Rudd backs call for inquiry in Chinese organ harvesting claims

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Broadcast: 17/08/2006

Reporter: Tony Jones

Two days ago we spoke to David Kilgour, the co-author of a report investigating the allegations that the Chinese government has executed thousands of Falun Gong dissidents and then harvested their organs for transplants. And last night we revealed the Federal Government has asked Chinese officials to allow for an independent investigation into the claims. Tonight, the Opposition Foreign Affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd has backed those calls.

Transcript

TONY JONES: Two days ago, we spoke to David Kilgour, the co-author of a report investigating the allegations that the Chinese Government had executed thousands of Falun Gong dissidents and then harvested their organs for transplants. And last night, we revealed the Federal Government has asked Chinese officials to allow for an investigation, an independent investigation into the claims. Well tonight, the Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd has backed those calls. It was also Kevin Rudd who raised questions in Parliament today about the implications of new documents released by the Cole inquiry into AWB. I spoke to him earlier this evening in our Canberra studio.

Kevin Rudd, thanks for joining us.

KEVIN RUDD, OPPOSITION FOREIGN AFFAIRS SPOKESMAN: Good to be with you, Tony.

TONY JONES: What was your reaction when you read the detail in the report of Kilgour and Matas into the allegations of the mass murder of dissidents, political dissidents in China and the harvesting of their organs for transplants?

KEVIN RUDD: A few weeks ago, Tony, one of my constituents in Brisbane sent me a copy of the report. I read it and I was deeply disturbed by it. It's a very long report with lots of attachments. What I did in response to it was then send it by letter to the Department of Foreign Affairs to ask for their views on its contents. And recently, I've received a reply from the Department as well.

TONY JONES: Well, what was in that reply? Because we heard last night, for example, that in behind-closed-door meetings and the bilateral talks on human rights with China last month, that issue was raised?

KEVIN RUDD: My understanding is - and the Government of course can speak for itself on these matters - is that they were raised in the bilateral human rights dialogue with China. I wasn't able to attend that dialogue, but my understanding from the record contained in a letter from DFAT is that it was raised. The Department's proposition to the Chinese was that there should be some independent investigation of these matters. I think that was put to the Vice Minister and the letter to me from the Department of Foreign Affairs doesn't indicate what the response by the Chinese has been.

TONY JONES: What is the Opposition's position? You've read this in detail, you're disturbed by it, do you think there should be an independent investigation of these claims?

KEVIN RUDD: I support the Government's proposal that there should be an independent investigation and I'll be corresponding now with - again with the department to see what response has come back from the Chinese. The key responsibility we've got as an Opposition is to establish the truth of these matters. They are very serious allegations, as you said in your program a couple of nights ago. Allegations of the most serious type. That's why we've got to get to the bottom of it. The Department also, in its letter back to me, notes that other human rights activists like Harry Wu, like Amnesty International and like Human Rights Watch, have either not commented on this report so far or in the case of Harry Wu, have been in part critical of it. I think we've got to be cautious about this, exceptionally cautious. But because the allegations are so far-reaching and so profound, we need to ensure that there is an appropriate investigation.

TONY JONES: Is it enough for the Government to simply raise these matters and their concerns about them behind closed doors?

KEVIN RUDD: Well, the purpose of that human rights dialogue is to discuss these sorts of things. The Government obviously has confirmed to you that they have put this proposal to the Chinese for an independent investigation. Also, my understanding is that the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture is himself investigating these matters and in some months would be looking to report on it. I will be following up with Mr Downer's department what process will now follow from that. As I said before, our responsibility is to get to the truth of these matters. I've lived and worked in China before. Part of my job in the embassy years ago was to monitor human rights development. Years before that, when I was at university, I wrote my thesis on human rights in China. I have more than a passing, casual political interest in these matters. But we must establish the truth and we should not traduce China's name until we've established that truth.

TONY JONES: Indeed, but given your experience, these allegations are based on certain types of evidence. David Kilgour told us 19 different types of evidence were used to compile this report. What's your assessment of the evidence provided?

KEVIN RUDD: Well Tony on that one, I'm in no professional position to cast a judgment on the quality of the evidence. I met with Mr Kilgour today, privately, and I asked him questions of his methodology, not dissimilar to the ones that you put to him in his program a couple of nights ago. But one of the things I was a little concerned about was that all of the telephone conversations occurred involving Falun Gong practitioners and were translated in the first instance by Falun Gong practitioners. That of themselves - of itself doesn't make it inaccurate, but I go back to my overarching point here. We need to establish the truth of these things and that's where we've got two channels open to us now: The independent investigation which Mr Downer's department has requested and also the activities of the UN Special Rapporteur.

TONY JONES: Did Mr Kilgour manage to convince you that the methodology used by those who compiled the report who are not Falun Gong members were sufficient for them to come to the conclusions that they did, that the allegations were true?

KEVIN RUDD: As I said to you before, I'm in no professional position, I'm not a former crown prosecutor, I haven't tested and evidence. I'm in no position to say this is ridgy-didge, Tony - I'm just in no position to do that. But my responsibility as a Member of Parliament, in particular because a constituent came to me with this matter, a constituent who is a Falun Gong practitioner, I have a responsibility to test the truth of it. And I thought the most responsible course of action was to pen a letter to Mr L'Estrange, the head of Mr Downer's department, and he's done the me the courtesy of providing a substantive reply.

TONY JONES: Alright, I won't spend too much longer on this, but I know that you have read the report in detail, so like us, you've looked at the evidence and as I said, the evidence comes in different forms. As well as the secretly taped phone calls and the witness evidence, the report documents a huge jump in actual transplant operations. It concludes there have been 41,500 unexplained transplants. That is to say, transplants for which the donor is unexplained. No one knows from the evidence, official Chinese evidence, who the donors are and no one can conclude anything about them until the Chinese provide that evidence, which must exist in hospital files because of the cross-checking that happens with organ donations. Should that evidence be provided urgently by the Chinese to either lay these allegations to rest, or to allow us, looking independently at it, to make our own conclusions?

KEVIN RUDD: On the specific question of the numbers of organ transplants in China, again I'm in no position to challenge or to verify Mr Kilgour's methodology and whether it's accurate or otherwise. That's why we need a proper process to establish the truth. On your wider question, which is do the Chinese now have an obligation to answer that specific charge, I think I'd say this: it's important for our friends in China to respond to the substantive matters raised in Mr Kilgour's report. My understanding so far is that a response has been provided, but the report has only been around for a month or so. I think it would be useful if our friends in China did that. Can I just add this, though, about China: I first went there to work in 1984 and in the 20 years since then, I can point to many areas where Chinese human rights practice has actually improved considerably. I am fully aware that there are human rights abuses still today in China and in relation to Falun Gong practitioners - I've said that before. But it would be wrong to simply, on this program, say there haven't been improvements across the entire structure of Chinese Government engagement with their society.

TONY JONES: What are the implications if this proved to be true? Mass murder of thousands of political dissidents. That's the allegation, their body parts then used to make money in transplant operations?

KEVIN RUDD: Well Tony, let's not get ahead of ourselves here. Let's establish the facts first. That's the first responsibility here. In terms of policy implications which flow from that, one way or the other let's take those in their season. The responsibility which people of good conscience have now is to establish the facts of this, because I am not 100 per cent convinced that anything that Falun Gong says per se is true, and Mr Kilgour, of course, himself is not a Falun Gong practitioner. But I am - I think it behoves all of us, given the significance of China and the fact that improvements have occurred in their human rights practice in 20 years, to be very careful about establishing the veracity of this and I think the Australian Government has said much the same.

TONY JONES: And what if the Chinese refuse to allow an independent investigation?

KEVIN RUDD: Let's cross that bridge when we come to it. That request was only put to the China Government, as I understand it, a couple of weeks ago. And, of course, we had the second track involving the UN Special Rapporteur. But we do have a responsibility to get to the bottom of this.

TONY JONES: Okay. Kevin Rudd, on AWB you began quoting from new AWB Government documents. These are documents the Cole Commission has only very recently put on its website and, therefore, publicly released. What is the import of the documents that you have been using today in Parliament?

KEVIN RUDD: Tony, they point to further new evidence of the Government's gross mismanagement of Australia's national security interests in Iraq and our foreign policy interests in general, through this $300 million wheat for weapons scandal which I think has shocked many people in recent months who watch your program. On the specific stuff today, it goes to early communications between the Government's embassy in Jordan and the AWB in 2002, where the Australian Government is offering its services to the AWB as a match-maker with an individual, an Iraqi we think, with very close contacts with Saddam Hussein himself. And Mr Downer's department is there matching their match-making services in 2002, barely nine months before going to war, saying, "We can stitch you up with this bloke who claims to have links with the great man himself and who claims to be able to do behind the scenes work to improve AWB's market access to the Iraqi wheat market." I find this extraordinarily hypocritical, given the Government was already beating the drums to take Australia to war and at the same time they were providing these sort of commercial match-making services with Saddam himself.

TONY JONES: What are you alleging here, though, that the embassy was wrong to maintain links with people who knew or were very close to Saddam Hussein?

KEVIN RUDD: It goes to the mismanagement of our national security interests. At that time, Mr Downer is already starting to sound the drum about what Australia was about - was going to do nine months later and go to war against Saddam Hussein's regime. As of about that time in the middle of 2002, the Howard Government was accusing the Labor Party of appeasing Saddam Hussein. How extraordinary! Here they were, already two to three years into this $300 million wheat for weapons bribes scandal, and on top of that one of their officials in Amman is saying, "Oh, by the way, if you want a special back door route to even get better prices for your wheat, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, we'll do it for you." This is extraordinary foreign policy hypocrisy and Mr Downer didn't answer my question in Parliament today about whether he thought that was appropriate or not.

TONY JONES: You would expect for intelligence purposes at least, the embassy to maintain links to people who knew Saddam Hussein. That would be a back channel of information for them?

KEVIN RUDD: Well, my long-standing policy is not to comment on any matter concerning the Government's intelligence operations and I don't propose to do that on your program, either. But what I can say is by the time this communication occurs from Jordan - in Amman, remember the Australian Government by mid-2002 has already received a number of explicit, direct warnings from the United Nations, from the Canadians and from others that the AWB was up to no good in its commercial dealings with Saddam's regime. So at that stage, surely alarm bells rang with Mr Downer's department and the Government that this was simply not on.

TONY JONES: Now the second document you refer to refers to a DFAT email. That reference is contained within a briefing note to the Prime Minister. What are you saying about that email and what is its date and what is the timing?

KEVIN RUDD: Well, this is an interesting document, Tony. It's an undated briefing note for the Prime Minister and we assume it was completed for the Prime Minister just prior to the release of the Volcker Inquiry of report into the whole wheat for weapons scandal at the end of last year. And it's a chronology, it seems, of all the Government's internal dealings with the AWB on this period.

But the significant one is this: going back to 1999, about the time when this whole $300 million wheat for weapons scandal began, the Department of Foreign Affairs, according to this note, was engaged in a discussion with the AWB about gifts they were giving to Saddam's regime which were in breach of UN sanctions. Now, DFAT properly expressed concerns about that, but in their - in this note, in this internal email from Mr Downer's department at the time, it says - and I quote: "AWB may have been doing this for some time, but there is no benefit in launching a witch hunt at this stage." - unquote. That's extraordinary.

TONY JONES: What sort of gifts are referred to? Is that indicated at all? I mean, are we talking about specific gifts, small gifts or are we talking about bribes? Is there any indication as to what is being referred to there?

KEVIN RUDD: From the context it appears that gifts were provided which were relevant to, let's say, the wheat industry and the commercial operations of the Iraqi Grains Board. That's my assumption from the context - I may be wrong. But the point I make here is Mr Downer's department were sufficiently concerned about breaches of UN sanctions on the surface, but once they discovered that there was an apparent problem they say in black and white here, we should not investigate it further. This is in part, Labor's continuing critique of Mr Downer's incompetent handling of this crisis and scandal from the outset. That is that as evidence emerged, the Government systematic behaviour is to turn a blind eye and pretend it wasn't happening. That, at best, is negligence and at worst, cover-up.

TONY JONES: Kevin Rudd, on that point we'll have to leave you. We thank you very much for taking the time to come and talk to us again tonight on Lateline.

KEVIN RUDD: Thanks for having me on your program, Tony.

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2006/s1717752.htm