Warning: Australia Unaware of Black Market Organ Transplant Trade, Experts reveal
‘We’re talking about prisoners in forced labour camps that I actually call internment camps,’ ETAC representative said about the source of organs.
The Communist Chinese Party’s (CCP) practice of organ harvesting is the subject of renewed interest from Australian politicians as new evidence emerges about the chilling practice.
A Senate Committee is examining a proposed law to make it compulsory for people entering Australia to respond to questions about overseas organ transplants.
Madeleine Bridgett, a human rights lawyer and a representative of the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC), revealed how quick and easy it was to source an organ from China.
Ms. Bridgett said that one of her colleagues, a professor, gave a presentation a few years ago in which she almost secured an organ from China via an online chat platform in just 10 minutes.
“She showed those WhatsApp messages in the presentation. She was able to get an organ arranged in 10 minutes,” the human rights lawyer told the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee.
“It is just not possible in any legal voluntary organ donation system for that to happen.”
Ms. Bridgett noted that the only way for organs to be available that quickly was the existence of “internment camps” in China, where people were killed on demand for their organs.
“We’re talking about prisoners in forced labour camps that I actually call ‘internment camps,’ not ‘forced labour camps,’ they are actually internment camps,” she said.
The ETAC representative also pointed to conclusive evidence from the China Tribunal, a non-governmental tribunal to inquire into forced organ harvesting in China. It found that practitioners of the spiritual mediation practice of Falun Gong, and Muslim ethnic Uyghurs, were the main victims of the CCP’s organ harvesting.
“It’s on the Hansard record that forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China, on a significant scale, and Falun Gong practitioners have been one and probably the main source of organ supply,” she said.
“In regard to the Uyghurs, the tribunal had evidence of medical testing on a scale that could allow them, amongst other users, to become an organ bank.”
No Visibility of Overseas Transplant Operations
Ms. Bridgett pointed out that currently, Australia had no visibility on the extent of how many people were receiving organ transplants overseas.
“There’s no transfer of medical information that comes from when someone has a transplant overseas,” she said. “Australia needs to know when someone’s coming back and they’ve had an organ transplant overseas.”
“And not just to know that they’ve had it, where they’ve had it, who’s done the operation and having some kind of clinical letter like a referral letter like you would do with any medical operation or intervention.”
