South China Morning Post: A blind side to human rights in China
| Copyright 2006
South China Morning Post Ltd. All Rights Reserved South China Morning Post August 11, 2006 Friday SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 13 LENGTH: 584 words HEADLINE: A blind side to human rights in China BODY: Former Canadian politician David Kilgour and human rights lawyer David Matas have unwittingly exposed the current dynamics that drive Australia's relationship with China. Mr Kilgour and Mr Matas are authors of a report alleging that mainland Chinese authorities are using the organs of executed Falun Gong dissidents to supply its booming transplant business. Mr Kilgour and Mr Matas found that, of the 60,000 transplants the China Medical Organ Transplant Association recorded between 2000 and last year, 18,500 of those organs came from identifiable sources. That leaves 41,500 transplants from no other explained sources, says the well-publicised, 68-page report. Some members of the Australian medical profession have backed these claims. Daryl Wall, a transplant specialist, said that "the expansion of capital punishment has contributed significantly to the rate of organ donation in mainland China". The Kilgour-Matas report is providing succour to those Australians who think that their country ought to be more robust and confrontational in taking China to task over human-rights abuses. But Canberra seems determined to ensure that the matter of organ donations, like other human-rights issues, does not jeopardise the growing strategic and economic alliance between the two countries. Australia did raise the matter of organ harvesting and political executions at its annual human rights dialogue with China last month. But it appeared to do so simply because it thought it politic, given the publicity the Kilgour-Matas report was receiving in Australia. The leader of the Australian delegation at that meeting, Foreign Affairs Deputy Secretary David Ritchie, was clearly prepared to give Beijing the benefit of the doubt. "We think the evidence is not necessarily there, it's still open - which is one of the reasons why we raised the issue: we don't know one way or the other," he said. Instead, it was Australia that found itself on the back foot at the meeting. Assistant Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai warned Australia to ensure that Falun Gong protesters who jeopardised what he termed the "dignity'" of the Chinese diplomatic mission to Australia were dealt with under local laws. Canberra and Beijing are locked in negotiations over a free-trade agreement, and sports-mad Australians are beginning to focus on matters Chinese in the lead-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. So we can expect that medical and human-rights advocates in Australia will take every opportunity to continue to seek answers about China's organ-harvesting practices. But when it comes to China, Australian governments, like successive US administrations, like to draw a neat line between human-rights issues and economic matters. Australia does not want to link trade deals and economic synergies with assurances and answers from Beijing about the organ-donation issue, or any other human-rights matter. This is despite the fact that now is probably the best time to do so, given, for example, Australia's strong hand in negotiations with China over Beijing's desperate need for uranium. Instead, human-rights issues are given an annual airing at an official talkfest, then put away again for another year. But, as China becomes more familiar to Australians over the next few years, the public will make more insistent demands that their administration take the Chinese government to task over human-rights issues like organ donations. Greg Barns is a political commentator in Australia and a former Australian government adviser .
http://breakingnews.scmp.com/NLet/NLet.asp?Sec=focus&SubS=focusnews&Id=ZZZWSV48KQE&P=Y&NT=china
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