The Compromised Situation of Judges and Prosecutors in China

(Minghui.org) According to recent reports, during the illegal court trials of Falun Gong practitioners in China, judges are doing their best to hinder lawyers from entering not-guilty pleas for their practitioner clients. Why? Because through the lawyers' defense, the prosecutors and judges have all gradually come to understand that their show trials of Falun Gong practitioners are illegal, and the “evidence” concocted by the Public Prosecutors is at best far-fetched or even laughable. Thus, the judges have lost their confidence in the system, yet continue to play along, behaving more and more reprehensibly. For whom are they perpetuating this farce?

Under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rule, the prosecutors and judges know that the 610 Office and Political and Judiciary Committee will always maintain control over them, and personnel from the Party committee are constantly monitoring court personnel and assessing their performance based on how closely they follow CCP policy. They know very well that they must keep the farce up, and that the slightest slip in terms of action and words will destroy their career and material benefits instantly.

Under such intense pressure, the prosecutors and judges are forced to choose between following the rule of law or becoming the regime's puppets or accomplices. Yet, when faced with the lawyers' righteous defense, they are so embarrassed that they have to disregard the law and react with hooligan behavior to display their "Party spirit.”

Going through the motions

In these trials, the standard cross-examination is an exercise in only going through the motions. In fact, the cross-examination is typically interrupted by the judges, or, the Public Prosecutors skirt the issue entirely. Xie Delu, Public Prosecutor from the Jinchuan District Procuratorate in Jinchang City, Gansu Province, has said to practitioners, "Even if you don't plead guilty, I will frame you!" Cheng Guang, the Jinchuan District court judge, has threatened Falun Gong practitioners before the trial, ordering them not to speak.

Illegal evidence

The Jinchuan District Court in Jinchang City, Gansu Province, has stated that the following items can be construed as incriminating evidence: "Cyber evidence includes: animation tutorials on encryption, Nero 9 software, without-trace data erasure software, and virtual disk programs." They labeled all of these common software programs as "anti-forensic programs," and declared that "the animation tutorial on encryption is proof of criminal activity."

The indictment by the Jinchuan District Procuratorate stated, "The Public Internet Security Division of the Jinchang City Police Department has detected that the defendant has successfully burned 58 disks and has edited and changed 47 messages containing sensitive words including 'Jinchang,' 'Dafa,' 'kidnap,' 'evil,' 'withdraw from the Party,' etc."

When a Falun Gong practitioner went to the Jinchuan Road Police Station to ask for his computer back after it had been confiscated, the officers claimed, "We can't return it to you because there is without-trace data erasure software on your computer."

“Evidence” obtained through illegal means should be illegal in the first place, but after approval from the Jinchang City Party Committee and the Political and Judiciary Committee, illegally-acquired evidence became legal. The National Security Bureau also colludes with the telecom sector to monitor Falun Gong practitioners' Internet activities, and obtains evidence illegally by remote control and Trojan planting.

Illegal search and seizure

Around 10 o'clock on the morning of May 12, 2012, five unidentified people broke into Falun Gong practitioner Mr. Wang Shushen's house and searched it. When Wang Shushen asked them who they were, they said they were police officers. Mr. Wang asked them to show their search warrant, but they refused. Mr. Wang then tried to chase them out and warned them that what they were doing was against the law. At that point they showed their police IDs and immediately handcuffed him. The search warrant was delivered at 4 p.m., many hours after the house had been searched. When Mr. Wang refused to sign it, the officers video recorded the search warrant in order to show that what they had done was lawful.

During the trial, public prosecutor Zhao Kai said, "From our search of Internet activity on his computer, Wang Shushen visited the Minghui website over 190 times. Additionally, according to the verification conducted by the Lanzhou City Police Technique School, Minghui Weekly was printed from Wang Shushen's printer." When the lawyer asked to present the verification serial number, the public prosecutor kept nervously wiping sweat and kept silent.

The "Police Department Internet Security Division" provides various kinds of “cyber evidence” to support the persecution of Falun Gong. They often inflate the quantity so as to meet the 610 Office quotas: If the evidence has not met the expected number, they inflate the numbers by counting a book's pages, or count an e-book by its bytes. By doing so, they are rewarded with money and promotions.

******

We would say to the prosecutors and judges in China: Faced with such a compromised situation, why you don't you think about your own futures and give yourselves a way out of this predicament? We urge you to read the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party and Dissolving the Party Culture . Make use of anti-censorship software so that you can read the truth on the Internet and find out for yourselves what is going on. The wisest path for you to take is to immediately stop your role in the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners, and declare your withdrawal from the CCP and its affiliate organizations, so as to entirely free yourselves from the shackles of the Party culture.

The Internet Security Division of the Jinchang City Police Department Liu Changfu: [phone] Zhang Shu: [phone] Xu Shihan: [phone] Xu Lixin: [phone], [phone] Gong Hailong: [phone]

For additional information, please refer to related article: “Visibly Nervous Prosecutor Sweats as Attorneys Plead Not-guilty for Teacher Mr. Wang Shushen” http://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2013/4/1/138733.html