Falun Gong practitioners from Sydney visited Eden on Tuesday as part of a 200 town/city road trip across Australia to raise awareness of forced organ harvesting in China and the ongoing persecution of its members in that country.
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Falun Gong is a traditional Chinese spiritual and meditation practice based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion and tolerance; it is estimated to have up to 100 million followers.
The group asked Eden residents to sign postcards to be sent to members of parliament, expressing concern about the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners which they said started in 1999.
"New crucial research by international investigators leads us to believe that over one million prisoners of conscience may have been killed for their organs since year 2000 and Falun Gong practitioners remain the main target," the postcard said.
The price of body parts from forced organ harvesting range from $30,000 for a cornea and $62,000 for a kidney to $130,000 for a liver, $160,000 for a heart and $170,000 for lungs, it said.
It is hoped that more than 20,000 postcards will be delivered to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and a further 30,000 to MPs across the country.
They want the Australian government to follow the lead of the US House of Representatives this year and European Parliament in 2013 in passing resolutions urging China to stop the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners and forced organ harvesting.
Ni Yan, 26, said most Australians knew very little about Falun Gong and the situation in China, adding that people may be less eager to visit the country if they knew the truth.
Travelling with Ms Yan on the road trip, which also took in Merimbula on Tuesday, were Changzhi Yue and Yanping Wu who claimed that they had been detained in prison and tortured for their beliefs while living in China before moving to Australia.
According to reports, former Chinese communist leader, Jiang Zemin, ordered a ban on the practice in July 1999, fearing that its own popularity was being overshadowed.