Concern over ABC Foreign Correspondent's Series about Falun Gong

The Australian Values Alliance (AVA) expresses our concern over the recently aired ABC  Foreign Correspondent's series about Falun Gong.

Falun Gong is a religious group severely persecuted by the Chinese Communist regime. Its practitioners have been the subjects of brutal organ harvesting in China.

AVA members are of the opinion that ABC reporters who produce the series have not demonstrated the same balanced and objective approach to journalism as we normally associate with ABC’s news programs. We are particularly concerned about the random use of isolated cases to define the whole group, and how this irresponsible approach will unfairly stigmatise this minority group. 

The AVA notes that this ABC  Foreign Correspondent's series has been amplified by the Chinese state-run media and used to justify the horrendous persecution that the tyrannical government is imposing upon Falun Gong practitioners in China. The AVA fears that this ABC current affairs series will validate social discrimination against this already vulnerable religious group in Chinese communities and among the general public in Australia. Discrimination and vilification on the basis of religion will discourage community participation, and will infringe civil rights that are pivotal to the normal functioning of our multicultural society.

The AVA therefore urges the ABC to halt the broadcast of the remains of the series.

--Australian Values Alliance (AVA)