Australian Senate passes bill to combat illegal organ harvesting in China

The Australian Senate last week passed a new bill that aims to fight illegal organ trafficking and forced organ harvesting from living people. The bill assumes significance since it is well known that organ harvesting has been used to advance the Chinese Communist Party’s persecution of the adherents of the Falun Gong religious movement.

The Migration Amendment (Overseas Organ Transplant Disclosure and Other Measures) Bill 2023, introduced by Liberal Senator Dean Smith, passed the Senate test on August 21 after gaining support from Liberal, National, Green senators and independent Senator David Pocock, according to reports.

The bill will now move to the House of Representatives for further debate, local media reports said.

The legislation amends the Migration Act 1958 requiring people entering or returning to Australia by sea or air to disclose on the incoming passenger card whether they have received an organ transplant overseas in the last five years.

If responding affirmatively, those arriving in Australia will be asked to disclose which country, state, and locality they received the transplant and the name of the medical facility where the operation took place, reports The Epoch Times.

This data will be collected and published in an annual report tabled in the country’s Parliament.

The information will be of great assistance to human rights organisations, medical institutions, and the Australian Government in analysing data on trends in overseas transplants, and helping to corroborate existing evidence of organ trafficking or harvesting activities abroad, according to a report by the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC) — an Australia-based coalition of lawyers, academics, ethicists, medical professionals, researchers and human rights advocates dedicated to ending forced organ harvesting in China.

It will also serve to raise awareness of the sensitivity and risks associated with transplant tourism, encouraging Australian citizens and residents to consider whether any plans to receive an overseas operation might carry the risks associated with an unethical or unsafe organ transplant, the ETAC report added.

As per ETAC, the bill was first introduced to the Senate in June last year (2023) with the aim of implementing some of the recommendations from the 2018 organ harvesting inquiry report of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade titled ‘Compassion, not Commerce’.

The report included a recommendation to “monitor the transplantation practices of other countries with regard to consistency with human rights obligations, including with regard to the use of the organs of executed prisoners”, according to ETAC.

The bill compliments similar initiatives being considered in the United Kingdom (UK) and Canadian Parliaments, bringing Australia in line with international efforts.

Meanwhile, the Labour Government opposed the Bill in the Senate.

Despite this, the bill passed the Senate with the support of crossbench Senators and without a division.

Labour’s human rights record was diminished by their decision not to support this bill, reports ETAC.

Australian Senator Dean Smith, who introduced the bill, stated, “This is the most significant step made in decades in emboldening Australia’s efforts to combat the growing trade in illegal and unethical organ harvesting and trafficking.”

“It is an overdue and crucial first step in developing a stronger response from the Australian Government towards these abhorrent practices. This simple and modest initiative will have an oversized impact in uncovering the scope of this complex and opaque international crime,” Smith continued.

“Many Australians will be surprised and confused to hear that the Labor Government was a bystander to this improvement in our human rights arsenal,” the Senator added.

Minghui.org, a website dedicated to reporting on the Falun Gong, or Falun Dafa, community worldwide, reported that the bill was passed after gaining support from Liberal, National, Green, and independent senators.

In the process of the bill being passed, the story of Falun Gong practitioner Cheng Peiming was widely reported by major media outlets in England, the United States, and Australia, reports Minghui.org.

Cheng Peiming is the first victim found to have survived the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) systematic live organ harvesting.

He went to Washington D.C. last month to give a speech and recount his experience of what happened to him in China.

Welcoming the new bill, the president of Falun Dafa Association in Australia, Lucy Zhao, said the passing of the bill carries a special and important message, as this is the first legislative action taken by the Australia Parliament to curb illegal organ harvesting.

During the debate, the senators brought the attention of live organ harvesting and the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong and prisoners of conscience to the Congressional level.

Many countries passed similar bills, and Lucy Zhao hopes that the Australian government can go one step further and pass bills to punish offenders of illegal organ transplants, similar to what the United Kingdom and Canada have passed.

Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa), which is a modern qigong discipline combining slow-moving exercises and meditation with a moral philosophy, has been the subject of a relentless campaign in communist China designed to eradicate the faith.

For the last 25 years, adherents of the meditation discipline based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance — numbering up to 100 million in 1999 according to estimates at the time — have faced lengthy imprisonment, torture, forced labour, and forced organ harvesting by the Chinese authorities, according to reports.

As per US-based anti-slavery organization Freedom United, in China, minorities rounded up by government crackdowns – political prisoners, ethnic Uyghurs, and Falun Gong practitioners — are known to be victims of forced organ harvesting.

An international people’s tribunal in London found that some of China’s 1.5 million detainees in prison camps have been killed for the state-sanctioned organ transplant trade worth over $1 billion, Freedom United stated.

An academic research analysis of organ donation data in China uncovered “highly compelling evidences are being falsified” and that tracking the sources of organs in the country remains difficult, according to the organization.

Freedom United stated that despite the clear evidence of organ trafficking and forced organ harvesting, ‘tourists’ continue to go abroad for organ transplants where the source of the organ cannot be verified, and in fact, research suggests that 28 percent of organ transplants in China go to foreigners.