One of China's key delegates at this week's APEC summit, Commerce Minister Bo Xilai, was promoted up through Communist Party ranks after overseeing the administration of forced labour camps in Liaoning Province, one of China's main industrial bases.
One may wonder why this man has been allowed into the country.
With the title of Commerce Minister many Australians may have presumed that Bo Xilai is China's version of our treasurer Peter Costello or perhaps the trade minister Warren Truss.
But the similarities end there.
Bo Xilai has been pursued by the courts in no less than ten countries including, Canada, Australia, US, England, Ireland, and Spain to answer allegations of such serious crimes as systematic torture and genocide.
Here in Australia, a local Falun Gong practitioner Pan Yu is seeking justice through Australia's courts after suffering terribly when he was forcibly detained under the authority of Bo Xilai at China's Shenyang City's Danan Custody Centre.
Mr Yu says he was held for six months and was subjected to all kinds of torture and abuse after he went to appeal on behalf of Falun Gong which has suffered persecution in China since 1999.
"Once people understand the magnitude of the crimes being committed, they will be shocked and horrified," Mr Yu said.
It is claimed that Bo Xilai openly authorised his subordinates to employ torture in an effort to coerce Falun Gong practitioners into giving up their practice. Cases of death by torture increased sharply under Bo Xilai's authority.
When Bo Xilai was governor of Liaoning Province from January 2001 to February 2004, he allegedly planned and developed large prison facilities and poured more than 1 billion yuan into upgrading notorious facilities such as the Masanjia Forced Labour Camp.
The Falun Dafa information centre say that in 2003, Liaoning Province invested five hundred million Yuan in Shenyang to construct China's first prison complex built simply to hold Falun Gong practitioners. The complex is huge, sprawling over 1.3 square kilometres.
The first media reports that brought attention to the shocking atrocities of forced organ harvesting from thousands of living Falun Gong practitioners were also in Liaoning Province.
And over the days to come as Bo Xilai, the former governor of Liaoning Province, attends APEC, the authors of a investigative report into those allegations of organ harvesting will also visiting Sydney – former Canadian secretary of state for Asia Pacific David Kilgour and international human rights lawyer David Matas.
The Canadians are to receive an award for their human rights work while also taking the opportunity to attend forums in most of Australia's capital cities.
Thanks to the efforts of such individuals as Mr Kilgour and Mr Matas, Australia's political community are attending APEC knowing full-well the unrelenting nature of China's Communist regime.
The burning question is do they possess the moral fortitude to make a stand for cardinal human values and the integrity of the democratic institution they claim to represent?
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