During his global tour, renowned Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas, stopped in Perth, Western Australia on September 17 for three functions to bring to light the inhuman atrocities in China in the lead up to the Olympic Games.
On the start of his day in Perth, David Matas and Erping Zhang (National spokesperson for Falun Gong) gave evidence at the State Legislative Council in Perth to assist the investigation into the alleged organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China.
Ten-Thousand Sign Petition
The Western Australia State Standing Committee for the Environment and Public Affairs had been investigating the forced organ harvesting allegations on the strength of a tabled petition with 10,000 signatures from the people of Western Australia.
Louise Pratt MLC who is chair of the committee jumped at the chance to hear direct evidence from both witnesses. A formal report will be given to the WA government with specific recommendations from the Committee.
Later on that day after a quick lunch, approximately 25 VIPs attended the forum "Balancing the Scales with China" at the (WA) Parliament house, and later on that night about 150 people attended the public forum at the University of Western Australia.
Both forums were hosted by State MP Louise Pratt who is also the primary member of the Committee to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (CIPFG) in WA. David Matas, a human rights lawyer, Erping Zhang, executive director of the Association for Asian Research (USA), and economic specialist Dr Elliott Fan, research fellow in Australia National University, were speakers at the forums.
Chen Hong a Falun Gong practitioner living in Australia also spoke about her ordeal of being arrested 5 times and tortured for her Falun Gong practice. Chen Hong also spoke about her experience being blood and urine tested—which is to identify blood and tissue type, a necessary step for organ harvesting.
As co-author of Bloody Harvest: Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China 2006/2007, David Matas shared his observations about China in general, about the process of their investigation, and also about he and David Kilgour's global campaign to raise awareness of the practice of organ harvesting in China. They concluded that it is "a form of evil yet to be seen on this planet."
Olympics has Fostered Repression
Matas said that human rights abuses in China continue, despite its economic development. "China has decided that various repressed groups (those of Falun Gong) can not participate in the Olympics Games," and "Falun Gong is not unique, there is a list of 44 different groups which have been banned. This list did not exist when the Olympics Games was awarded to China, and so as we see China developing economically, we have also witnessed that human rights problems are not being resolved, and they have even deteriorated further."
Matas also said, "The primary existence of human rights abuse in China is Falun Gong," "UN Special Rapporteur on torture tells us that 2/3 of torture victims in China are Falun Gong," "arbitrary detention is the same, the United States Department of State reports that half of the people in forced labor detention camps are Falun Gong, and forced labor detention camps have hundreds of thousands of people in there."
According to Matas, China politicizes its human rights issues to deflect criticism. He explained, "What they do is to identify the Communist Party of China with China, and so the notion is that if you criticize what the government is doing you are being anti-China if you are foreigner, or unpatriotic if you are Chinese."
David added, "The regime often criticizes Falun Gong as being political although Falun Gong has no political agenda, no platform whatsoever." He said that Falun Gong only wants the persecution to stop, while the communist regime's purpose is to mislead the public by saying that Falun Gong is political; it is an approach that the government wants to promote widely.
China Trades with Anyone
Although there are many repressive governments, "China uses its global power to project its repression around the world" because it is an economic power. The global reach of China has extended the Communist Party's persecution to the world, so it therefore also requires a response everywhere around the world. Matas said that there is no need to fear China will stop trading with us. They need our resources and there has never been one example of China stopping trade because human rights issues are discussed.
Matas' view was also echoed by another speaker, Dr Elliot Fan, who said in his observation, he has never seen a single case where China stopped trade with any country because of human rights criticism. He used Taiwan as example, in the past six years, Taiwan's government is controlled by the pro-independent Democratic Progressive Party (DDP), but Taiwan's trade with China has increased continuously. Fan also emphasized that currently, China's economy is highly dependent on the international market. China needs to export more than what it buys, so Western countries should use this card to push harder for reform on all human rights issues.
Manufactured Economic Data
Fan said the biggest challenge for economic research on China is that "most of the official data is not reliable… even the GDP figure that is used to calculate the economic growth every year is not reliable in China." Fan elaborated further on this issue, "during the global recession in 2001, the growth rate in Hong Kong and Taiwan were negative, but China claimed a 7 percent to 8 percent high growth rate, which does not match the data collected by the economic experts."
Fan says "Another fundamental problem is the role of the government. A government is responsible for a healthy economic environment, instead of competing with others. But that is exactly what the regime is doing, which has resulted in a very corrupt society. A lot good companies failed in China because they cannot do a good job dealing with corrupt officials."
Erping Zhang calls the current China a new form of communism. He said, "As China is merging with the world economy, the communists in China are forming alliances with interest groups, such as elite intellectuals, and foreign capitalists. Today's communist in China is coated in a Western suit. Yet the Communist Party's fear of losing control of the people is still the same."
Why Political Reforms Failed
Western society used to believe that with the economic reform, political reform would also come. However, three decades have passed, and this has not happened. Zhang attributes this to two reasons:
The first reason is unfair wealth distribution, with the majority of people in China not enjoying the fruits of the economic reform. After thirty years China now has an upside down "T" shaped society with the majority of poor people at the bottom."
Erping said, "China's middle class only has middle class income, they don't have their fundamental political or cultural rights, because they obtained their middle class income by association with the communist regime."
The second reason is information control; the communist regime spent US$800 million to build the Golden Shield project. The information control is not to only control what people know, but also what people think. Zhang gave examples of Yahoo giving different results of sensitive topics such as the Tiananmen Square Massacre and Falun Gong, between searching inside China and outside of China. In reality, Western enterprises such as Yahoo and Cisco have helped the communist regime build its internet firewall, instead of bringing into China the ideology of democracy.
Louise Pratt of CIPFG talked about the formation of CIPFG and the need to ask questions and generate discussion about the human rights issues in China. She said the best way to highlight these issues was to help with the Global Human Rights Torch Relay now following the route of the Olympic Torch. Louise passed a form through the audience asking people for their contact details to assist CIPFG with the Torch Relay.
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