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Critics view “hitting the black” as illegal and unconstitutional
Li Heping, a Beijing human rights lawyer, said that it is illegal for the Chongqing authorities to make a key effort out of forced labor detentions. He told The Epoch Times that it is a very serious matter and an aberration to send so many people to forced labor camps. The forced labor system is itself illegal and unconstitutional and is a sinister law that should be abolished, he said.
Beijing attorney Xu Yanyi told The Epoch Times that the campaign is an extreme political measure which results in a total trampling of democracy, the rule of law, and human rights. He further commented that it is a criminal action that should be exposed by the media and investigated by attorneys and the media alike.
“For example, the Supreme People's Procuratorate has the legal responsibility to monitor and make corrections,” he said. “The local government has that responsibility, too.”
He suggested that the public take the matter seriously and organize protests to hold those who have trampled the law accountable.
Qiu Feng, a Chinese scholar of constitutional law, said the “hitting the black” campaign is a political movement that is above the law.
When interviewed by Radio France Internationale, he said, “To a great extent, the courts and the Procuratorate did not observe the legal process,” regarding Chongqing authorities conducting large-scale arrests of the so-called “gangsters.”
A fierce political movement every ten years
The Chinese communist regime has followed the pattern of launching a political movement every 10 years. Heng notes that after the Cultural Revolution there were the mass arrests of democracy activists in 1989, of Falun Gong adherents since 1999, and of gangsters and corrupt officials in the “hitting the black” campaign in 2009.
In each political movement, the regime used its propaganda machine as a powerful weapon—this can be clearly seen in the efforts to defame and persecute Falun Gong adherents in the past ten years.
We are now seeing the same tactic in the “hitting the black” campaign. The cases against the high-profile people, including prominent defense attorney Li Zhuang and former deputy police chief and director of the municipality's justice bureau Wen Qian, were sensationalized by the press and tried by the public before they were ruled on by the court. Bombardment by the mass media is a typical way of handling criminal cases in a political movement, according to Ma.
In fact, Heng contended, “No political movement under the Chinese communist’s rule ever followed the law, and it would not be counted as a political movement if it did follow the law.”
Read the original Chinese article
