[Stage Instructions: One Judge will speak and appear. Behind him will be chairs with huge placards with the names of the below mentioned Judges.]
Bailiff: All rise for the members of the International Criminal Tribunal -- the Judge of the International Tribunal of Rwanda, the Judge for the trial of Pinochet, and the Judge for the trial of Milosevic. Please be seated. The Court shall now proceed.
Judge: In the case of the People of China versus Jiang Zemin, the people of China have charged Chinese dictator Jiang Zemin with, among others, conspiracy to destroy the spiritual practice of Falun Dafa, torture, abuse of authority, genocide, and crimes against humanity. Prosecutor, please be prepared to make your opening argument.
Prosecutor: Ladies and Gentleman, Honourable members of the Judicial Panel, members of the Press. I am here today on behalf of 100 million Chinese practitioners of Falun Dafa, their fellow practitioners overseas, their families, business associates, classmates, friends and neighbours. We are here to commence one of the most important criminal trials of the 21st century.
The scale and scope of this case is vast -- spanning the landscape of Mainland China and beyond as well as involving millions of souls. And yet this is also a case about a personal vendetta, the distorted attempt of one man, and one man alone, to destroy a peaceful spiritual practice.
Let us think for a moment, ladies and gentlemen, what it means to "destroy" a spiritual practice that has no houses of worship, no formal institutions, no coffers, no membership rosters -- just millions of citizens of all ages and walks of life who study the teachings and practise simple exercises in the parks. To destroy Falun Gong, he must try to literally change the minds of those who believe in it, forcibly pluck out their core beliefs. Failing that, he must destroy the physical persons of the practitioners themselves.
As you will see from this trial, Ladies and Gentlemen, Jiang's approach has been as calculated and systematic as it has been brutal. On June 10, 1999, he established what is called the "610 Office," an organization that he gave the power to over-ride China's constitution and all its laws and regulations. The organisation -- or shall we call it the "610 system," since it is a system that extends from the core of the Chinese power structure all the way down to the smallest local village--a system that is specialised in persecuting Falun Gong and carrying out state-terrorist policies--a Chinese "Gestapo," if you will.
As for how to deal with Falun Gong practitioners, Jiang Zemin ordered his Gestapo to implement a three-pronged approach: to "smear their reputations, bankrupt them financially, and destroy them physically."
It's no simple matter, this matter of ruining people's reputations. It helps, of course, when, as a dictator, Jiang owns the media, the security and police apparatus, as well as the judicial system. It means having reporters fabricate stories demonising the practice and all those associated with it 7 days a week in newspapers, radio stations, and TV. It means portraying practitioners as worse than common criminals or even murderers. It means throwing them into mental hospitals so they must bear the stigma of mental illness and insanity. It means discrimination every way you turn. Landlords don't dare rent their apartment to your family anymore. Friends are suddenly no longer to be found, fearful of "trouble" or of being tainted. Husbands divorce their wives because of the pressure.
The matter of driving people to financial ruin in a totalitarian state where salaries and pensions are in the hands of Party officials is not so complicated, but the results are no less devastating. Practitioners are fired from their jobs and students expelled from school for keeping their faith. Others are made homeless because the police are waiting for them at their workplace and apartment. They have nowhere to go, nothing to eat, and nothing to wear in the freezing Northern winters. Sometimes to add insult to injury, families are forced to pay thousands of dollars to the labour camps and brainwashing centres for "room and board."
As for "destroy them physically," the 610 Office certainly took their orders to heart. More than 750 practitioners are confirmed dead from this persecution, with actual estimates closer to 1,600. Their brazen use of violence comes from the top -- Jiang personally sent down orders that "the death of Falun Gong practitioners from beating is nothing but shall be counted as suicide and the body shall be directly cremated without investigating the person's identification." Imagine the despair and anger of a family who knows nothing of what happened to their loved one and has literally nowhere to turn, for the authorities claim they have not killed a single practitioner -- they were all supposedly "suicides" or death by "natural causes." And sometimes death can almost be a relief, if the alternative is unending torture and torment. Police guards burning the flesh, the mouth, the genitals with electric batons, hammering metal spikes under fingernails, whipping with spiked bamboo sticks, beating with metal clubs, sexual humiliation and rape... the list goes on.
As you will see, Ladies and Gentlemen, this case is about a nationwide campaign of terror, a systematic and brutal effort to break the will of good people who seek to practice virtue, those who believe in Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance.
It is a case about the machinations of one man who abused his authority as head of state, who violated the laws of his own country, who trampled the freedoms so clearly written into the Constitution of the People's Republic of China, who used his position as chief of the militia to force an unwilling government, an unwilling Party, and an unwilling people to participate in some of the worst crimes of the 20th and 21st centuries. It is a case about brainwashing, about the use of psychotropic drugs, about the use of torture devices to control the minds of the people. It is about the breakdown of civil and moral society and the rupture of ties among families, friends and co-workers. It is a case about the injustice, cruelty and jealousy of Jiang Zemin, who himself designed, created, and implemented a persecution unmatched in history.
This case is also about the spirit and courage of all practitioners of Falun Gong, and especially those in China who refused to renounce their spiritual beliefs in spite of the terrible price they knew they would have to pay -- loss of liberty, loss of dignity, painful and unbearable torture, and in many cases death.
In the People of China versus Jiang, defendant Jiang has been formally charged with a violation of the most sacred norms, laws, and mores of civilised nations. The evidence is voluminous indeed, including the testimonies of many of the victims of the Jiang regime's crimes, the written affidavits of millions of other victims in China, the United States, Europe and Asia, and such tangible evidence as models and pictures of the torture equipment utilised in detention centres, labour camps and mental hospitals.
It is not often in the affairs of man, that we find ourselves in the shadowy presence of true evil embodied in one being. It is even less often that such a man is brought to trial by the people of an entire nation. The defendant is charged by the people of China with crimes of such magnitude as to give us pause as we try to understand how such things could occur. How could a single man with the aid of perhaps two or three co-conspirators manage to abuse his power as head of state to violate the Chinese constitution, the criminal law, the civil law, and all ius cogens norms of international law, the law of nations, morality and the common good? Perhaps it has to do with a Communist system, a dictatorship that has used repression of thought as its way of remaining in power. Perhaps it has to do with its system of propaganda, economic and social leverage, and terror that has controlled a nation of people through an all-pervasive fear, a nation of people who have lived under the repression of tyranny for so long that they think it's normal. And perhaps they have long given up trying to defend virtue and what is right and good. Of course we can only begin to answer such questions today.
But in the search for answers in this historic case, I believe will come some wisdom, an appreciation of the principles, and the practitioners, of Falun Dafa, and, of course, a guilty verdict for the defendant.
Judges -- Mr. Defense Counsel, you may now begin your opening statement.
Defense Counsel -- Defense waives an opening statement your honours but reserves the right to present when the Prosecution rests.
Judges -- Prosecutor, you may now call your first witness.
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(The rest of the script will be published in installments on Clearharmony over the coming days)
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