(Minghui.org) Since May of this year, more than 60,000 Chinese people have filed criminal complaints against Jiang Zemin, the former head of the Chinese Communist Party, for launching and directing the persecution of Falun Gong. The criminal complaints have drawn considerable attention in Australia, especially after a report on July 7 by the Australian Associated Press, which was reproduced in the mainstream Australian media.

On July 9, Joe Bullock, Labor Senator for Western Australia, commented on the wave of complaints in an interview with a Minghui correspondent.

Joe Bullock, Labor Senator for Western Australia in the Australian Parliament

Mr. Bullock said, “While Australia's economic future is now, more than ever, linked to the prosperity and progress of China, economic considerations cannot be allowed to distract us from an objective consideration of China's humanitarian record since the Communist ascendancy or of the efficacy of the current efforts being made to redress some of the nation's past poor practice.”

As a supporter of Chinese democracy, on July 7, Bullock met with David Matas, a Canadian human rights lawyer and independent investigator of the Chinese State-sanctioned organ harvesting, and was horrified by the facts of the forced organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience, the majority of whom are Falun Gong practitioners.

During the July 9 interview, Bullock mentioned this crime. “Regular purges and the imprisonment of opposition groups have been a feature of Chinese politics over the last sixty years but evidence, more recently, of the practice of the forced harvesting of the organs of political prisoners to supply the gruesome trade of transplant tourism constitutes a new low in the treatment of perceived dissidents.”

Regarding the new Chinese law, which allow for citizens to be plaintiffs in criminal cases, and opens the door to the lawsuits against Jiang Zemin, Bullock made positive, yet cautious, comments.

“Under China's current leadership there appears to be a commendable preparedness to abandon the veil of secrecy, to shed light on this abhorrent practice and to bring the perpetrators to justice. The flood of lawsuits being lodged against former leader Jiang Zemin in this connection is testimony to the fresh approach being adopted to redressing the sins of the past.”

Background

In 1999, Jiang Zemin, as head of the Chinese Communist Party, overrode other Politburo standing committee members and launched the violent suppression of Falun Gong.

The persecution has led to the deaths of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners in the past 16 years. More have been tortured for their belief and even killed for their organs. Jiang Zemin is directly responsible for the inception and continuation of the brutal persecution.

Under his personal direction, the Chinese Communist Party established an extralegal security organ, the “610 Office,” on June 10, 1999. The organization overrides police forces and the judicial system in carrying out Jiang's directive regarding Falun Gong: to ruin their reputations, cut off their financial resources, and destroy them physically.