(Minghui.org) Jiang Zemin, a former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader, launched the persecution against Falun Gong in July 1999. Since then, countless practitioners have been persecuted severely for their belief in Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. The tragedies include arbitrary round ups and detention, false imprisonment, forced labor, disappearance, torture, and extra-judicial killing.
While the persecution is still going on in China today and Jiang’s crimes are covered up by the regime on international soil, Falun Gong practitioners have sued him and his followers in multiple countries and won major victories in bringing him one step closer to justice.
Below is a brief summary of the lawsuits.
Spain
Falun Gong practitioners sued several high-ranking CCP officials on November 2, 2009, for torture and genocide against Falun Gong. They included Jiang Zemin (former head of state and former Central CCP Party Secretary), Luo Gan (director of Central 610 Office), Jia Qinglin (chairman of the National Committee of China’s Political Consultative Conference), Bo Xilai (Minister of Commerce), and Wu Guanzheng (Party Secretary of the CCP’s Discipline Inspection Commission).
After this lawsuit was filed, Spanish National Court Judge Ismael Moreno granted a petition to indict the defendants on charges of torture and genocide. In addition, the Prosecutor submitted the letters regulatory to the Chinese authorities, asking the defendants to answer the questions therein. According to the court order, if any of these accused set foot in a country with which Spain has an extradition treaty, they will be detained and handed over to Spain to stand trial for the atrocities committed. Details of the lawsuit can be found at:
https://hrlf.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/JiangIndictmentTranslation.pdf
https://hrlf.net/our-cases/
Argentina
Similarly, Jiang and Luo Gan, director of Central 610 Office and also Secretary of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Committee (PLAC), were sued in Argentina for genocide and torture. A judge from the National Federal Criminal and Correctional Court No. 9 issued arrest warrants for Jiang and Luo charging them with the perpetration of crimes against humanity against Falun Gong.
The judge relied on a theory of universal jurisdiction to hear the case and determined that the Defendants’ violations of human rights would be assessed based on the domestic law of Argentina (which incorporates international law) and principles of jus cogens in international law. For more details, please refer to:
https://hrlf.net/global-assistance/
Israel, France, and the United States
Progress was also made in Israel, France, and the United States via lawsuits against high-ranking CCP officials for their genocide related to Falun Gong.
Favorable judgments were received in the United States. Among them was one against Zhao Zhifei, director of the Public Security Department of Hubei Province. The charges include murder, mistreatment, and illegal detention of Falun Gong practitioners.
After former Beijing mayor Liu Qi was sued for persecuting Falun Gong, a federal judge in the Northern District of California concluded that Liu had violated the rights “to be free from torture and arbitrary detention” and the rights to be “free from cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”
The same judge denied immunity to Xia Deren, deputy governor of Liaoning Province, and found that he had perpetrated significant international law violations, including his direction of Chinese security to persecute practitioners of the Falun Gong religion.
In addition, federal judges in courts across the United States have dismissed all lawsuits brought by CCP proxies against Falun Gong believers, which were filed as part of the CCP’s effort to extend the persecution onto U.S. soil. For more details, please refer to:
https://hrlf.net/past-cases-in-the-u-s/
Misinformation by the CCP
Similar to other types of censorship, the CCP-controlled news media actively censored these lawsuits in China and overseas, especially those with favorable judgments against high-ranking Party officials.
The Party further spread false information about several of these cases, going to far as to declare victory in cases that had not yet been decided including a lawsuit filed against the China Anti-Cult World Alliance (CACWA), an organization closely related to the CCP.
According to eyewitness and video evidence, beginning in 2009, CACWA and its affiliates attacked and issued death threats against Falun Gong at their religious booths. In April 2011 one of the Defendants threatened to disappear one of the Plaintiffs, declaring that the “Chinese Embassy has a blacklist of all of you.” As the evidence makes clear, Defendants also damaged the religious booths and proselytization materials while threatening “to kill” and “dig out [the] hearts, livers, and lungs” of Plaintiffs. After Falun Gong practitioners sued the organization for its crimes and prevailed during major phases of the case, including the motion to dismiss phase, the CCP media declared “victory” although the case was still in progress and headed to trial.
Breaking Away from Lies
Plaintiffs of these and related cases alleged that the CCP had committed such international crime as genocide not only against Falun Gong practitioners, but also against Uyghurs and Tibetans. Inside China however, the regime suppressed all legal opinions that exposed the Party’s crimes under international and domestic law.
In fact, the CCP had been consistently deceiving people through a variety of channels. The regime never admitted and continues to deny that it has committed torture, forced organ harvesting, or genocide. Inside China where news media is controlled by the CCP, the numerous legal findings against the Party and its highest-ranking officials are censored by the Party’s propaganda machine.
Lawsuits Inside China
The CCP began to collect evidence to frame Falun Gong as early as 1996, three years before the onset of the persecution. After Jiang formally launched the suppression in July 1999, he not only mistreated practitioners with brutality but also mobilized nearly all news media in China to produce and propagate defamatory lies against the practice.
After China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate and Supreme People’s Court announced they would accept all complaints filed with them in 2015, 209,908 Falun Gong practitioners sued Jiang between May 2015 and October 2016.
One of the plaintiffs was Ms. Sun Linghua, a former presiding judge of Yi County of the Administrative Court and Economic Court in Jinzhou City, Liaoning Province. Because she did not renounce Falun Gong, her employment was terminated in 2003. She filed a criminal complaint against Jiang with the Supreme People’s Procuratorate on June 8, 2015.
Mr. Zhou Yi, a retired professor from the Naval Academy of Aeronautical Engineering in Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province, was also detained numerous times for practicing Falun Gong. After his criminal complaint against Jiang was published on the Minghui website in June 2015, police repeatedly followed and harassed him. Mr. Zhou was arrested in August 2016 and later sentenced to Suzhou Prison in Jiangsu Province.
The CCP’s Culture of Impunity
At a press conference held at the Canadian Parliament Hill in December 2015, Irwin Cotler, former Canadian Minister of Justice and Attorney General, said the CCP’s culture of impunity underpins the persecution of Falun Gong in China. He believes that as long as the persecution continues, “the Chinese authorities will continue to be on the wrong side of history.”
Many Falun Gong practitioners have been retaliated against after filing criminal complaints against Jiang. The 24-year-long persecution still continues, and new reports still emerge from China regarding Falun Gong practitioners being arrested, sentenced, or tortured to death. Even though Jiang has passed away, international courts shall one day provide Falun Gong and other complainants with the opportunity to voice the horrors they witnessed and experienced and prove that those suspected of bearing the greatest responsibility for atrocities committed China be called to account.
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Category: Media Reports
