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Human Resource Leadership Forum (HRLF) Issues a Challenge to Hong Kong and the International Community
(Clearwisdom.net) The Hong Kong government used a blacklist provided by
the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to deny several hundred Falun Gong
practitioners from Taiwan who held valid visas from entering Hong Kong and
deported them, some even violently. This has caught international attention. The Human Resource Leadership Forum (a non-profit organization formed in 2005
to preserve human rights around the world) released the following statement to
ask governments around the world to speak out and do what they can do, indeed
what they must do, to not only preserve fundamental protections and checks and
balances in Hong Kong, but also, and just as importantly, to put an end to the
government-sponsored torture in China. The following is the complete text of the
HRLF editorial statement: A Challenge to Hong Kong and the International Community There has never been a more urgent need to preserve fundamental basic rights
and freedoms and the democratic system of checks and balances than today, as
over 500 persons of the Falun Gong faith have been denied the exercise of a
variety of constitutionally protected human rights including the right to
travel, the right to hold and exercise religious and spiritual views, the right
to freely associate and to peacefully express opinions, and the right to not be
discriminated against on religious grounds due to an abuse of power by the Hong
Kong Office of Immigration and the co-extensive lack of strong steps taken by
the governments around the world against government-sponsored torture programs
in China that transcend the bounds of the law and our most treasured human
rights values and norms. The 500 barred travelers are all citizens of Taiwan in possession of valid
visas and requisite travel documentation who clearly pose absolutely no safety
risk to Hong Kong whatsoever. Indeed, as an application for judicial review
filed with the High Court of Hong Kong SAR maintains, the Hong Kong immigration
department in collaboration with the Chinese communist authorities have
purposefully excluded all persons of the Falun Gong faith from traveling to Hong
Kong in the wake of a lawsuit filed against Jiang Zemin, Luo Gan, and Li Lanqing
for their purportedly pivotal role in the government-sponsored torture programs
set up in China today. Lawsuits have been filed against these three defendants
in over 17 countries around the world based on the very same allegations. These actions were taken by reference to a blacklist of names of presumed
Falun Gong practitioners or supporters that was compiled by the Chinese
communist regime, and circulated by it to the Government of Hong Kong. As Chen
Yonglin, a former high ranking Chinese Communist Party official involved at the
highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party spy network abroad, has stated,
the persecution against Falun Gong practitioners who reside outside of China
includes the collection of information about them and their activities in other
countries to prevent any form of (legal or other) protest activities against the
government-sponsored torture programs in China. To this end, the Chinese
communist authorities created these black ("no fly") lists with the
help of a network of spies who work for them around the globe. It is this information collection and effort to prevent legal or other types
of protest that has been used to bar these 500 presumed Falun Gong practitioners
from traveling to Hong Kong to show their support of the lawsuit filed to hold
accountable those responsible for the repressive policies of the Chinese
communist authorities. The use of blacklist collection efforts to single people out for various
forms of ill treatment has a history that goes back at least as far as the Nazi
era. Himmler's blacklists of Jewish persons living in Europe were used by the
Nazis to identify, round up, and transport six million Jews to the concentration
camps where they were subjected to forced labor, torture, and mass
extermination. The Nazi Gestapo is also known to have compiled a list of more
than 2,300 persons whose arrest was to occur immediately after the victory of
the Nazi forces. Included on the list were Winston Churchill, Churchill's
cabinet ministers, France's former leader De Gaulle, "enemy of
Germany" Lady Astor, the leadership of British intelligence Service Robert
Vansittart, and many Jewish refugees including Dr. Sigmund Freud. However, unlike Nazi Germany, the Hong Kong legal system like that of all
democratic states has evolved carefully structured checks and balances that are
predicated in part upon the independence of the judicial branch of government.
The "no fly" blacklists that bar entry into Hong Kong of Falun Gong
practitioners not only impose sanctions on Falun Gong practitioners (amounting
to a deprivation of their constitutional due process rights under Hong Kong's
Basic Law), making abuses through discrimination inevitable. They also signal
the conspicuous lack of an independent judicial branch able to decide cases and
controversies without sanctions imposed upon the complainants and their
supporters. The latest in a series of due process deprivations in Hong Kong is especially
unfortunate in light of the purpose of the transfer of Hong Kong to China in
1994 - to uphold a two-system rule rather than the one-system rule of government
that prevails in China today. This is equally unfortunate in light of the
gravity of the human rights allegations, allegations that are being taken quite
seriously by federal courts around the world. In May of 2004, the United States
Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals acknowledged the pivotal role of the former
head of state Jiang Zemin in the "mass arrests, allegedly farcical trials,
torture, forced labor, 're-education,' and killing of [Falun Gong] members"
in its opinion issued on May 27, 2004. Similarly, Judge Octavio Araoz de
Lamadrid, the chief judicial officer now presiding over the criminal case filed
in Argentina against Luo Gan, issued an opinion in January of 2006 which held
that the role of defendant Gan in these government-sponsored torture programs
was of such a serious nature as to not permit a dismissal of the case on foreign
immunity or related grounds. Other courts including most notably the Spanish
National Court (Audencia Nacional) have applied the principles of universal
jurisdiction to cases filed against former head of state Jiang Zemin in spite of
the absence of any links between Spain and the alleged crimes, the alleged
perpetrators, or the victims, based upon the serious of the allegations and
strength of the plaintiffs' case. While the courts around the world have upheld the principles of justice and
the legal standards created to enforce these principles, most of the democratic
countries around the world have cast a blind eye to the ongoing
government-sponsored torture programs that clearly transcend the bounds of law
and the most treasured values of all democratic states. HRLF asks governments
around the world to speak out and do what they can do, indeed what they must do,
to not only preserve fundamental protections and checks and balances in Hong
Kong, but also and just as importantly to put an end to the government-sponsored
torture in China. Posting date: 7/7/2007 |