Violation of all 33 UN Human Rights Declarations Cited
Plaintiffs Include Two Men Currently in Chinese Custody
Citizens and residents from Australia, Canada, USA, France, Ireland, Hong Kong and China have jointly submitted a legal case against Communist Party Head Jiang Zemin, and two other top Chinese officials, to the United Nations Committee Against Torture, the United Nations Human Rights Committee and the International Criminal Court, for crimes committed in instigating and carrying out the brutal persecution of Falun Gong. Lawyer, Joel Etienne from Etienne law Associates states:
“What we’ve submitted to these tribunals is more than just a complaint. It is a detailed account from both Chinese and Western practitioners claiming that there is objective and cogent evidence of these crimes taking place and that these individuals are the ones responsible for them. These types of claims are precisely what the international tribunals have been designed to adjudicate upon.”
Among the outcomes sought from the legal case, the submission calls on the Prosecutors’ Office of the International Criminal Court to launch an international criminal investigation into the three named officials. The other two officials named in the case are Zeng Qinghong, Head of the Organization Department of the Communist Party of China, and Luo Gan, Secretary of the Central Commission of Politics and Law.
Among the plaintiffs, Mr. Wang Jie of Beijing and Mr. Chu O-Ming, a Hong Kong businessman, submitted a legal case against the same three officials to the Supreme People’s Procurator of China in August 2000. Shortly after submitting the case, more than ten police broke into a private residence and arrested both Mr. Wang and Mr. Chu. This action is effectively a continuation of that case.
The group of eight plaintiffs have personally faced kidnapping, prolonged incarceration, extortion of money and property, forced labour, prolonged beatings, severe torture, sexual assault and the murder of family members. However, they are only the tip of a very large iceberg encompassing millions of Falun Gong practitioners all around the world.
One of the local plaintiffs is Ms. Jennifer Zeng, a former inmate of a forced labour camp who currently resides in Melbourne. She summed up the reasons for filing this complaint as follows:
“After September 11 and the recent Bali attack, everybody is asking in what direction the world will now go and how should we react amongst this chaos. By taking this legal action against systematic and state-sanctioned terrorism, we, as the residents of the global village, have again made a firm stand: to remain peaceful, to remain rational, to remain courageous and righteous, and to uphold common principles and justice for the good of all humanity.”
Posting date: 26/Oct/2002
Original article date: 24/Oct/2002
Category: Media Release
