Torture Lawsuit Filed against China’s Minister of Information During U.S. Visit

Chinese Minister of the Information Industry Wang Xudong was served with legal papers Friday charging him with torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment committed against Falun Gong practitioners in Hebei Province.

CHICAGO
(FDI) – A Chinese minister was served with legal papers Friday charging him with
torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

The
papers were served upon a guard outside Wang Xudong’s hotel room within hours
after the Minister of the Information Industry delivered a speech at an internet
technology trade summit in Chicago.

“[The] defendant’s acts
and omissions were deliberate, willful, intentional, wanton, malicious and oppressive,
and should be punished by an award of punitive damages in an amount to be determined
at trial,” according to the complaint.

The civil action was
filed according to the provisions of the Alien Tort Claim Act and the Torture
Victims Protection Act on behalf of an unnamed plaintiff who was tortured in China
for over three years.

Wang, China’s current Minister of Information,
is accused of supporting such torture while serving as Communist Party Secretary
of Hebei Province, from June of 2000 through November of 2002.

Hebei,
which surrounds Beijing, is one of five notorious Chinese provinces. Of China’s
30 provinces, the five have accounted for over half of the deaths of Falun Gong
practitioners from abuse in custody.

Plaintiff “Doe,” from
Hebei’s city of Shijiazhuang, has survived this abuse. “Plaintiff was subjected
to arbitrary detention, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and severe torture,”
reads the complaint, “because she refused to relinquish her spiritual belief in
the tenets and practice of Falun Gong.”

The complaint states
that “Defendant Wang Xudong has authorized and supported a harsh crackdown against
the Falun Gong. [He] planned, instigated, ordered, authorized, or incited others
to commit the abuses suffered by Plaintiff, and had command or superior responsibility
over, controlled, or aided and abetted such forces in their commission of such
abuses.”

According to the complaint, the abuses practitioners
have experienced in the province of Hebei include: shocking with electric batons,
beating and burning of the genitals, stripping naked and drenching with icy water
in the winter, as well as breaking of nose, teeth and vertebra.

Justice
Sought Outside of China

Two attorneys are representing
the plaintiff in this case: Lana Han, and Dr. Terri Marsh.

Dr.
Marsh is also representing Falun Gong practitioners in cases against former Chinese
president Jiang Zemin, and Han is working on a case against the Chinese Minister
of Commerce and former governor Bo Xilai.

According to Han,
these lawsuits are an opportunity to seek accountability for torts committed in
violation of international law, Chinese law and U.S. domestic laws.

The
complaint, too, emphasizes that justice cannot be sought in China at this time.
“A proceeding in the People’s Republic of China for these claims in not possible.
The Chinese judiciary has never resolved a case of abuse filed by civilians against
their government.”

“A suit in Chinese courts would be futile
and could result in serious reprisals against those raising the allegations as
well as their attorneys,” says the complaint against Wang.

Notorious
at Home, a Star among U.S. Executives

Wang was in Chicago
attending the third Annual China-U.S. Telecommunications Summit, an event sponsored
by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Telecommunications Industry Association,
a U.S. trade organization.

Wang gave a talk Friday night at
the Hyatt Regency. In attendance were top executives of 30 firms who may have
been eyeing the $500 billion China is said to be ready to spend on information
technology over the next four years.

As the person in charge
of China’s information industry, Wang is responsible for making deals with U.S.
firms to help censor and monitor China’s Internet.

Selling
such technology, according to Harry Wu of the Laogai Research Foundation, is as
good as selling China “electronic handcuffs.”

According to
media reports, Cisco Systems, Sun Microsystems, Nortel Networks and others have
given China’s security systems the tools they need to criminalize free speech
on the Internet. With this technology, some industry reports say China’s “internet
police” are able to monitor nearly every single email message that goes through
China’s Internet – commonly known as the “Great Firewall of China.”

“When
foreign companies sell this kind of censorship and monitoring technology to this
repressive regime knowing full well the torture and other severe abuses that are
brought down upon those who are captured with it,” says Dr. Zhou, a computer science
Professor with Rutgers University, “you can’t say they are not accomplices. What
is the difference between Jiang Zemin – who has murdered thousands of Falun Gong
practitioners – and Saddam who killed his own people? Why should we treat them
differently?”