November 15, 2004
Australia's relations with China are being strained by a Sydney Falun Gong practitioner who is suing former president Jiang Zemin for personal damages in the NSW Supreme Court after being locked up four times in China.
Australian ambassador to China Alan Thomas has been called to the Chinese Foreign Ministry in Beijing for a carpeting on several occasions since the woman filed a statement of claim with the court on September 15, an Australian Foreign Affairs spokeswoman confirmed.
The claim sent China into a diplomatic frenzy. China's ambassador to Australia, Fu Ying, has repeatedly visited the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Canberra to express concern over the case, raising it at various levels of the bureaucracy.
"They can't understand why the Government can't just stop it from going ahead, like it would in China," a source said.
Zhang Cuiying, a Chinese-born former jewellery designer, who lives in Bankstown in Sydney's southwest, is suing Jiang Zemin and the Chinese Falun Gong Control Office over injuries she allegedly suffered in a detention centre in the southeast city of Shenzhen from March to November, 2000.
"I accuse Jiang Zemin and 610 Office of torture and crimes against humanity," said Zhang in a telephone interview. "I want them put into prison and I want the office abolished. I also want compensation," Ms Zhang said.
The 610 Office is a notorious Gestapo-like unit with branches throughout China and wide powers to root out and punish Falun Gong adherents. It was set up after Jiang Zemin banned the quasi-religious movement as an "XX"1 in 1999.
Ms Zhang, whose husband drives taxis to support their 18-year-old daughter in college, said she suffered health problems because of the torture. She claims she was repeatedly beaten by groups of inmates coerced by the detention centre guards. She was forced to wear shackles weighing more than 10kg which made her feet bleed, and was locked up with male inmates to strip her of dignity.
Although Ms Zhang's is an individual case, the Falun Dafa Association has mounted proceedings in nine countries against Jiang Zemin and other Chinese leaders alleging torture, genocide and human rights abuses, with five further cases in preparation.
Ms Zhang's case is listed for a status conference in court on December 10.
1. Jiang Regime's slanderous words omitted.