One of China’s most powerful leaders has just visited Australia, but rather than it being a cause for celebration, human rights activists were horrified.
Jia Qinglin, the fourth in the chain of command in the Chinese Communist Party, spent six days in Australia last week meeting with the Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd, visiting Perth, Brisbane and Sydney to talk up trade.
While it was reported that Ms Gillard and Mr Rudd had raised human rights issues with Mr Jia, John Deller, spokesperson for the New South Wales Falun Dafa Association, said Mr Jia was a human rights criminal and should not have been allowed into the country.
“Not only is he allowed in, but he is given the royal treatment,” Mr Deller told The Epoch Times, noting that Mr Jia was even referred to as His Excellency in some of the media releases.
As a former Mayor of Beijing and secretary of the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) Beijing Municipal Committee, Mr Jia had been instrumental in implementing the torture, persecution and killing of Falun Gong practitioners in China in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, Mr Deller explained.
“He is already identified as a criminal under the legal system in Spain and if he had flown to Spain, there is an arrest warrant there in the Spanish Court, so it is really disturbing that such a human rights criminal is allowed into Australia,” he said.
Falun Gong, a peaceful meditation and exercise practice, was much lauded by Chinese officials during the 1980s and 1990s, but when Government figures determined that an estimated 100 million people had taken up the practice, then-leader Jiang Zemin ordered a brutal crackdown.
Today, Falun Gong practitioners fear for their lives in China, many forced to leave and seek asylum in countries like Australia.
