The Ontario superior court has said a torture lawsuit against former top Chinese leader Jiang Zemin can go forward, despite Jiang's unwillingness to accept the case. The decision was released on Monday.
"We are very happy with it [the judgment]," Kate Kempton, counsel for the plaintiffs, told The Epoch Times . "If we proceed default judgment, which means there is no defendant, then the chance there is excellent. We think the judgment will be in our favour, because if the case is not defended, the court has to accept the allegations and statement of claim as true and as factual." Kempton said she expects the court to hear the case before the end of this year.
The five plaintiffs are Ontario residents and Falun Gong practitioners. In November 2004, they sued five Chinese high-positioned officials, including Jiang Zemin, for torture and gross abuses of human rights and claimed damages of 20 million dollars.
In their statement of claim, the plaintiffs argued that the Chinese officials "acted in their private capacity…and are not entitled to immunity from suit in Canada." On March 2005, a request for service was sent to the ministry of justice in Beijing in accordance with Hague Convention.
However, the ministry refused to execute the request, saying that it would "infringe the sovereignty or security of China."
After exhausting means to serve the suit on Jiang, the plaintiffs sought an order of the Court to allow the case without the defendants' acceptance.
In the reasons for his decision, Master Benjamin Glustein acknowledged that "all reasonable steps" were taken to serve the defendants. Glustein said he also considered the interests of justice on both sides.
The plaintiffs allege that the five Chinese officials violated fundamental human rights and international law by persecuting them on the basis of their beliefs. Considering this, Glustein wrote: "The plaintiffs will not be able to pursue any of these claims unless the Court dispenses with service."
The main plaintiff, Zhang Kunlun, was a renowned sculptor and an associate professor of arts at Shandong Art University in China. He became a Canadian citizen in 1995, taking a post as a visiting scholar at McGill University. He was arrested and detained without trial in China on five occasions beginning July 1999 during the period when he was visiting his relatives there. He was tortured while in detention and finally released from labour camp in January 2001 thanks to intervention by the Canadian government, Amnesty International, and others.
The chief defendant, Jiang Zemin, was the head of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government from 1993 to 2003. Jiang made key decisions in launching the systematic persecution of Falun Gong in 1999. Just a decade earlier, he made a similar decision to crack down on democratic activists in Shanghai when he was the city's mayor.
Falun Gong is a spiritual practice that combines yoga-like exercises with teachings based on principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance, and a belief in the divine. Made public in China in 1992 by Mr. Li Hongzhi, the first more than fifty classes of Falun Gong were endorsed by the Chinese authorities, who viewed Falun Gong as means of reducing its health care burden.
But the practice fell out of favour with some leaders, including Jiang, after government surveys showed the practice had attracted 70-100 million adherents, a number more than that of communist party members. A violent crackdown was launched in July of 1999 and continues to this day.
The Falun Dafa Information Center, a non-profit organization registered in New York State that monitors the persecution of Falun Gong, has verified the details of more than 2300 Falun Gong deaths at the hands of the communist regime but says the actual number is likely much higher.
The other defendants named in the claim are former executive vice-premier Li Lanqing, secretary of the communist party's political and legislative affairs committee Luo Gan, deputy minister of public security Liu Jing, and Wang Maolin, who was the deputy leader of the communist party's leadership team of political propaganda work.
Kempton believes that a victory in this case would be a huge boost for Chinese human rights efforts. She hopes the case will make more people aware of human rights violations in China and add to the pressure on the Chinese regime to stop the persecution of Falun Gong.