Australia, China and Forced Organ Harvesting

(Report on a visit to Australia, June 2nd to 22nd, 2024)

by David Matas

ETAC Co-founder and international human rights lawyer, David Matas, visited Australia recently to meet with Australian MPs and Senators regarding the ongoing forced organ harvesting happening in China and what can, and should be done. Mr Matas also urged for the recommendations from the Australian Senator’s ‘Compassion Not Commerce’ report to be urgently implemented and for a Motion to be passed calling for an end to the persecution of Falun Gong in China.

A detailed report by Mr Matas is available regarding Australia’s current efforts and further recommendations for combatting forced organ harvesting.

Excerpts of the report below:

I went to Australia … to address three matters – extra-territorial legislation to prohibit Australian complicity in transplant abuse abroad, data collection to determine the magnitude of the problem and to operationalise an eventual law, and parliamentary condemnation of Chinese organ transplant abuse. In doing so, I visited five cities … meeting with state and Commonwealth parliamentarians, political advisers and civil servants.

…

There was a study and a report of the Human Rights Sub-Committee…titled “Compassion, Not Commerce: An Inquiry into Human Organ Trafficking and Organ Transplant Tourism” of November 2018. The report made several recommendations directed to the Australian Government including one on mandatory reporting and another on extra-territorial legislation.

The recommendation on mandatory reporting was .. “…whereby medical professionals have an obligation to report, to an appropriate registry or authority, any knowledge or reasonable suspicion that a person under their care has received a commercial transplant or one sourced from a non-consenting donor, be that in Australia or overseas.”

The recommendation … about amending the Criminal Code was this: “… include trafficking in human organs, including the solicitation of a commercial organ transplant; apply to any Australian citizen, resident or body corporate; apply regardless of whether the proscribed conduct occurred either within or outside of the territory of Australia;”

…[To] date, the Government has not accepted this recommendation in practice.

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Senator Dean Smith introduced into the Commonwealth Parliament in June 2023 an amendment to the Migration Act to require persons entering Australia to respond to stated questions about organ transplants outside Australia. The Bill requires annual reporting about the information gathered. The Bill also authorizes the Government to refuse to grant, or to cancel, a person’s visa if the designated Minister reasonably suspects the person has been involved in trafficking in organs.

….

In the absence of any alternative Government proposal, the Dean Smith bill should be enacted by Parliament.

Waiting to do everything before anything can be done is a recipe for inaction. The current Government review on Modern Slavery Offences adopts this recipe, proposing a wide variety of changes to the modern slavery offences in the Criminal Code, most of which have nothing to do with Australian complicity in organ transplant abroad. The extra-territorial prohibition against complicity in organ transplant abuse should be enacted, without waiting for decisions on all the other issues raised in the modern slavery review.

 

Read the full report HERE