(Minghui.org) Sixteen years after Jiang Zemin, the former head of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), launched the brutal persecution of Falun Gong in China, practitioners who have endured the countless injustices are finally exercising their right to pursue litigation.
Since May 28, more than 800 lawsuits from Falun Gong practitioners around China were sent to the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate. These cases against Jiang aim to restore justice in China's society and represent the will of China's people.
The increasing number of lawsuits from Falun Gong practitioners caused some members of Jiang's clique to panic. Some of his followers had practitioners arrested as they attempted to mail indictments to the courts, and others mobilized local police to block the mail from reaching the courts.
In Bin County in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, the police department ordered post offices and express mail services to reject any mail from Falun Gong practitioners.
Post office workers in Macheng in Hubei Province illegally examined mail to make sure they did not contain indictments against Jiang Zemin.
The police in Jinchang City in Gansu Province arrested five Falun Gong practitioners Fan Yongcheng, Wang Zefang, Wang Yongfang, Wang Yukang and Wang Lifeng from a post office in two separate incidents. They police also confiscated their indictments.
The three locales mentioned are notorious for persecuting Falun Gong practitioners. For more than a decade, local Communist Party officials and police have committed serious crimes against Falun Gong practitioners, including torturing them, stealing their personal property, and pressuring their employers to terminate them.
It's out of great compassion that practitioners sue Jiang Zemin instead of targeting these lower-level perpetrators. It is practitioners' hope that those involved in carrying out Jiang's policy of persecution will still have an opportunity to turn around and make up for their heinous crimes.
Striving to follow the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, Falun Gong practitioners are China's most compassionate and lawful citizens. Despite the obvious benefits Falun Gong brought to Chinese society, such as improved health and moral standards, Jiang utilized the entire state apparatus to inflict the most inhumane treatment upon practitioners. Unlawful imprisonment is commonplace, as are physical and psychological torture and brainwashing.
In China, citizens have the right to file criminal complaints. The System Reform Opinions issued by the Supreme People's Court on May 1 of this year also stated, “In order to guarantee the rights of litigants, and effectively resolve problems encountered by masses of people with 'Filing difficulty' problems, the court system has reformed the filing review and change registration system... the court must accept the case according to law, and no unit or individual shall use any excuse to obstruct the court from accepting the case.”
While we strongly condemn the recent crimes where members of Jiang's group blocked criminal complaints against him from reaching the courts, we hope that those who have assisted Jiang in carrying out crimes against Falun Gong practitioners will turn their actions around and start to make up for their crimes.
Falun Gong practitioners are determined to bring Jiang, as well as his accomplices, to justice.