FDI: Lawless Court Takes Aim at American

(3/12/2003áá15:16)

A Falun Dafa Information Center Editorial

NEW YORK (FDI) -- How much of China's constitution will come to the aid of an American prisoner of conscience in a trial now less than two weeks away? Very little, because in the eyes of the Chinese court, he is already guilty of the worst possible crime: choosing his own faith.

Charles Li, American citizen, doctor of medicine, and recent fianc? was detained by police as he disembarked from a plane seven weeks ago on his way home to visit his parents. His name was on "the black list" -- the list Chinese officials keep of foreigners who practice Falun Gong.

Chinese officials have held Charles in isolation for nearly two months, allowing only two 30-minute visits from an American official. Now his captors have demanded he choose a lawyer to defend him in China's courts. Sounds like a good idea, right?

Wrong.

Following a 1999 order from the Justice Bureau, lawyers were forbidden to represent Falun Gong practitioners. In 2001, the Bureau changed its strategy slightly, requiring all pleas to be handled "in accordance with the tone of the Central Government." China's constitution is completely ignored. Hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners in China are currently held without trial in forced-labor camps, tortured, and in hundreds of documented cases, killed during sessions of extreme violence aimed at "curing" the subjects of their peaceful faith.

Charles' situation is dire. Choosing a lawyer for this trial would only validate a fundamentally impossible proposition: that any practitioner of Falun Gong could escape China's predetermined "verdict" of guilty. It's a farce to entertain the idea that justice could be served in a state where the top standing orders include "eliminate Falun Gong at all costs." In these courts there are no appeals and there are no observers.

Some U.S. officials have said their role is to make sure that Charles receives the same legal treatment that a Chinese citizen in the same circumstances would receive. But what exactly is the nature of this "legal treatment?" Anyone even suspected of practicing Falun Gong in China is subject to arbitrary arrest, detention, torture or worse. This is not the case for just a few severe cases. It is state policy. It is pervasive. There is no rule of law for practitioners of Falun Gong in China.

Should we be content to ensure a lamb receives the same treatment as any other lamb caught in the lion's den?

In fact, China's legal system is an instrument of persecution, offering a cloak of legitimacy to the process of systematically imprisoning people for their beliefs. China's propaganda mongers would have us be distracted from the ever-mounting atrocities by orchestrating show-trials on state TV, but the real evidence abounds.

Now an American is the target.

Detaining and holding Charles challenges the values upheld and ensured by his U.S. passport. Indeed, it challenges the U.S. itself. How much do we value the hard-won freedoms we enjoy in our homeland? Should we ensure Charles receives the same "treatment" as any other Chinese under a persecutory regime, or should we ensure a fellow American's hard-won freedoms are not trampled in the dark detainment camps of a foreign regime?

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Related Articles

• Hundreds Rally in Front of US State Department in Support of Freeing Dr. Charles Li
• American Held 44 Days in Isolated Detention Inside China

EDITORIAL - Mar. 12, 2003
Falun Dafa Information Center, www.faluninfo.net

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