(Clearwisdom.net) On July 15, 2004, Radio Free Asia broadcast an article by special commentator Cao Changqing. It cites an item in the U.S. Epoch Times, commenting that during the morning of July 14, Zhao Zhizhen, the former chief of the Wuhan City Broadcasting Bureau and the Wuhan TV Station was served with a summons during a recent visit to New Haven, Connecticut. He was sued for producing films inciting hatred against Falun Gong practitioners and for participating in the persecution of Falun Gong during his tenure of office. This is the first lawsuit certain overseas Falun Gong practitioners have filed against Chinese officials in the media sector.
The complaint notes that during his tenure as the chief for the Wuhan TV Station, Zhao Zhizhen spearheaded and supervised the production of a film to slander Falun Gong. The Chinese authorities have used this film as one of the main propaganda tools to defame Falun Gong and its founder, and for brainwashing the Chinese people. After viewing the film, the police in China further developed hatred for Falun Gong and intensified their severe persecution and gruesome torture of Falun Gong practitioners.
It is said that Zhao Zhizhen not only personally chaired and supervised the production of the propaganda film that incites hatred, but that he was also one of the Standing Committee members of the Chinese Anti-Cult Association (CACA). In many places in China, the CACA are directly associated with the "610 Office," the agency formed exclusively for the suppression of Falun Gong.
One of the reasons that certain members of Falun Gong have sued the former chief of the Wuhan Broadcasting Bureau is that there have been like precedents in the international community from other nations in the past. At the end of last year, the UN War Crimes Court convicted three defendants on crimes of using the media to inflame hatred during the 1994 Rwanda massacre. Of the three, the former government press official and Director of Radio T¨¦l¨¦vision Libre de Mille Collines (RTLM) Ferdinand Nahimana, was sentenced to life in prison; founder of the RTLM Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza was sentenced to 35 years of imprisonment [reduced to 27 years because of the time he has already spent in jail.]; chief editor of a newspaper, Hassan Ngeze, was sentenced to life in prison. This is the first time that the international community has acknowledged that using the media to incite hatred is the same as crimes of genocide.
Falun Gong practitioners have also filed a lawsuit in the Northern District Court for Illinois against the former head of state of China Jiang Zemin for crimes of genocide. Although the Chicago court rejected the complaint on reasons of immunity as "Head of State," the Falun Gong plaintiffs appealed to the 7th Circuit Court, which began the appeals process in May of this year.
In addition to Jiang Zemin, several Falun Gong practitioners have also sued other Chinese officials such as Bo Xilai, the former governor of Liaoning Province and China's current Minister of Commerce. During Mr. Bo's tenure of office in Liaoning Province, the province came in first in terms of the severity of the persecution of Falun Gong in China.
These legal actions taken by several Falun Gong practitioners indicate the following: that, given the circumstances when Jiang Zemin's regime persecutes Falun Gong and because there is no legal justice in China, people in free countries like the U.S., a society based on the rule of law have the right to investigate and track down those persecutors and have justice restored.
In recent years, person-to-person exchanges between China and the U.S. has been increasing day by day, and many high-ranking officials from China come to visit the U.S. Falun Gong practitioners' investigation activities are sending a clear message to those who participated in the persecution and whose hands are stained with the blood of the people, that after they committed all kinds of outrages and caused grievous misery and suffering to people in China, they simply cannot come freely to Western countries like the U.S., as if nothing had happened. As the lawyer representing the plaintiffs had stated, "This is to tell those Chinese officials who have chosen to suppress beliefs with violence that they cannot avoid responsibility, simply because they can control the state law."
According to a New York Times report from July 14, a Hawaiian Court ruled that the court agreed to the appeal and request of the Filipino people who had suffered persecution under the rule of Ferdinand Marcos, and that the US $80 million held in his name would be used as compensation for the victims.
This example has opened another venue for certain Falun Gong practitioners, because they too can now sue those Chinese officials and media personnel who have participated in the suppression of Falun Gong, and request that their illegally-obtained wealth held in the U.S. be used as compensation for the victims. According to official Chinese statistics, China attracts US $40 billion direct foreign investment per annum, and yet the amount of money fraudulently transacted [by deceptive means] overseas mounts to US $42 billion. We can see from these figures that there is much room for tracking down and affixing the responsibility of those persecutors. At least they should be made to pay, to compensate the family members of those who lost their lives or those who became disabled as a result of the persecution.
Ultimately, of course, the investigation into and tracking down of those guilty persecutors will take place in China. Once there is freedom of the press and freedom of speech in China, and when China is eventually ruled by law and with democracy, and when there are no longer a Jiang Zemin and the "610 Office," the Chinese people will not only bring to justice people like Bo Xilai and Zhao Zhizhen; they will also dig out all the historical facts and investigate and punish all the tyrants and their accomplices, so that China will become a just society.
