Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 17/08/2006
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