From the International Conference on "Genocide in the New Era:" A Tribute To Chinese Mainland Falun Gong Practitioners

In the Differend, by Jean-Francoise Lyotard (1), an injury of great magnitude occurs -- something as serious as the Holocaust, an example used by the author throughout his poignant essay. Unlike the Holocaust in Germany, the holocaust as "differend" cannot be expressed. It occurred but no one knows about it, because no believes it could have occurred or because no one wants to believe it occurred, or because other 'so called' more important matters do not permit it to be discussed.

The victims, thousands upon thousands or perhaps millions upon millions, cannot speak, and even if they could speak no one would hear what they say. There is not a shred of evidence. Indeed no one knows of the holocaust, the terror or the tragedy. If asked, many would claim that it did not occur precisely because of the silence which surrounds it. But of course it did occur. It's just that it occurred within the context of what Jacques Lyotard terms "The Differend--" an injury that renders the victims voiceless because they do not have the means to report it or to seek redress in a court of law.

Lyotard's point is especially important today, because the fictive holocaust which he describes is actually occurring today in China. The perpetrators' names are real as are those of the victims. The goal of the holocaust is not merely the physical death of millions, but the psychological death of the person, his belief, his principles, and his conscience. To date hundreds of thousands of persons have been jailed illegally, placed in labor camps without trial, force fed with saline solutions, which rupture lungs and tear stomach walls, injected with psychotropic drugs, which kill the person while leaving the body intact, and subjected to a huge number of other tortures of frightening and terrible inhumanity. As Barrister Theresa Chu observed in her talk, by forcing persons to renounce their beliefs or else endure what no living person can endure, the genocide in China today is a deadly assault that, whether or not it results in physical death, aims to kill the person.

Surely there must be legal redress for these injuries in a court of law in China. But, as many have observed, the holocaust in China continues without legal redress. Indeed the attorneys who have filed complaints on behalf of the victims have themselves been arrested and tortured, with many disappearing. Lawyers are not permitted to represent practitioners of Falun Gong. When trials do occur, and even that is rare, they are a sham.

In China today, the law is viewed and used as an instrument of power and political control, and its application is always subject to the dictatorship of the Party, which has established a public security system independent of the official legal system. It has used this independent system to detain hundreds of thousands of political prisoners by administrative action alone.(2) Many judges are former Party officials, many are not trained in law at all, and many are openly corrupt. Political leaders still use the criminal process to advance their own policies and personal agendas.(3)

Many third party reports disclose the lack of a rule of law in China. For example, Amnesty International's report for the year 2002 states that political trials are conducted well beyond the standards set by international law for a fair trial, since the judgments are drawn up by authorities before the trial begins.(4) In its reports for 2001 and 2002, Human Rights Watch points to the increase in human rights violations in China in recent years: including arbitrary arrests and executions following a trial with no guarantee of fairness or impartiality. (5) Among the recommendations of the International Center for Human Rights and Democratic Development (Rights and Democracy) to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights can be found the request to the Chinese authorities to guarantee that the right to a fair trial is upheld for all citizens in China.(6)

Enshrouded in silence, the genocide against Falun Gong in China continues, in spite of the principles of Nuremberg, which have been reaffirmed in international law, in court decisions and the practices of nations - all of which assert, affirm, and re-affirm the principle that all individuals notwithstanding their position are subject to suit for acts of torture, genocide and other jus cogens crimes.

Le differend as an injury that renders the victims voiceless because they do not have the means to report it or to seek redress in a court of law characterizes well the situation in China in some but not all respects.

In fact, practitioners of Falun Gong in China and abroad have managed to find their voice and to break through the silence of le differend. By their persistence, determination and courage they have managed to tell their story, by the filing of lawsuits in domestic federal courts outside China, by interrupting cable signals on the state-owned television stations in China, by an array of other creative and courageous techniques.

Lawsuits have been filed against Jiang Zemin, the architect and founder of the campaign of genocide and torture in China today in courts around the globe. In Spain Carlos Ignesias filed a criminal lawsuit under the principles of universal jurisdiction; in Taiwan, Theresa Chu helped to file a criminal lawsuit under Taiwan criminal law; lawsuits have also been filed in France, Belgium, Iceland, Finland, Germany, Moldova, Armenia, Cyprus, and South Korea. The lawsuit filed against Jiang Zemin in the United States in October of 2002 is now on appeal before the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. And the law is on our side. Not even le differend can silence practitioners of Falun Gong. In time the persecution will end because we the disciples, by our voices, our innovation and our sheer persistence, shall end it.

In the words of Justice Jackson, the distinguished United State Prosecutor at Nuremberg, not even a King is above God and the law... If certain acts in violation of [the law] are crimes, they are crimes no matter who commits them.

1. The Differend: Phrases in Dispute. Trans. George Van Den Abbeele. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988
2. See, A.C. Grayling, "When China Cracks," Prospect, June 2002, p. 62.
3. See, "Not Welcome at the Party: Behind the 'Clean-Up' of China's Cities," a report published by Human Rights Watch, October 1999. Also see, "Prominent Chinese Lawyer Detained by Police Since Early May," The Washington Post, June 7, 2002, p. A20; The Tiananmen Papers, compiled by Zhang Liang, edited by Andrew J. Nathan and Perry Link (Public Affairs, 2001).
4. See Amnesty International, ASA 17/052/2002.
5. See: HRW World Report 2001: China; Human Rights Watch World Report 2002: Asia: China and Tibet; see also, "China: Human Rights Constitutions and U.S. Policy," Statement by Mike Jendrzejczyk to the Congressional Human Rights Caucus
6. Commission on Human Rights, fifty-ninth sessions, E/CN.4/2003/NGO/73, 5 March 2003. See also, Jerome Cohen, Roundtable Discussion On "Challenges for Criminal Justice in China," Statement by Jerome A. Cohen, School of Law, New York University Council on Foreign Relations, "The Plight of Criminal Defense Lawyers," for a similar analysis.