(Clearwisdom.net)

The Chicago Court dismissed the case filed against former President of China, Jiang Zemin, on the grounds that a former Head-of-State has immunity for crimes as serious as genocide and torture. The Judge issued this decision notwithstanding the fact that

1. The Convention Against Genocide exempts from immunity all perpetrators of genocide irrespective of their official rank or statute,
2. The Pinochet case, which found the former Head-of-State of Chile not immune from suit because he had perpetrated torture against his own citizens while serving as Head-of-State, and
3. The Torture Convention, which has been interpreted by many courts as exempting from immunity perpetrators of torture irrespective of their official rank or stature.

While the Judge was persuaded by Plaintiffs' argument that Jiang Zemin could be served on behalf of a third party agency, such as the Office 6/10, he did not recommend that the case against Office 6/10 go forward because of such technicalities as the nature and extent of contact between 6/10 and the United States, and the presence of 6/10 in Illinois during Jiang's visit on October 22, 2003, when Defendant Jiang was served by substitute service pursuant to an order signed by Judge Hibbler.

As former President Jiang has rendered voiceless in China the millions upon millions of victims of his campaign of genocide and torture against Falun Gong, so too has the former President of China deployed any and all stratagem to have the case filed against him in the United States District Court of the Northern District of Illinois dismissed, threatening nothing less than an international crisis between the United States and China should this case be permitted to go forward.

What Jiang Zemin does not yet grasp are the limits of his power not only in China but here in the United States. Like the plaintiffs in Filartiga v. Pena-Irala (2nd Cir. 1980), like the plaintiffs in Pinochet, the plaintiffs in Falun Gong v. Jiang Zemin shall prevail on appeal. History will soon show that the principles which comprise the plaintiffs' claims shall prevail. Sitting and former heads of state cannot commit crimes of terrible magnitude against their own citizens and those of other countries with impunity.

It is a fact that this lawsuit represents the idea that heads of state cannot commit genocide and torture using their position yet escape punishment. An overwhelming amount of evidence will bear out the fact that from both a legal perspective and a public opinion perspective, Jiang Zemin absolutely cannot escape being held accountable for initiating and executing the suppression and persecution of Falun Gong.

A short news brief on the website of the Chinese state-run People's Daily did not mention Jiang Zemin by name, instead using "a Chinese leader", and used the words "false accusations" to refer to the lawsuit against Jiang.

Can the People's Daily really expect to use wordplay to stop the lawsuits against Jiang that are coming one after another? Jiang Zemin is now a former Head-of-State, and that is an indisputable fact. The next time he is sued in the United States, he will not receive the immunity granted to heads of state.

Mr. Morton Sklar is a well-known American human rights lawyer, a law professor and American branch executive president of the World Organization Against Torture (WOAT). He has assisted Falun Gong practitioners, enabling them to successfully sue the Mayor of Beijing, Liu Qi, and the Deputy Provincial Head of Liaoning Province, Xia De Wen.

Professor Sklar expressed that the lawsuit filed against Jiang can be viewed as a part of the action of world human rights organizations. The significance of the lawsuit is that a foundation is being built worldwide to mandate that officials who severely violate human rights through committing acts of torture and genocide be held accountable in both criminal and civil actions taken against them.

Professor Sklar said: "There have been precedents set by American courts and the international court, for example, in the cases of the former Philippines President Marcos, the former Yugoslavia President Milosevic and so on, the courts had maintained that during their terms in office, they had committed crimes against human rights and were therefore deprived of Head-of-State immunity."

Over the past four years, Jiang Zemin and the "610 Office", the Cultural Revolution style group that he formed specifically to persecute Falun Gong, has carried out a brutal, systematic persecution against Falun Gong practitioners. They established policies such as "defame their reputations, bankrupt them financially, and destroy them physically" and "do not check for the identity, immediately cremate their bodies after death" against Falun Gong practitioners, and they were carried out on a national scale under the direct orders of Jiang Zemin and Luo Gan. On September 7, 2003, Jiang Zemin even directed the state-run Xinhua News Agency to publicly denounce the ideals pursued by Falun Gong practitioners, including "Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance", as "demonic theories."

After four years of clarifying the truth all over the world by the Falun Gong practitioners, more and more people have come to a clear understanding of this blatant trampling of human rights and freedom of belief that is mainly occurring in China. However, there are still a lot of people who are not fully aware of the severity of the persecution and the danger it poses to themselves as individuals, their communities, and their countries. Clarifying the truth in a broader, deeper, and more detailed manner is something that must be done, and it is something that needs more Dafa disciples' attention and participation.

The lawsuit against Jiang in Chicago is not over. The final decision as it progresses through the court system is yet to be determined. While we continue to clarify the truth through bringing the lawsuit against Jiang in Chicago and other areas all over the world, we need to clearly remind ourselves that the significance of bringing lawsuits against Jiang is not limited to inside the courthouse. The deeper significance lies in the Dafa disciples, in the course of bringing these lawsuits against Jiang, helping people to clearly recognize the evil's nature, awakening the people's sense of justice and conscience, and offering salvation to people on a broader basis.

As Jiang is pronounced guilty again and again in the courts of people's hearts and public opinion, the evil forces are being eliminated time and time again in different areas and in different people's hearts. When even more people have understood the truth, and step forward from their state of unconsciously or even consciously defending or allowing the evil persecution to go on, when the vast majority of Chinese people and people all over the world who uphold justice and morality are unequivocally opposing the persecution, the time will arrive for that wonderful moment when people step out of the unprecedented persecution against the eternal principles of "Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance" and humankind's sense of justice and conscience, and when they step into a beautiful new epoch.

Posting date: 9/15/2003
Original article date: 9/15/2003
Category: Practitioners' Insights
Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2003/9/14/57394.html

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