An Argentina judge made a landmark decision last Dec. 17 in ordering the arrest of China’s former communist chairman Jiang Zemin and another top party official for “crimes against humanity” in the persecution of the Falun Gong spiritual practice in China.
Federal Judge Octavio Aráoz de Lamadrid asked Interpol to issue an arrest warrant against Jiang and former security chief Luo Gan after four years of investigating charges of torture and genocide against the Falun Gong group.
In an interview from his office in Buenos Aires recently, Lamadrid, who stepped down as a judge shortly after his ruling, said that taking on the case was simply something a judge does “because it is his duty.”
The criminal case was filed in 2005 by a lawyer on behalf of Liwei Fu, the head of the Falun Dafa Association in Argentina, when Luo Gan was on a private trip in Argentina. The case was accepted by the Argentina Federal Criminal Court and assigned to Judge Lamadrid to handle.
The ruling set a historic legal precedent for Argentina through its reliance on principles of extraterritoriality to prosecute foreign defendants for crimes against humanity.
Lamadrid, 40, grew up in Buenos Aires in a family of judges. His grandfather was President of the Court under the government of three former presidents. His father, now a lawyer, was a judge for 15 years, and all his brothers are also lawyers.
“The complaint was accepted basically under the principle of universal justice, under which all civilized countries—including China because she signed those treaties—are responsible for. That is, giving any citizen of the world access to justice to be able to go to a court and claim his or her rights,” he said.
The judge’s decision was based on evidence that included the oral testimonies of 17 victims of torture and other forms of persecution. He also took into account the testimony of doctors, United Nations’ reports, and research by human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
“The U.N. reports are very convincing,” said Lamadrid.
Lamadrid also relied on the testimony of two Canadians—David Kilgour, former Canadian Secretary of State for Asia Pacific, and David Matas, an award-winning human rights lawyer—for their investigation of large-scale organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners for profit by the regime. The two recently were nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for their work.
Through studying the evidence, Lamadrid said he was “surprised” by the magnitude of the torture and the extent the Chinese regime goes to in carrying out its campaign of persecution.
“They fine-tuned a very clear method,” he said. “All this structure, all this organization is what most surprised me. We are talking about something that happens far away from us, which we do not see, which we cannot touch, but there are a whole lot of people who are subject to torture, and so many things are happening to them. When you can see that behind it there’s a system, it is very shocking.”
Jiang Zemin, who both held the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and the title of Chinese President, set up an extrajudicial agency—the 610 Office—to specifically handle Falun Gong and assigned Luo to head it.
Judge Lamadrid described the 610 Office as a “Chinese Gestapo with the objective of exterminating thousands of innocent people (including women, the elderly, and children) under the control, direction, supervision, and coordination of Luo Gan, the accused.”
“The genocidal strategy … comprised a broad range of actions arranged in total contempt for life and human dignity,” Lamadrid wrote in his decision.
“The designated purpose—the eradication of Falun Gong—was used to justify any means used. Therefore, torment, torture, disappearances, deaths, brainwashing, psychological torture were everyday occurrences in the persecution of its practitioners,” he said in the decision.
Under the ruling, if Jiang or Luo travel to a country that has an extradition treaty with Argentina, they may be detained, transferred to Argentina, and brought before the court.
Jiang is widely acknowledged as the initiator and primary driver behind the campaign launched in 1999 to “eradicate” Falun Gong, which had about 70 million adherents in China at the time.
The regime’s “first big mistake,” said Lamadrid, is that it freely admits to having banned the practice of Falun Gong.
“If they want to persecute practitioners of a religion and prohibit it by law, they are showing the entire world that they are carrying out a religious persecution, which is prohibited by all the conventions signed by all countries around the world, including China.”
He explained that if China were a signatory to the Rome Statute, the regime could be brought before the International Criminal Court.
The Falun Dafa Information Center, which monitors the persecution of Falun Gong, has detailed the deaths of 3,000 practitioners. The persecution against the group is also commonly cited as among the most severe human rights abuses in China.
Regarding the ruling, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu accused Falun Gong of using “foreign court proceedings to bring false charges” in order to damage China’s relations with other countries.
According to VOANews.com, Jiang curtly suggested that the Argentine government “properly handle this.”
Lamadrid said the fact that the regime commented means his decision has rattled them.
“We are talking about the arrest of a former president and former important official. They are not even acting officials—the Chinese government could have ignored the matter. That a spokesperson expresses the displeasure of the Chinese government is a sign that it is something that pains the Chinese government. This would not have happened if it had not affected them.”
Dozens of civil and criminal cases of torture or genocide were filed against Jiang Zemin in various countries between 2002 and 2005, including Canada, U.S., Australia, Spain and Germany.
The ruling in Argentina follows a similar decision in Spain in November in which five top communist leaders were indicted for their roles in the persecution of Falun Gong by the Spanish National Court.
In that case, Spanish judge Ismael Moreno accepted charges of genocide and torture against five Chinese officials, including Jiang, after a two-year investigation. However, the Spanish case was less far-reaching in that it did not apply the principle of universal justice.
Lamadrid said he hopes the ruling will eventually have the effect of bringing about change in China.
“What I did is a very little step. I hope it has some effects. I hope that this will make China recognize that they are in the wrong and become more pluralistic and open,” he said.
With files from New Tang Dynasty Television.
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