gong Issue."

Hao said he collated and analyzed documents sent by informants spying on Falun Gong and other groups in several countries, including Australia, the U.S., Canada and New Zealand.

[...]

Australian Attorney-General Philip Ruddock indicated that intelligence agencies were investigating the spying claims.

Following the disclosures made by Chen and Hao, the lawyer of a third Chinese man -- a former security official who already has refugee status -- has gone public with his client's claims of witnessing abuses and torture carried out by plainclothes members of the 610 Office, which he called an "insidious Gestapo apparatus."

The defector's lawyer, Bernard Collaery, told Australian television his client had fled to Australia and applied for asylum after witnessing and being unable to prevent the beating to death of a Falun Gong prisoner "with the use of electric prods."

The series of public allegations has put pressure on Howard's government, whose political opponents have questioned the morality of negotiating an FTA with a regime notorious for violating human rights.

In New Zealand, center-left Prime Minister Helen Clark is also seeking an FTA with China, and is also facing criticism because of the human rights issue.

"Kowtowing to China has upset New Zealanders right across the political spectrum," Green Party co-leader Rod Donald said in a speech Saturday.

"No one can understand how Helen Clark, who has a strong reputation for standing up for human rights, can turn a blind eye to the many abuses the Chinese regime perpetuates on the people of occupied Tibet and on its own citizens."

Beijing banned the Falun Gong movement in 1999 . At the time the government estimated the number of adherents at at least 70 million.

Practitioners claim it is a peaceful movement with roots in traditional Chinese culture, practiced in 60 countries around the world.

Since the Chinese crackdown began, the Falun Dafa Information Center in New York says it has verified more than 2,300 deaths.

The U.S. State Department said in its most recent global report on human rights that "tens of thousands of [Falun Gong] practitioners remained incarcerated in prisons, extrajudicial reeducation-through-labor camps, and psychiatric facilities."

The group in Australia issued a statement Thursday urging Canberra to grant asylum to the two defectors, and voicing the hope that "just as with the concentration camps in Nazi Germany, the treatment of Falun Gong practitioners and what they have been subjected to in these labor camps will not remain a secret for much longer."