Lawsuits Pile Up in China Against Former Head Jiang Zemin

Bay Area Falun Gong practitioners gather at the Chinese Consulate on Laguna St. on July 1 to support lawsuits against dictator Jiang Zemin. Mark Cao/Epoch Times

San Francisco—Over 200 Bay Area Falun Gong practitioners gathered for a rally in front of the Chinese Consulate on Laguna St. in San Francisco on Wednesday, July 1, calling for the Consulate to support an unprecedented wave of lawsuits against Jiang Zemin, leader of the Chinese Communist Party from 1989–2002. Jiang is widely known for having initiated a campaign of terror against Falun Gong.

As part of the tactics used to eliminate the spiritual practice, Jiang employed the largest propaganda network in the world to launch a campaign of lies and slander targeting the practitioners and their beliefs. Joined with the propaganda were mass detentions, brainwashing, and torture. Thousands have died in labor camps and detention centers, and researchers estimate tens of thousands have died from forced, live organ harvesting.

Several provisions of China’s Supreme People’s Court took effect on May 1, stating that the courts will now accept written complaints without exception, in order to protect citizens’ legal right to sue. These complaints cannot be automatically rejected as they were in the past. As a result, a flood of lawsuits has come in against Jiang Zemin.

According to Minghui.org, a website that monitors and reports events relating to Falun Gong in China, more than 23,000 lawsuits have been filed against Jiang since the new law’s inception, with hundreds or thousands more recorded daily.

At the rally, speakers Yu Yang, Tang Liquan, Wang Yunbo, Chen ZhengDa, and Han Hua recounted their horrific experiences of persecution while in China. They have all filed suits. Other speakers included former 1989 Tiananmen Square-uprising student leader Tang Baiqiao.

The rally called for these lawsuits to be processed, which can lead to the arrest and conviction of Jiang for crimes against humanity.

“The time for justice has come,” said Jollia Xiong, one of the organizers of the gathering. “Recent history has not been favorable for dictators, and it will not be with Jiang Zemin. His days are numbered.”