Svenska Dagbladet (Swedish Newspaper): Falun Gong Sues PRC Leader (Excerpt)

Excerpts from an article in the Swedish newspaper on October 23, 2002

Falun Gong has submitted an application for a summons to be issued against PRC leader Jiang Zemin for his persecution of the movement, Falun Gong's information centre in the U.S.A. announced on Tuesday night...

A judicial report on torture and genocide has been submitted to a U.S. court of law in the northern district of Illinois and papers were served to Jiang's security guards at Chicago's Ritz Carlton Hotel on Tuesday, Falun Gong announced.

According to Falun Gong and human rights organisations, practitioners have been subjected to severe acts of cruelty over the past few years. According to the movement, over 1000 [practitioners] have been killed after having been arrested. Practising Falun Gong's exercises and meditation is forbidden and if one so much as talks about the movement or practises at home [in China] one will be arrested, according to information from Falun Gong.

The summons issued against Jiang Zemin is not the first to be submitted against Chinese leaders. In August 2000 Li Peng, now speaker in the people's congress and second in the Party's hierarchy, was sued by the relatives of victims of the massacre in Tiananmen Square in 1989 because he had, in his capacity as prime minister, issued the state of emergency which made the action possible.

The US judiciary considered the summons against Li Peng to be formally defective. But in August this year an American judge found that the case could, nevertheless, be taken up in a federal court of law in Manhattan in New York.