(Minghui.org) Since the beginning of 2016, 2,000 residents in Cangzhou City, Hebei Province, have signed and/or fingerprinted a petition calling for the prosecution of former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin for initiating the persecution of Falun Gong.
Under Jiang's campaign that started in 1999, Falun Gong practitioners nationwide have been arrested, tortured, and even killed for refusing to renounce their faith.
The petition letter listed Jiang's offenses as crimes against humanity:
Brief Overview of the Persecution
In 1999, Jiang launched the persecution against Falun Gong and established the 610 Office, an extralegal agency tasked solely with eradicating Falun Gong.
Jiang utilized the armed forces, police, and the legal system and allocated a large sum of government funds to carry out the suppression campaign. His directive was “to ruin practitioners' reputations, cut off their financial resources, and destroy them physically.”
The campaign included a propaganda campaign using state-controlled media to incite hatred against Falun Gong practitioners.
As a result, countless practitioners have suffered mental and physical torture at the hands of the communist regime. According to the Minghui website, thousands have died as a result of the persecution. The exact number is unknown, due to censorship by the Chinese authorities.
Background
In 1999, Jiang Zemin, as head of the Chinese Communist Party, overrode other members of the Politburo Standing Committee and launched the violent suppression of Falun Gong.
The persecution has led to the deaths of many Falun Gong practitioners over the past 16 years. More have been tortured for their belief and even killed for their organs. Jiang Zemin is directly responsible for the inception and continuation of the brutal persecution.
Under his personal direction, the Communist regime established an extralegal security organization, the 610 Office, on June 10, 1999. The organization overrides police forces and the judicial system in carrying out Jiang's directive regarding Falun Gong: to ruin their reputations, cut off their financial resources, and destroy them physically.
Chinese law allows its citizens to be plaintiffs in criminal cases, and many practitioners are now exercising that right to file criminal complaints against the former dictator.
