Former Top Aide Warns China Not To Interfere With Spanish Court

By Xin Lin

A former top ruling Chinese Communist Party aide has warned Beijing not to interfere with the proceedings of a Spanish court, which recently named former Chinese leaders as suspects in a human rights abuse case involving a Spanish national of Tibetan descent.
Former Chinese president Jiang Zemin and former premier Li Peng could face arrest when traveling overseas after the court named them, along with three other former top officials, as suspects in a human rights case brought in 2006 by two Tibetan campaign groups and a Tibetan monk with Spanish nationality.
Under Spanish law, suspects can be tried for human rights abuses committed in other countries, if a Spanish national is named as a victim.
The officials are accused of human rights abuses in the Himalayan region. 

The same court last month indicted former president Hu Jintao for genocide in Tibet.
Arrest warrants will now be issued, which could result in the former leaders’ arrest in certain countries.
Former top party aide Bao Tong, who has been under house arrest in Beijing since serving a seven-year jail term in the wake of the 1989 student-led pro-democracy movement, warned Beijing not to overstep its sovereignty.
“I think that the way in which a Spanish court handles cases is an internal matter for Spain, and we shouldn’t interfere,” Bao said, in a reference to Beijing’s insistence on the principle of non-interference in the domestic affairs of other nations, a core tenet of its foreign policy.
“If other people are making it up, then why don’t you make the facts public? That’s the only way to deal with people concocting stories.”
“The word ‘fabrication’ by itself isn’t going to make things clearer,” said Bao, who is a vocal advocate of political reform for the Communist Party.

International attention
Chinese officials said this week that they had sought clarification directly from the Spanish government, but hit out at the idea of arrest warrants on former leaders for human rights abuses.
China expressed “strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition” to the Tibetan support groups in Spain for “repeatedly manipulating the issue,” foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei told a regular news briefing in Beijing on Thursday.
Buddhist monk Thubten Wangchen, a Spanish national of Tibetan origin, has said that the aim of the lawsuit is to focus international attention on the suffering of Tibetans under Chinese rule, rather than to arrest any particular individual.
Beijing-based rights lawyer Mo Shaoping said those who perpetrate crimes against humanity, including genocide, should be pursued through the international justice system.
“The crime of genocide is a crime against universal values that should be pursued internationally if it can’t be pursued in the country in which it occurred,” Mo said.
“It doesn’t matter whether [the suspects] were in charge at the time; if their actions amounted to crimes against universal values, then this is totally in keeping with a legal stance, if international courts pursue it,” he said.
In 1998, former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London after a warrant was issued by former Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzon.

Beijing dare
Top Chinese adviser Zhu Weiqun, who heads the ethnic and religious affairs committee of China’s top advisory body to parliament, said the case was absurd.
In comments published by Chinese state media on Tuesday before the ruling, Zhu warned that “enormous embarrassment” would follow any attempt to pursue the case against former Chinese leaders.
“Go ahead if you dare,” Zhu said.
Exiled Tibetan groups are campaigning for the return of the Dalai Lama and self-rule for their region.
Demonstrations and protests challenging Beijing’s rule have continued in Tibetan-populated areas of China since widespread protests swept the region in 2008.
A total of 123 Tibetans in China have set themselves ablaze in self-immolation protests calling for Tibetan freedom, with another six setting fire to themselves in India and Nepal.

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Court ruling on Tibet raises concerns over Spain-China relations

Five former Chinese leaders now face the risk of detention should they travel to Spain or to countries that recognise Spanish arrest orders. 

By Tobias Buck in Madrid and Simon Rabinovitch in Shanghai

The Spanish National Court (Spain's National Court) has issued a warrant for the arrest of Jiang Zemin and four accomplices, suspected in the genocide of the population of Tibet.

The Dirty Five: Wanted Chinese leaders

There is rising concern in Spain over a diplomatic and economic backlash from China, after a criminal court in Madrid called for the arrest of five former Chinese leaders for their role in crimes of genocide in Tibet.
The ruling, handed down last week, is aimed at Jiang Zemin, the former Chinese president, Li Peng, the former prime minister, and three other high-ranking ex-officials. 

The men are said to have held “political or military responsibility” in periods when the Chinese authorities have committed human rights abuses against the Tibetan population.
All five now face the risk of detention should they travel to Spain or to countries that recognise Spanish arrest orders. 

However, former Chinese top officials almost never travel abroad, which means it is highly unlikely that the five former officials will ever appear in court in Madrid.
Beijing reacted angrily to the move all the same, denouncing the Tibetan support groups in Spain that initiated the case. 

The Chinese authorities called in the Spanish ambassador last Thursday to convey their displeasure, a message that was repeated at a meeting between Chinese diplomats and Spanish government officials in Madrid last week.
Hong Lei, China’s foreign ministry spokesman, said Beijing had sought clarification from Spain about the ruling. 

He added that China expressed “strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition” to Tibetan activist groups in Spain for “repeatedly manipulating the issue”.
José Manuel García Margallo, the foreign minister, has insisted publicly that Madrid has no desire to interfere in the country’s judicial process. 

But Spanish diplomats made clear the government is seriously concerned about the impact the spat could have on the country’s normally trouble-free relationship with a key trading partner.
“This is a very complicated situation,” one Spanish diplomat said.
Analysts said the diplomatic rift came at a particularly awkward time for Spain, which is hoping to deepen its economic relationship with China in the midst of a fragile economic recovery.
“Spain is trying to attract Chinese investment and big Spanish companies are trying to establish a foothold in China,” said Charles Powell, the director of the Real Instituto Elcano, a Madrid-based think-tank. 

“Given that the Chinese authorities have a major say in who wins contracts and who doesn’t Spain obviously fears that the Chinese authorities will not take kindly to this initiative [by the court].”
The criminal complaint that started the case was filed by a Tibetan group seven years ago. 

It made use of Spain’s relatively broad universal jurisdiction provisions, which allow judges to pursue criminal cases even if they took place outside Spain.
There was next to no coverage of the arrest orders or Mr Hong’s response in Chinese state media, suggesting that Beijing is itself trying to contain fallout by limiting public discussion.
Speaking before the arrest orders, Zhu Weiqun, head of the religious affairs committee in the Chinese parliament’s advisory body, angrily denounced foreign courts for accepting such cases.

“If a country’s courts accept these cases, all it is doing is inviting enormous embarrassment for itself,” he said. “Go ahead if you dare.”

Spain´s universal jurisdiction provisions have previously been used by investigating judges to pursue Israeli officials for war crimes in the Gaza Strip. 

They also formed the basis for a high-profile Spanish attempt in 1998 to prosecute Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator.
Stung by the repeated diplomatic and political backlash against such legal moves, Spain tightened its universal jurisdiction provisions in 2009. 

The Chinese case, however, predates that change.

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Spanish Court Issues Arrest Warrants for Ex-Chinese Leaders

Orders Follow Eight-Year Probe into Human Rights Abuses in Tibet. Jiang Zemin and Other Officials Could Face Arrest if They Travel to Spain or Other Countries that Have an Extradition Treaty with Spain.
By MATT MOFFETT

The Wild Bunch : Wanted for genocide, crimes against humanity, torture and terrorism.

MADRID—Spain's national court, acting on a suit filed by Spanish Tibet groups, issued arrest warrants for former Chinese President Jiang Zemin and four other top authorities as part of an investigation into human rights abuses in Tibet.

The arrest orders follow an eight-year investigation, launched by the court on the basis of a principle known as universal jurisdiction, claiming that China had committed genocide in Tibet. 

The court said there was sufficient evidence against the five officials to have them appear for questioning.

The court orders means the former Chinese leader and other officials could face arrest if they travel to Spain or other countries that have an extradition treaty with Spain. 

Legal experts said that there was a highly remote possibility of the warrants ever actually being executed but that the ruling would have symbolic impact in casting a further spotlight on human-rights issues in Tibet.
Besides Jiang Zemin, warrants were issued for former Chinese Prime Minister Li Peng; Qiao Shi, a longtime police and intelligence official; Chen Kuiyan, ex-Communist Party secretary in Tibet; and Peng Peiyun, China's former minister of family planning. 

The court said it issued the warrants based on the "existence of signs of participation" in abuses "given the political or military responsibility of each one of them during the long period in which the facts that are under investigation occurred."
At a daily press briefing on Wednesday, China Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Beijing was seeking clarity from Spain on the matter. 

Alan Cantos, president of the Tibet Support Committee, a Spanish nongovernmental group that was one of the plaintiffs, hailed the news of the warrants. 

He said the decision was significant "in terms of the truth coming out and winning a little bit of justice and accountability where there had been total impunity."
The suit had accused Chinese officials of conducting "generalized and systematic" oppression against the population of Tibet. 

Among the witnesses who appeared before the national court was American doctor Blake Kerr, who had told the court about forced sterilizations and abortions he said he had seen working in Tibet.
The penchant of Spanish courts to aggressively pursue international human rights cases has won them plaudits from rights activists.

Spanish investigative judge Baltasar Garzón gained fame in 1998 when he ordered the arrest in London of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who was detained there for a year and a half before being released. 

Spanish courts have also involved themselves in other human-rights cases from Rwanda to Iraq.
A few years ago, Spain's government, frustrated by the diplomatic problems that its judges were causing, tried to limit their reach by imposing a requirement that there must be a clear Spanish connection for local courts to get involved.

The Tibet matter fit the new requirement because one of the plaintiffs, Tibet-born Thubten Wangchen Sherpa Sherpa, is a naturalized Spanish citizen.

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China demands clarity on Spanish Jiang Zemin arrest order

Tibetan rights groups brought the case against Jiang Zemin, Li Peng and three other Chinese officials responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity, torture and terrorism against Tibetans in the 1980s and 1990s.

AFP

Chronology of major political events in Tibet since China seized control of the territory in 1950

An Ethnic Tibetan woman watches as Chinese soldiers keep watch in Chengdu, in southwest Sichuan province, on January 27, 2012

Jiang Zemin raises his hands to vote for a report at the closing of the 18th Communist Party Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, on 14 November 2012

Beijing — China is demanding a "clarification" from Madrid after a Spanish court issued an international arrest warrant for former Chinese president Jiang Zemin over genocide in Tibet, Beijing said Wednesday.
Spain's National Court issued the warrant for the former head of state and Communist Party chief on Tuesday under the doctrine of universal jurisdiction, which allows courts to try some human rights abuses committed in other countries.
Tibetan rights groups brought the case against Jiang, former prime minister Li Peng and three other Chinese officials, alleging they were responsible for "genocide, crimes against humanity, torture and terrorism" against Tibetans in the 1980s and 1990s.
Beijing's foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said that Chinese officials had seen reports on the arrest warrant and had asked Spanish authorities for a "clarification".
Hong blamed "Tibet separatists" for using "rumours and "slander" to make "false accusations" against China.
"Such means are doomed to fail," Hong added. 

The Spanish court accepted the case because one of the plaintiffs, Tibetan exile Thubten Wangchen, has Spanish nationality, and the Chinese courts have not investigated the allegations.
It has also agreed to investigate a charge of repression in Tibet brought against China's former president Hu Jintao, who left office last year.

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Spanish court orders arrest of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin

Jiang is among five Chinese officials accused over human rights abuses in Tibet. Spain's National Court said that the five should be questioned. It must process the arrest orders via the international police organization Interpol. 

Al Jazeera and The Associated Press

Jiang Zemin and Li Peng

Hu Jintao

Qiao Shi with is a Norwegian politician Thorbjørn Johansen

Spain's National Court on Tuesday issued warrants for the arrest of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin and four other officials as part of a probe into genocide in Tibet.
The court said it accepted arguments from Spanish Tibet rights groups that international reports indicate that the five may have had a role in human rights abuses and should be questioned.
But the accused are thought unlikely to ever stand trial.
In addition to Jiang, the Chinese politicians wanted by Spain are former Prime Minister Li Peng; former security and police chief Qiao Shi; Chen Kuiyan, a former Communist Party official in Tibet; and Pen Peiyun, an ex-family planning minister. 

None has been formally charged.
Former Chinese President Hu Jintao is also under investigation, although Spain has not said it seeks his arrest.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said during a regular briefing Wednesday that Beijing firmly opposes the court's move and urged Spain to repair "the severe damage." 

Officials at the Chinese Embassy in Madrid did not immediately comment on the court's decision.
Alan Cantos, president of Spain's Tibet Support Committee, which first pressed for the investigation in 2008, expressed satisfaction with the court decision but was not overly optimistic that anyone would be brought to trial.
"It's not easy, but it's a big step," Cantos told The Associated Press. 

"They are stuck in their own country, and a competent court is pointing the finger at them. It's so they don't have it too easy."
The court must process the arrest orders via the international police organization Interpol.
Spain's legal system recognizes the universal justice principle, under which genocide suspects can be put on trial outside their home country.
The policy allowed former Judge Baltasar Garzon to try to chase the late Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

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Spanish court orders arrest of Chinese leaders including Hu Jintao

The ruling might dissuade the Chinese leaders to travel outside the PRC as they could be arrested for questioning on the crimes they are accused of. 

Phayul

China's criminals against humanity.

DHARAMSHALA – The Spanish National Court has ordered arrest warrants to be issued against give Chinese leaders, including former President and Party Secretary Jiang Zemin, for their policies in Tibet. 

The ‘ground breaking’ development as the International Campaign for Tibet calls it, comes after former Chinese president Hu Jintao’s indictment for genocide last month. 

The court gave orders to inform Hu of the indictment and question him about his policies in Tibet through the Chinese Embassy in Madrid.
Legal experts in Spain believe the ruling is potentially as significant as the arrest of Pinochet in London in 1998 after a group of Spanish lawyers put together a lawsuit against the Chilean dictator, who presided over a 17-year reign of terror and ordered foreign assassinations.
The five Chinese leaders are Jiang Zemin, former President and Party Secretary; Li Peng, Prime Minister during the repression in Tibet in the late 1980s and early 1990s (and the crackdown in Tiananmen); Qiao Shi, former head of Chinese security and responsible for the People¹s Armed Police during the martial law period in Tibet in the late 1980s; Chen Kuiyuan, Party secretary in the Tibet Autonomous Region from 1992 to 2001 (who was known for his hardline position against Tibetan religion and culture), and Deng Delyun (also known as Peng Pelyun), minister of family planning in the 1990s.
The rulings today have positively surprised Spanish legal experts working on the Tibetan law suits upholding the principle of “universal jurisdiction” a part of international law that allows courts to reach beyond national borders in cases of torture, terror and other serious international crimes perpetrated by individuals, governments or military authorities.
Analysts also say that the ruling might dissuade the Chinese leaders to travel outside the PRC as they could be arrested for questioning on the crimes they are accused of. 

All the leaders face the possibility of their overseas bank accounts being frozen.
Today’s ruling was made by the appeals court (Section 4 of the Criminal Court of Spain's National Court, the Audiencia Nacional), which is the investigative national court for major crimes such as terrorism, drug trafficking, piracy, or money laundering.
“We wish to dedicate this judicial success not only to the victims, but also to the thousands of “freedom fighters” and to the memory of all those who self-immolated in and outside Tibet, and those who risk their lives and their freedom in the face of the passivity of the international community whose silence is an accomplice to the genocide. Their sense of justice and their determination for truth is enshrined in this judicial battle that believes in these values in a non violent manner,” said Alan Cantos of CAT last month when the court decided to indict Hu Jintao.

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China, corruption and the court intrigues of Nanjing

What really lay behind the sacking of Ji Jianye, mayor of one of China's largest and booming cities?
By David Hearst

'To have called the sacked mayor Ji Jianye a Mr Big was something of an understatement.' 

For much of the week, few locals in Nanjing knew what to say to a group of foreign journalists on an exchange visit organised to show a western audience life in a part of booming China that was neither Beijing or Shanghai.
The historians talked up the city's glorious past, the six dynasties it lived through as the pre-communist capital of China. 

Software engineers pointed to a glorious future as a clean new Silicon Valley, a city with two top-class universities and an abundant supply of graduates. 

It has to be said the smog was pretty persistent.
Together they waxed lyrical with a combination of genuine local pride at a city with modern infrastructure and confected party rhetoric. 

Brilliant achievements, social development and, that ubiquitous word, harmony featured large in their presentations.
There was just one elephant in the room. 

The day we arrived, Beijing announced Nanjing's mayor had been fired. 

The city's boss had become the latest target of President Xi Jinping's anti-corruption crusade. 

It was too late to cancel the visit. 

Everyone froze.
To have called the sacked mayor, Ji Jianye, a Mr Big was something of an understatement. 

In a city with a population the size of London and in a province with more people than Britain, the former mayor had a finger in every pie.
The trouble started when he began ripping up the city's beloved plane trees to build the underground. 

Two lines have been completed, seven more are under construction and four of them will be completed by next year. 

The breakneck pace of construction earned Ji the title of "the digger", and prompted a silent march of 3,000 people.
Then there were the motorways, the railway station (the biggest reportedly in Asia), the tower blocks bearing 82,000 flats. 

They sprout like mushrooms in the once-rural hinterland of the lush Yangtze delta. 

Every day the cranes swing and bulldozers clear another footprint for a high-rise block. 

Even by China's standards, the construction boom in this once sleepy walled city is frenetic.
So when the organisation department of the central committee of the Communist party of China announced that Ji had been fired for "suspected serious disciplinary violations", and when the People's Daily put the figure for the sum that Ji had allegedly embezzled by passing construction contracts to friends at 20m yuan ($3.3m), many here greeted the news with a wry grin. 

That could only have been a fraction of the sum involved. 

The CPC, they concluded, was once again sheltering one of its own.
News of Ji's removal triggered a wave of rumour on the internet: Ji had been arrogant; he had run city hall from a luxury hotel suite; he had a bad temper and hit his aides round the head with their briefing papers.
The pall cast over a man who had still to face any charges, let alone defend himself in a court of law, spread by osmosis to the projects he promoted. 

A dodgy venture to separate rainwater from sewage water, into which millions of yuan had been poured, was suspended.
But then people started asking other questions. 

Was Ji a rotten apple, was he different from the rest of the party elite, or had he simply lost political cover? The People's Daily said that investigations into Ji were connected to a parallel probe into the richest man in Suzhou in Jiangsu province, Zhu Xingliang. 

His construction company received many of Ji's contracts. 

Ji worked for eight years as mayor and party secretary in Yangzhou, which was Jiang Zemin's hometown. The former president and head of the party often used to return for a visit and Ji became one of Jiang's proteges.
Not long ago Jiang emerged from the shadows of his retirement praising Xi Jinping as an "extraordinarily capable and wise leader". 

Observers were at the time perplexed by Jiang's lavish praise for the princeling who had displaced him. 

They speculated that one motive for doing so was to shield Jiang's supporters from Xi's anti-corruption drive. If Ji does indeed belong to that group, we now know that Jiang's efforts were in vain.
The silence about Ji's fate was broken by his former boss, Nanjing party secretary Yang Weize. 

To the foreign journalists, it was clear that Yang was a man on the rise. 

He compared his own city to Boston, where his daughter and grandchildren live. 

He was unabashed by the comparison. 

He spoke with ease about the failings of the man who just one week ago had the same relationship to him as a prime minister has to a president.
Ji was responsible for the city budget and yet ,according to Yang, removing Ji was like removing a tumour from your body. 

At the time, the operation hurts, the cool party secretary explained, but then the body recovers and leads a healthy life: "The root of Mr Ji's corruption was that he let his personal interests prevail against the people's interests. We needed to remove this person from his position, which has been done."
The legacy of Ji's removal was a good one: "The rule of law has been established. Anyone who violates the law will be punished. This case will help improve the legal environment of the city. In the past, the fairness and justice of the market was affected by corruption, but now we will be able to build a fairer and better market governed by the rules of competition."
Yang dismissed any talk of a political coup. 

Political trials belonged, the city's party secretary maintained, to the era of the cultural revolution. But today that path "had been corrected". 

The party had its own disciplines and procedures and anyone who violated them knew what to expect.
Yang did not talk like a man who had anything to hide. 

He embellished the party line with his own metaphors and rhetorical swirls. 

Whatever battle had been waged behind the scenes in some luxury hotel where Ji was forced to write his confession, it was clear that Yang now represented the winning side. 

The people of Nanjing may never know what went on way over their heads. 

Their jobs, contracts, flats and, ultimately, freedom depends on keeping as far away from these court intrigues as they can.

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Former Paramount Leader Hu Jintao Indicted for Tibetan Genocide

The original complaint charged former paramount leader Jiang Zemin, Li Peng and five other Chinese officials with genocide, crimes against humanity, torture, and terrorism committed upon the Tibetan people.

By Ana Curbelo

(L to R) Thubten Wangchen (victim and individual plaintiff), Palden Gyatso (victim), Takna Jigme Sangpo (victim), Kalsang Phuntsok (Director at the time of the Tibetan Youth Congress). stand in front of the Spanish National Court (Audiencia Nacional) after filing a complaint for genocide on June 28, 2005. On Oct. 9 former head of the Chinese regime Hu Jintao was added to the complaint.

LAS PALMAS, Spain—Former paramount leader of the People’s Republic of China Hu Jintao has been indicted by Spain’s highest criminal court for committing genocide in Tibet.
With the Oct. 9 decision the court reversed a lower court, finding that a lawsuit first filed in 2005 could be extended to include Hu Jintao. 

In a June 21, 2013 decision, the court sided with the state’s attorney, who had argued Spain did not have a national connection to the case and so lacked jurisdiction. 

The state’s attorney also claimed Chinese courts were competent to try this case.
In reaching their decision, the judges noted that one of the co-complainants—Thubten Wangchen—was a nationalized Spanish citizen. 

As for the alleged competence of Chinese courts, the judges said there was no record “of Chinese authorities having begun any type of investigation into the facts that are the object of the lawsuit.”
The complainants—the Tibet Support Committee, the Tibet House Foundation, and the foundation’s director Mr. Wangchen—waited to petition to include Hu Jintao in the ongoing case until after he lost his diplomatic immunity. 

In March 2013 Hu Jintao was replaced by Xi Jinping as the PRC’s head of state.
In the June hearing the complainants presented evidence alleging Hu Jintao’s culpability for genocide both as head of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Tibet from 1988-1992 and, beginning in 2003, as general secretary of the CCP and chairman of the PRC, the highest ranking positions in the Party and the state.
In the October decision, the judges cited “international evidence of the repression carried out by Chinese leaders.”
The judges ruled that: “The Chinese authorities decided to carry out a series of coordinated actions aimed at eliminating the specific characteristics and existence of the country of Tibet by imposing martial law, carrying out forced transfers and mass sterilization campaigns, torturing dissidents and forcibly transferring contingents of Chinese in order to gradually dominate and eliminate the indigenous population in the country of Tibet.”
The original 2005 complaint charged former paramount leader Jiang Zemin, Li Peng (former premier of China), and five other Chinese officials with genocide, crimes against humanity, torture, and terrorism committed upon the Tibetan people.
Alan Cantos, the director of the Tibet Support Committee, told the judges’ decision was greeted “with joy , especially for victims in Tibet, their families and the Tibetan people, because it means that there is a little more justice. Also because it is a triumph of Spanish justice that has fallen on the side of truth, principles and law, and not on the side of diplomatic pressures and powers in China.”
Tenzin Tsundue, a Tibetan activist living in Dharamsala, India was deposed in this case, recounting torture he had witnessed while held in Chinese prisons in Tibet.
Tenzin Tsundue said, “It is not enough to give peace prizes to His Holiness the Dalai Lama and continue to be blind to the human rights violations” against Tibetans, who are “under tremendous pressure to survive as a people of ancient culture and history.” 

He called upon the international community to go to Tibet and document the genocide taking place there.

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