Austria: Criminal Charges Brought Against Jia Qinglin

Under the guidelines of the UN Convention On Torture, an unusual lawsuit was filed on Monday with the State Prosecutor's Office in Vienna. In the suit, a lawyer for the "International Society for Human Rights“ and the "International Society for Threatened People“ argues that a Chinese Communist Party politician currently visiting Austria is one of the main parties responsible for the persecution and oppression of Falun Gong. Even before attending a press conference given by Falun Gong practitioners, the respected and widely-distributed daily Austrian newspaper "Die Presse“ reported on August the 31st 2004 that Jia Qinglin is the former Party Secretary from Beijing and a member of the important Central Committee Politboro of the CCP. A spokesman for the Austrian Falun Dafa Association, Martin Schrott, explained that the reason the press conference in Café Eiles had not been scheduled for 9am, the same time that the lawsuit was filed yesterday, was that they wanted to inform the government before they read about it in the daily news.

In spite of numerous press releases and an invitation issued by guest speaker, Mrs Grieb of the International Society for Human Rights, only one daily newspaper attended her presentation in the well-known Viennese coffee house at 10 am. One Falun Gong practitioner stated that probably everybody went to the special session in the parliament when asked why more journalists had not turned up. Indeed, almost at the same time, a special session about a currently controversial topic had been called in the upper house of parliament.

Jia Qinglin, former Party Secretary from Beijing and current permanent member of the Politboro, arrived last night at the airport in Salzburg. From 1999 to 2002 he ranked above the mayor of Beijing and tried to escalate the persecution of Falun Gong at all costs. Among other things, during his term he was partially responsible for the so-called "Tiananmen self-immolation“, which was invented by the Chinese propaganda machine and used to mislead many people. Jia himself actively participated in the persecution of female Falun Gong practitioners.

Jia has already visited Korea as part of this trip and will visit Spain and Portugal after Austria. Today, the situation is different at the Vienna Ballhaus Square, the seat of the government and of the Chancellor’s office. Although two years ago several police vans shielded the Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji from view of practitioners, today a clean-cut Chinese man tries, without success, to talk police officers into ensuring that the highly visible Falun Gong banners are at least lowered. With the exception of one small van close to the practitioners and the usual escort for the delegation, there were almost no police visible.

One pedestrian passing the demonstration was very surprised when she heard about the lawsuit. Although initially she dismissed the principles as unimportant, she soon became so enthusiastic that she wrote them down both in German and in Chinese in order to be able to commit them to memory. Before she left, she asked several times what she could do to end the persecution in China.