The Federal Government's lack of response to the "ongoing atrocities" by the Chinese Communist Party, including the harvesting of organs from prisoners of conscience, has been heavily criticized by the Democratic Labor Party (DLP).
At their annual conference held this month in Melbourne, the DLP passed a unanimous resolution that said it "deplores as culpably inadequate the Federal Government's responses to massive, systematic oppression and cruelty, including the ongoing atrocities of forced organ harvesting by the official agencies of the Chinese Communist Party".
Beginning in April 2006, reports of Chinese hospitals harvesting and selling the organs of living Falun Gong practitioners have drawn increased attention. In June last year, former Canadian Secretary of State David Kilgour and human rights lawyer David Matas released a report that they believe proved the allegations. Mr Kilgour travelled to Australia with Vice President of the European Union, Edward McMillan-Scott to meet with Australian politicians about the report's findings.
DLP secretary John Mulholland stated that the resolution "reflects the long-held views of DLP members towards the oppressive Communist regime", and drew a historical comparison between the current Communist dictatorship and "Stalin's Russia and Hitler's Germany". He added that in contemporary times the international community is again turning a blind eye to the same kinds of mass-scale, flagrant human rights abuses.
The secretary's speech also targeted the current Australian Government specifically, stating that "it is a deplorable circumstance that an Australian Government can be turning its own blind eye to these atrocities perpetrated by an anti-democratic regime."
Mr Mulholland further commented that Australia's trade dependency with China has resulted in the Government toeing "the Chinese Communist Party line in our relations with pro-democratic Taiwan".
The Democratic Labour Party was officially founded in 1955, during a split in the Australian Labor Party (ALP). The party's website states that it was formed on matters of principle and in resistance to the growing communist influences in the ALP at that time.
The DLP currently has one elected Senator in Western Victoria, Peter Kavanagh.
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