Humans do matter. Really.

While the Australian media fawns over the arrival in Australia today of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao – after all, who cares about human rights when there is money to be made? – the Falun Gong Human Rights Group provides some much-needed perspective on China’s attitude towards its own people:

Since the persecution of Falun Gong started in 1999, the Chinese authorities have expanded China’s many jail facilities to hold practitioners. In Liaoning Province, near the Masanjia Labor Camp, Dabei Second Prison, and a brainwashing center located in the Huanggu District Police Station, there is another facility located in the Sujiatun District in Shenyang City, especially used to eradicate Falun Gong practitioners – the Sujiatun concentration camp

Currently, detained Falun Gong practitioners in the northeast part of China have been gradually transferred to the Sujiatun Concentration Camp. There are more than 6,000 Falun Gong practitioners detained there, including practitioners from the three Northeastern provinces and central China.

Most prisons and labour camps have detainees going in and coming out, so they will eventually bring out information about the camp. However no one has ever come out of the Sujiatun Concentration Camp. The Falun Gong practitioners are killed for their organs in this concentration camp, and their body cremated in the camp. Their organs are then sent to various medical facilities. Organ selling is a very profitable business in China.

It is known that human organs from the Sujiatun Concentration Camp are sold to various hospitals. Those hospitals purchase human organs for resale on the international market. In the past, many Falun Gong practitioners were tortured to death, and some of their organs have been harvested.

Murdoch’s Australian views Wen Jiabao as a benevolent, kindly dictator, a “pragmatic leadership” that Australia can do business with. The paper once issued similar declarations about Indonesia’s Suharto.

The Australian newspaper explained the priorities of Australia’s rulers in its editorial of 6-7 November, 1993:


…bilateral trade has reached $3 billion, and is growing fast. As the Indonesian middle class expands, so will demand for infrastructure, manufacturing inputs, value-added goods and services… Unfortunately, public attitudes are influenced by pressure group hostility to Indonesia… manifest in misconceived claims about human rights violations. Indonesia is not alone in being a country with rapidly growing population, poverty, a recent history of political turmoil and racial tension, and a difficult balance to strike between individual liberty and general welfare. Sometimes, as in East Timor, the balance is upset.”

The Australian believes in human rights…as long as it doesn’t disrupt Western multinationals making money in the process.

Text and images ©2024 Antony Loewenstein. All rights reserved.

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