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Australian Legislative Member Ian Cohen Condemns Organ Harvesting in China and Calls for Action (Photo)

May 14, 2006

(Clearwisdom.net) Ian Cohen, green party legislative member of New South Wales Province, recently gave a speech at the provincial legislative council. In his speech, Mr. Cohen condemned the Chinese Communist regime's atrocities of harvesting organs from living Falun Gong practitioners and called on the world not to be a bystanders to another genocide.

High Resolution Picture
On February 28, 2005, legislative member Ian Cohen gave a speech at the press conference for Zhang Cuiying's lawsuit against Jiang Zemin

On April 4, Mr. Cohen told the council that he had received materials which give details of the death camps in China. These death camps detain Falun Gong practitioners transferred from labor camps all over China. After their hearts, kidneys, cornea and skin tissues were removed, their remains were cremated. Organ trafficking has always been a profitable business in China.

Cohen also pointed out that as the 2008 Olympics are approaching, the persecution against members of Falun Gong practitioners is escalating. According to an organization based in Paris, Liu Jin, minister of Chinese Public Security ordered at a meeting to eliminate Falun Gong completely before the 2008 Olympics. Difference sources have reported the existence of concentration camps. In October 2000, AFP reported two concentration camps used to detain Falun Gong practitioners. Each has the capacity to detain 50,000 people. In 2005 Country Human Rights Report of the U.S. Department of State documented the [CCP's] continuous and systematic suppression of Falun Gong.

At the end of his speech, Ian Cohen quoted the famous poem of Rev. Martin Niemoller: First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me."

Cohen became the first green party legislative member in New South Wales Province in 1995 and was reelected in 2003. On many occasions, he has publicly supported Falun Gong.