Epoch Times Editorial: "Comments on China’s Show Trial Against American Citizen Charles Li"

Today the Chinese government puts on a show trial against Charles Li, an American citizen. It is also today that a group of American senators and Chinese law experts hold a round table meeting, the topic of their discussion being “China’s Rule of Law: Lawyers Have No Law.” The Jiang regime’s show trial happens to offer a target for this round table meeting.

It has already become a well-known secret that lawyers have no law in China’s legal system. Now the Jiang regime is fooling itself by putting on a show trial. One senior assistant of a senator in the USA Senate Foreign Relations Committee once told a story about the legal system in China. Several years ago, to show the revolution of their legal system, the Chinese government invited some American officials to watch a courtroom trial. The defendant was brought to the court in shackles, which is regarded by the Western society as an act lacking the common sense of law. Meanwhile, the Chinese officials in the court were doing their best to present the result of their legal system's revolution. But at the same time, the worst excesses were being exposed to the Westerners.

The moral principle of law is to protect the innocent from persecution. However, China’s legal system is an instrument for the Jiang regime to rule the country. Today, China’s legal system is even used to crack down on innocent citizens and strictly control their daily life and thinking. One peculiar thing is that China’s Justice Bureau often issues administrative orders to forbid any civil activity not permitted by the government. How can such a legal profession and legal system independently exercise their power to protect their kind citizens from insults? After understanding the social and political background in China, we realise why the lawyers in China have no law and put themselves in the pockets of the communist party and the government.

China’s legal system does not represent the will of the citizens but is instead another weapon of systematic persecution. The intention of the Chinese government is to persecute by force, with many crimes created and listed against the defendant so as to exemplify the ambiguity and vanity of their law. In this way, what the Chinese government can do is to put on a show of justice, with all the government departments involved in it to safeguard the vanity of their so called legal system.

Therefore, Charles Li chose to go on trial to defend himself because China has neither rule of law nor due process of law in the Western sense. No lawyers, judges or courts are independent from the interference of political power. It is for innocent citizens, as well as for thousands of Chinese lawyers who have no law, that Charles Li made the choice to defend himself in this trial. His righteous defence will overwhelm the autocratic Prosecutor. For human rights, for basic freedom of life and freedom of thinking, and as an innocent person, Charles Li will stand up in court to tell the world, the court, the judges and the people of China who have no law what basic human rights and freedom are. This sense of righteousness is what people should have no matter where they are.

Nancy Pelosi, an American senator, made the following statement in Freedom House several years ago: “One can change his life plans or study plans. But how can one change his belief? Because it is their innate nature and forms part of their life, how can it be altered? If it is altered, that will never be the same person.”

Yes! Imprisonment in China will never change a real person. The sham show of justice offers the world an opportunity to see that China has neither law nor legal system to represent justice, and also that Chinese lawyers have neither law nor opportunity to represent the rights of their clients.

The problem is that if Charles Li proves himself innocent, will the Chinese government free him? The answer is evident.

Chinese version available at http://www.yuanming.net/articles/200303/18554.html