On the 24th November 2003, Germany’s famous criminal lawyer Wolfgang Kaleck held a press conference with the German Falun Dafa Association in the capital city of Berlin. The main purpose of this conference was to announce that a lawsuit has been launched in Germany against the ex-president of China Jiang Zemin charging him with torture crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, along with fifteen other accomplices in his persecution of Falun Gong. Representatives of German Non-Governmental Organisations came to the conference by invitation. Several German and Chinese media organisations came to report on the event.
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By launching this lawsuit against Jiang, Germany follows in the footsteps of many other countries, including America, Belgium, Spain and Taiwan. The representative in this case is famous German criminal lawyer Wolfgang Kaleck. He is known in legal circles for prosecuting Argentina’s dictator for crimes against German victims. The complainants in his latest lawsuit are forty Falun Gong practitioners living in Germany, Ireland, Australia, Canada and America, as well as the German Falun Dafa Association. Those indicted were Jiang Zemin, Luo Gan, Li Lanqing, Liaoning Province official Xia Deren, ex-Mayor of Beijing Liu Qi, Chief Policeman of Hubei Province Police Station Zhao Zhifei, and sixteen thugs from Beijing’s Tuanhe and Chongweng labour camps who are directly involved in persecuting Dafa practitioners.
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The main evidence for this lawsuit was the International Penal Law established in Germany last June. This law regulates that any act of genocide happening outside Germany can be tried in Germany, and the court can sentence perpetrators with anything up to life imprisonment.
This is the second time that Jiang Zemin has been on the receiving end of a lawsuit for genocide in Germany. The first time was when a human rights organisation called “The Persecuted Race” sued him last April when he visited Germany. Back then he was China’s president, with the privilege of diplomatic immunity. In discussing differences between this lawsuit and the last one, the lawyer said: “Now Jiang Zemin is no longer the President of China. If he comes to Germany, he won’t have the protection of immunity any more.” The lawsuit describes in detail the persecution that fifteen Chinese Falun Gong practitioners have suffered.
After the conference, several journalists interviewed the lawyer, the prosecutors and the representatives of NGOs who were there to support the lawsuit against Jiang.
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