Chinese Forced Organ Harvesting and Transnational Repression – Remarks by David Matas
14 September 2026: At a rally before Parliament in Canberra, David Matas addressed forced organ harvesting in China and the Chinese Communist Party’s transnational repression of critics abroad, including in Australia.
Matas returned to the conclusion he and the late David Kilgour first published more than twenty years ago, that prisoners of conscience in China, primarily Falun Gong practitioners and also Uyghurs, Tibetans and House Christians, have been killed for their organs.
He argued that the practice has expanded, that China’s legal architecture still fails to prohibit it, and that Australia has still enacted no legislation to cut the country’s connection to transplant abuse abroad.
He also distinguished foreign interference from transnational repression, describing the latter as pressure directed at diaspora communities and at those who speak with them. Falun Gong, he said, remains a primary target. He cited cancelled venues for his own talks in Australia as part of a global pattern.
See below Matas’ prepared remarks as presented at the rally.
Chinese Forced Organ Harvesting and Transnational Repression
Click HERE for the full text and footnotes/citations
Excerpt of the Conclusion:
I myself in Australia have been the target of this transnational repression. I have been denied available venues and have had originally committed venues cancelled on a number of occasions in this country when I wanted to speak about forced organ harvesting in China with Falun Gong victims. This phenomenon is far from unique to Australia. it is global.
Legislation about organ transplant abuse abroad does not have to mention China. Moreover, if the legislation does not mention China, the Government of China is unlikely to oppose it.
Nonetheless, unless people know about forced organ harvesting in China, legislation combatting organ trafficking abroad may not seem that urgent or significant. One reason Parliamentarians and the Government do not do much about the Australian connection to forced organ harvesting in China is that they do not know much about it.
The designation by the Chinese President and Communist Party General Secretary of the Falun Gong community as the Party’s most prominent opposition force, though he did not mean it this way, is both an honour and a responsibility. If Australia is going to find out about forced organ harvesting in China and the need to do something about it, the Falun Gong community needs to spread the information. The Falun Gong community in Australia, I know, has been doing that. That work needs to continue.
