Daniel Wermus
Human rights
Mr Philippe Grant, the president of TRIAL (“Track Impunity Always”, a group of lawyers against the impunity of international criminals) has said that a criminal lawsuit is to be launched in Geneva against the former president of China, Jiang Zemin. An international team of lawyers will file similar lawsuits for crimes of torture, crimes against humanity, including genocide in many countries. According to Mr Grant, the former dictator - who remains behind the political scene - is “the main architect of the savage repression” against hundreds of thousands, even millions, of innocent practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement which is notably apolitical and non-violent.
Referral to courts
“The net is about to tighten around Mr Jiang Zemin and many others taking part in this vast machinery of repression. Global justice is slowly but surely finding its place, and one day will catch up with them” the lawyer says, hoping to have a deterring effect on the torturers. The Swiss judicial authorities will be called upon the moment one of the known perpetrators sets foot on Swiss soil. This case has already been referred to the United States and French courts.
Mr Grant has received his mandate from the Swiss Falun Gong Association. He is concentrating mainly on the files of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch without judging the movement’s philosophy. TRIAL - created last year with the support of Geneva’s ex-public prosecutor, Bernard Bertossa - will be launching its first case of this kind against the Chinese leader and will gain insight from the recent legal proceedings against the Chilean General, Augusto Pinochet.
“Although China has refused to join the International Criminal Court, crimes against humanity form part of customary international law”, said Mr Grant. According to article 7 of the ICC, “their scale corresponds to a ‘widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population’. Moreover, having relinquished the presidency, Jiang no longer has diplomatic immunity, especially in regard to torture. Furthermore, genocide against a group on religious grounds can certainly be applied.”
The “Chinese Gestapo”
According to many available witnesses, Jiang personally planned the “eradication” of Falun Gong by creating the “610 Office, a sort of Chinese Gestapo”. This special unit, which is above the law, is responsible for thousands of murders, say the survivors who are coming as witnesses to the Commission on Human Rights. At least 100,000 people are in labour camps, of which 70 per cent are women, elderly people and children. Millions are being hunted down, sacked from their jobs and thrown out of their homes and schools, denounced and exposed to brainwashing, abuse, abortion and enforced divorce. Ongoing propaganda is attempting to ostracise 70 to 100 million practitioners (the number unofficially registered before the crackdown began in July 1999).
According to victims who are now in Geneva, this is the most wide-ranging persecution since the creation of the United Nations, and for almost four years it has met with a strange silence from the international community. A worldwide coalition of lawyers is today coming together to fully bring to light China’s “State terrorism”.
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