Labor's Chris Bowen, has become the first MP to address the Australian Parliament on the issue of forced organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners in China.
In a private members statement, the member for Prospect in Sydney, told the Australian Parliament on November 1 that the Chinese authorities have a case to answer to "prove or disprove" allegations made in a Canadian report which links China's organ transplant industry to the Communist regime's persecution of the Falun Gong spiritual practice.
Mr Bowen likened descriptions of the persecution to that of the reports coming out of Nazi Germany where people refused to believe them "because they were too frightening and it was not accepted that human beings could do this to one another."
"I must say that it was my initial reaction: I thought the allegations [of organ harvesting] must be overblown; I thought they could not be true."
Mr Bowen called on the Chinese authorities to co-operate and allow an independent investigation to visit China saying "If the Chinese Government believes that these allegations are untrue, they should have no problem in granting visas to those delegations."
Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett, who has been a regular campaigner for Beijing to be brought to call on its human rights record, welcomed Mr Bowen's statement saying it was in everybody's interest, including the Chinese authority's, to "verify one way or another" whether these allegations were true.
Senator Bartlett said there were growing concerns about the human rights situation in China generally and important to its credibility as a host for the 2008 Olympics would be a more open and accessible China.
"I think it will be a growing problem heading towards the Olympics if there is not transparency and no opportunity for those sorts of concerns to be examined," the Senator told The Epoch Times.
Speaking on behalf of the Greens, Kerry Nettle said the Canadian report on the organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners raised specific questions which the Chinese regime now needed to answer.
"The allegations that have been raised are extremely serious, are quite specific in nature and what is required from the Chinese Government is not a blanket statement to say this couldn't be occurring but some detailed responses to the detailed allegations that have been made," she said.
Senator Nettle said Greens leader Bob Brown had asked the Australian Government a number of questions on the issue, most specifically to do with Australians travelling to China for possible organ transplants.
"We are asking the Australian Government to discourage Australians travelling to China to have any medical operations whilst the claims around organ harvesting are made," Senator Nettle said.
The Canadian report compiled by former secretary of State David Kilgour and international human rights lawyer David Matas lists a number of recommendations which include a call for "all states" to prevent their nationals from obtaining organ transplants from China until the "Chinese law on organ transplants is rigorously implemented".
Another recommendation is that "all detention facilities, including forced labour camps" be opened for international scrutiny.
Secretary of the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (CIPFG) in Australia, Ms Jane Sun said the CIPFG was preparing a delegation incorporating legal, medical and human rights groups to visit China in order to carry out the report's recommendations.
"We have taken the recommendations in the report very seriously," Ms Sun told The Epoch Times "and we intend to implement them".
Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline based on a moral philosophy and tai-chi like exercises, has been brutally persecuted in China for seven years.
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