Report from Swedish Newspaper: “Human Rights Lawyers Will Bring China’s Former President to Justice”

On May 13th 2003, a Gothenburg Newspaper published a commentary in their forum section about the lawsuit against former Chinese president, Jiang Zemin. The commentary was written by three human rights enthusiasts and was entitled, “The Dictatorship Policy in China”, with the subtitle, “Tracking the Former President of China”. Below are the main points from the translated article:

Under the shadow of the Iraqi War, many dictatorships, such as the ones in Palestine and Cuba, have taken advantage of the events by even more cruelly diverting public opinion and distorting facts.

In China, the suppression of Falun Gong continues. However, a Swiss human rights lawyer, Philip Grant, has responded to this.

The result: If China’s former president, Jiang Zemin, goes abroad, he may face lawsuits against him, due to his infringements of human rights. Grant and some human rights lawyers in various countries have established an international network to carry out legal proceedings to bring Jiang to trial.

If Jiang leaves China, he will be held responsible for his crimes of violating human rights for the past several years, beginning with the massacre on Tiananmen Square in Beijing [in 1989]. Using police to arrest people and handing out political prison sentences are ways and means for the dictator to gain “compliance” from the people. Another method used is to control the media, through which only one side of the story is reported to the general public. The wide-spread use of the internet is considered a threat. However, it is impossible to monitor every email. Governmental propaganda and information are piled up inside the Party machine. Although SARS had spread throughout the entire country and the world, it was still hidden for several months.

Leaders of western democratic countries have so far kept quiet regarding Chinese acts of violence. This is a result of the country’s huge market for businesses, in addition to its territory and nuclear weapons.

Information states clearly that there are over 10, 000 Falun Gong practitioners detained and more than 700 have been persecuted to death. The methods of persecution used include cruel torture, rape, forced abortion, forced injections with psychotropic drugs, and shocking with electric batons. Any activity, irrespective of whether it is political or peaceful, is considered a threat to the dictator. Similarly, the internet has now become something that is giving the Chinese government a headache: uncontrolled information is dangerous information.

On June 6th, the Ostindiefararen will sail into Gothenburg. It is similar to the news reports in the Gothenburg Post on April 22nd 2003: “If more than one hundred Chinese government officials come to visit, the Gothenburg City government will have to take the veils from the lips”.

Cultural exchanges or international trade cannot be separated from how we view human rights. We cannot leave human rights to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This is something related to every one of us. The Mayor and Deputy Mayor must make vocal Sweden’s point of view.

Such open and honest criticism will surely be helpful in bringing about democracy in China.

If the former Chinese president appears as one of the guests in Gothenburg, human rights lawyers will immediately step in, just as they did with the former Chilean president.

Boris Dragin, registered doctor of acupuncture
Jan Åberg, member of the FiB reporter’s association
Bo Walhjalt, writer

Translated from Chinese at http://yuanming.net/articles/200306/20905.html