April 3, 2006
[Editor's note: When Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao visited Australia, Australia Broadcasting Corporation reporter Catherine McGrath interviewed Falun Gong spokesperson.]
RUBY WONG: Our message is we want our government, Australian Government, to tell the Chinese Communist Party to stop immediately the persecution of Falun Gong, especially those practitioners who have been captured, secretly abducted and now being captured in the Sujiatun concentration camp, where they are being... their organs being taken out while they are still alive.
From witness reports, we know that there are about 10,000 practitioners have been in the concentration camp, and now there are some 2,000 still in the concentration camp, and we want our government to tell the Chinese Communist Party, Mr. Wen, leader, to ask him to stop the persecution and to release, unconditionally, all the practitioners in all the camps, concentration camps.
CATHERINE MCGRATH: Now, you're protesting here out in front of Parliament, you're a long way from Premier Wen today. Have you seen him? Have you been near him? Have you been allowed near him?
RUBY WONG: Um, no. We haven't been allowed near him. We have set up banners, tried to be in all the visible sites that he can see us so that the message can be passed to him effectively.
CATHERINE MCGRATH: What impact does it have on the Chinese Government?
RUBY WONG: We believe that by doing this we are actually exposing their crimes of genocide of Falun Gong...
CATHERINE MCGRATH: But they're ignoring you, aren't they?
RUBY WONG: ...and torture as well. That is actually they are most scared of. Why they want to silence us? Why all the interference we have received in Australia? Why like Mr. Chen Yonglin has said about the spies? Because they want to silence us.
CATHERINE MCGRATH: You've also served a summons today on one of Mr. Wen's party, his economics minister. Why have you done that?
RUBY WONG: Because he is... when he was actually the mayor of the Liaoning Province...
CATHERINE MCGRATH: You're talking about Mr. Bo Xilai?
RUBY WONG: That's right. Bo Xilai, in 2001 and 2002, and that Liaoning Province is where the Sujiatun concentration camp is located.
CATHERINE MCGRATH: So you hold him responsible?
RUBY WONG: Exactly. He is responsible, because being the head of that area, he must know what's going on and he must allow that... because he's allowing that going on and the persecution going on in that area, then the killing of the practitioners in that concentration camp, he's held responsible for this crime.
[...]
CATHERINE MCGRATH: The Chinese Government would say that you and your supporters are dissidents, and that you would say that.
RUBY WONG: We don't call ourselves dissidents. We are purely cultivators of Falun Gong cultivation practice.
CATHERINE MCGRATH: But you've rejected the Chinese Communist Party yourselves, haven't you?
RUGY WONG: All we are trying to do is telling people the truth about what the crime of Communist Party have been doing to practitioners of the last seven years of persecution, and also the last 56 years on Chinese people, that they have killed more than 80 million Chinese people in the past 56 years of their ruling, and that's simply what we are trying to tell the truth of the people.
ELEANOR HALL: Falun Gong spokeswoman Ruby Wong speaking there to Catherine McGrath.
Category: Organ Harvesting
