Labour MP Louisa Wall alleges China is harvesting organs from political prisoners from the Falun Gong supporters and Uyghur population.
Falun Gong is a set of meditation exercises and texts that preach the virtues of truth, benevolence and forbearance. China has banned it since 1999, seeking state atheism.
There are more than a million Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim Turkic minority group, detained in what China says are education camps, but Wall alleges these are slave labour camps.
Wall is part of a global inter-parliamentary alliance on China, which monitors the actions of the Chinese Communist Party.
“I'm speaking as our IPU representative, and what I've been saying is congruent with what our Minister of Foreign Affairs and Prime Minister have been saying in terms of enabling the United Nations to go to Xinjiang and to visit these purported education camps.”
“With my IPU hat on, I have to, I guess, highlight that at the last assembly, the UK representatives specifically brought that kaupapa to the IPU because China has also sanctioned MPs such as myself, for speaking out and highlighting the evidence that is before us.”
Wall says China is creating a database of organs that service a billion-dollar international trade, "and it's incumbent on us to do as much as we can to ensure that we're not creating a demand for those organs, so that will eventually lead to it being stopped because it's deplorable.”
“For a global world leader to be doing this to any member of their citizenship, we have to speak out and use every mechanism possible to hold them to account for these human rights abuses.”
Indigenous targets
Wall says her main concern is for members of the indigenous population of China who are being designated as prisoners of conscience and incarcerated in these camps or prisons, unable to practise their indigenous culture or communicate on digital platforms.
“There are some esteemed people who have, through independent means, had submissions from individuals who have been incarcerated or their families, and that's where the evidence at the moment is coming from because of China's refusal to allow the United Nations to do their job.”
Although China said that in 2014 that the practice of killing political prisoners for organ transplants had stopped, according to Wall it is testimony coming in from family members or those that were in the camp that make her believe it is still happening.
“It's the human beings, family members, those who have been in these camps since their testimony that make me believe this is happening, and also from the medical profession. They've obviously had to have medical expertise to extract hearts, lungs, other parts of individuals to then give to others.”
“I think we need to have a better regime, to be very clear that we will not allow a New Zealand citizen to go into a jurisdiction where consent is an issue, and that potentially, people are being killed so that someone else can have their organs. I mean it's heinous and it's deplorable. And the reason I'm choosing to speak out in part is also because they're targeting an indigenous population and because of our history of colonisation, here in Aotearoa, New Zealand.
"We're going through our own truth and reconciliation process through the Treaty settlement process. In fact, we've got Taranaki whānau here today for their Treaty settlement process. Somebody has to speak out. It’s appalling.”