Statement from Lord Moyne Regarding the False trial in Hong Kong

In Hong Kong, sixteen Falun Gong practitioners including four Swiss citizens are being prosecuted for alleged obstruction. They were peacefully protesting about the right of Chinese citizens to practice Falun Gong without persecution at home and abroad and without being tortured and murdered at home in pursuance of president Jiang Zemin’s policy of torture and murder. The prosecution is a disgraceful and rather pathetic attempt of the Chinese authorities to make life difficult for Falun Gong in Hong Kong without actually banning it, and to warn foreigners that they should not practise it.

The Hong Kong magistrates have a choice, and nobody can pretend it is an easy one. If they acquit the practitioners they will be acting justly but incurring the danger that their careers may be affected by the displeasure of the Beijing government.

If they convict, they will perhaps help their careers in the short term, but given the manifest unfairness of the charges and of the whole campaign against Falun Gong they will do their reputation no good when the policy of the government is reversed, as at some time it will be.

They could perhaps make private representation to the effect that the "one country, two systems" approach to the Hong Kong question is to the advantage of Beijing in many ways, and that a "not guilty" verdict in this comparatively small affair would help to show it is genuine.

A guilty verdict, however, would show that there is really only one system, not two, and that system is a barefaced tyranny.