56 Affidavit for the persecution of Falun Gong有关法轮功受迫
56 Affidavit for the persecution of Falun Gong有关法轮功受迫害的宣誓证词
This is the Affidavit of Guo Guoting (Thomas Guo), declared the 12th day of March, 2006, at the City of Courtenay, in the Province of British Columbia, Canada.
I, GUO Guoting, of 211C – 750 Comox Road, in the City of Courtenay, in the Province of British Columbia, Canada, senior Chinese lawyer, knowing that this Affidavit shall have the same force and effect as if given as evidence in a Court of Law, hereby AFFIRM THAT:
1. I am a native and citizen of China.
2. I am 48 years old.
3. I obtained an LL.B. degree in 1984 from Jilin University Law Department, majoring in International Law.
4. Beginning in 1984 I practised at all levels of the Chinese court system, from the District Courts to the Supreme Court, until March of 2005, when my licence to practise law was suspended by the Justice Bureau of Shanghai.
5. Before the revocation of my licence to practise law, I had been a Chinese lawyer for twenty-one years.
6. I was named by the international publication, Legal 500 (2001-2002), as the number one maritime lawyer in China.
7. I was a commercial lawyer for eighteen years and maritime law was my speciality, though I also practised as a defence lawyer in so-called “sensitive” criminal cases.
8. For the last two years of my practice in China, although I continued to take Maritime Law cases, I specialised in Criminal Law as it pertained to human rights.
9. I have served as a law professor at Wuhan University and at the Shanghai Maritime University.
10. I have been an arbitrator on the panels of both the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission and the Maritime Arbitration Commission.
11. I have translated the following English textbooks into Chinese and my translations are used as textbooks in Chinese universities:
a. The Art of Judgment;
b. Morden on Bills of Lading;
c. Sasoon on CIF & FOB Contracts(4th ed);
d. Scrutton on Charterparties and Bills of Lading(20th ed);
e. O’May on Marine Insurance Law and Policy;
f. The Institute Clauses(3rd ed)
12. In addition, I am the author of the following textbooks:
a. International Economic and Trade - Law and Practice: 1994, Politics and Law University Press, Beijing;
b. Law and Lawyer’s Practice in International Maritime Trade: 1996, Dalian Maritime University Press, Dalian;
c. Study of Current China Foreign Economic and Trade Cases: 1995 ,Politics and Law University Press, Beijing
13. I have also published approximately sixty major articles on Chinese law in professional legal journals.
14. I have provided expert evidence to the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board in two deportation cases which are currently still before that tribunal.
15. I lived my entire life in China until coming to Canada in May of 2005.
16. I acted as legal counsel and defence lawyer for six Falun Gong practitioners, including Qu Yanlai, from July 2004 until my licence was suspended by the Shanghai Justice Bureau in February of 2005. After the suspension, I was placed under house arrest and could not continue to act for my clients.
17. Both the suspension of my licence to practise law and my house arrest occurred solely because of my insistence on providing legal representation to Qu Yanlai and the other Falun Gong practitioners.
18. All Chinese lawyers who provide legal representation to Falun Gong practitioners will encounter great pressure from the Chinese government, in the form of the Justice Bureau, and will risk losing their licence to practise. On last December Beijing Lawyer Gao Zhisheng was suspend law license one year for his writing three open letter to Mr. Hu Jingtao, the president of PRC, to defense the Falun Gong; on February, Guangxi Lawyer Yang Zaixin, was suspend his practice for his defense for Falun Gong practitioner. And Xian Lawyer Zhang Jiankan, was threatened repeated by the CCP for his defending for Falun Gong.
19. I am totally familiar with the persecution of Falun Gong members from 1999 to the present date.
20. Even in the absence of specific media coverage of the Plaintiffs in this action, there is no doubt whatsoever that each and every Falun Gong practitioner who has been active abroad for any length of time is fully known to the “610 Office” in China and will be subject to immediate arrest upon arrival in China.
21. The theory that the Chinese government targets only “leaders” of the Falun Gong movement and not “ordinary followers” is entirely mistaken.
22. My own clients, Qu Yanlai, Chen Guanhui, Lei Jiangtao, Wu Aizhong, Zhang Hui, and Huang Xiong, were all ordinary Falun Gong practitioners and there was nothing in particular to set them apart from any other practitioners. All the accusations against them concerned editing articles on the internet, or making copies of the articles, or delivering those articles, or simply going to Tian Anmen in Beijing to state publicly that “Falun DaFa is good”. But all of them were put into prison and sentenced to between three and eight years imprisonment. I should mention that I, as their defence lawyer, was unable to meet my clients at all, although the relevant law stipulates that defence lawyers have the right to meet criminal clients.
23. At least 2840 Falun Gong practitioners are proved to have been murdered by police and prison guards while in custody. The actual number is much higher, likely several thousand. Scores of thousands are currently held in prisons and slave labour camps where they are undergoing terrible tortures.
24. There is no doubt whatsoever that every person in China who is known by the authorities to be a Falun Gong practitioner must anticipate arrest, incarceration, torture, and the very real possibility that he will be murdered in custody.
25. From the time he was first detained, Qu Yanlai was subjected to physical and mental torture. So he hold a hunger strike last for 780 days during the period of time, He was tortured to the brink of death four times and had to be treated in hospital for four months.
26. Chen Guanhui was tortured and beaten to death, becoming a “vegetable” for his last seven months, but the authorities still refused his application for bail in order to receive treatment. He was refused the right to have his lawyer or anyone else visit him in hospital, and there were eight secret policemen watching him 24 hours per day.
27. At midnight on September 30, 2002, Qu Yanlai was kidnapped by the Shanghai local police. He was officially detained on Oct. 2 and formally arrested on Nov. 2. A Putuo Court hearing was held on June 2, 2003, and on the same day, the Court pronounced the No. 324 (2003) criminal sentence: Qu was found guilty of “using a cult organization to damage the execution of the law” and was sentenced to five years imprisonment.
28. As a direct result of my internet article about Qu Yanlai, officials from the Justice Bureau came into my office and removed my computer and all my legal files involved with human rights cases .My licence to practice law was quickly revoked and thirty Shanghai police officers surrounded my home. My telephone was cut off and I remained under house arrest until I left China in May 20th of 2005.
29. I have studied the systematic campaign against Falun Gong in the Chinese media ever since 1999, and I am intimately acquainted with the details of the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners.
30. The Chinese Government has decreed that when any Falun Gong member dies during interrogation, there is to be no punishment for the interrogators.
31. All lawyers throughout China have been strictly forbidden to represent any Falun Gong practitioners as plaintiffs in litigation seeking redress for their unlawful incarceration and torture. Moreover, the “courts” have been forbidden by the government to accept any lawsuits on behalf of Falun Gong practitioners.
32. The persecution of Falun Gong adherents is conducted by an extra-legal entity known as the “610 Office”, named for the date on which it was set up by then former President of China, Jiang Zemin. This organization has no legal basis or legitimacy. It completely usurps the powers of the Chinese “courts” without any constitutional authority whatsoever for so doing.
33. The Chinese government has also issued a directive to all the “courts” in China stipulating that in all matters relating to Falun Gong, they are to take their instructions from the 610 Office, and that they are forbidden to accept any lawsuits filed by Falun Gong practitioners.
34. Lawyers who have ignored these directives and have persisted in their attempts to file lawsuits against the government or individual persecutors on behalf of Falun Gong practitioners, on constitutional grounds, have been bluntly informed by the Chinese “courts” that the “court” will not accept such cases, that the “court” belongs to the Chinese Communist Party, and that the Chinese Communist Party makes the laws.
35. To my knowledge, at least six Chinese lawyers have recently been systematically harassed and one(Lawyer Liu Luping) has apparently been arrested and put into labour camp for persisting with the filing of lawsuits on behalf of Falun Gong victims.
36. I learn that Ms. Wang Dan is not only a member of Falun Gong, but also the vice-chairman of FDC in Canada Branch, which is dealing as the State enemy of China by the CCP. Therefore, it is more danger if she was deported back China.
37. I am the defense attorney of Zheng Enchong, Huang Junqiu, Yang Tianshui, Zhang Lin, Shi Tao, all my clients are not the member of so call the State enemy of China, but the cyber dissident and journalist and writer, they were put into jail not for their action at all, but for their free speech and free expression.
38. I have been asked whether the Plaintiffs in this case could receive a fair hearing of their complaints against their torturers.
39. There is no possibility that these Plaintiffs could be accorded a fair hearing of their grievances in China.
40. As Jerome Cohen of New York University has testified in a Canadian case, “The Chinese courts have an absolutely impeccable record of carrying out the instructions of the Chinese Government”.
41. There is simply no such thing as a fair trial in any Chinese court, when a “sensitive” issue is involved. This is because the Chinese court system lacks all the prerequisites of a fair trial:
a. The courts themselves have no independence whatsoever. Both in theory and in practice, all Chinese courts answer only to the Chinese Communist Party.
i. It is true that Article 126 of the Chinese Constitution states that the judiciary is independent, but:
1. Article 128 of the Chinese Constitution states that the courts are responsible to the People’s Congresses (which are totally controlled by the Communist Party); and
2. Article 5(4) of the Organic Law of the People’s Procuratorate establishes that the courts operate under the supervision of the prosecutors and that the prosecutors should determine whether the judgements of the courts are in accordance with law!
b. Moreover, even within the individual courts, the presiding judges have no independence and are routinely required to sign judgements with which they are not in agreement, especially in so-called “sensitive” cases. There is a saying known to all Chinese lawyers and judges today: “Those who hear the case do not make the judgement; those who make the judgement have not heard the case.” This saying derives from the fact that the judges who have conducted the case have only the power of recommendation to the Judicial Committee, which committee decides the case behind closed doors, thus ensuring a total lack of transparency in the judicial process.
c. The Secretary of the Political/Legal Committee of the People’s Congress, who usually has no legal training whatever, has the power to over-rule the highest court and substitute his own judgement for that of the court.
42. All Chinese lawyers who have defied the directives of the Chinese government and the Justice Bureau to either refuse human rights cases or to abandon such cases have suffered experiences similar to mine:
a. Zheng Enchong, a Shanghai lawyer, brought suit against the Shanghai Municipal Government on behalf of five hundred homeowners who were victims of unfair compensated expropriation. The Justice Bureau refused registration of his law licence for two years. Then police placed his home under surveillance and tapped his telephone, made a forced search of his home, and arrested him on June 6th, 2003. He had faxed two articles to the publication, Human Rights in China, and for this was charged with “illegally providing state secrets to foreigners” and sentenced to three years imprisonment in October, 2003. He is still in Shanghai Ti Lanqiao prison.
b. Gao Zhisheng, a well-known Beijing human rights lawyer, while dealing with a number of human rights cases, drafted an open letter to the National People’s Congress on behalf of Falun Gong practitioners in December, 2004. He was put on the “black list”, and his cell phone and home telephone all were tapped. Police have repeatedly threatened him and his family. More recently, the government has confiscated his law licence, closed his entire law firm, and attempted to assassinate him. Up to date, Mr.Gao and his family member all are under strict surveillances and threatened.
c. Pu Zhiqiang, a well-known Beijing human rights lawyer, was black listed, threatened, and subjected to telephone taps after he became my lawyer and brought suit against the Shanghai Justice Bureau on my behalf.
d. Li Boguang, a Beijing lawyer, was arrested on the charge of “gathering many persons to disturb social order” in December of 2004, after representing 10,000 peasants of Fuan, Fujian Provice in a legal action to maintain their land rights; after eight months of detention, he was released on bail;
e. Zhu Jiuhu, a Beijing lawyer, was arrested for “illegally holding a meeting” and “gathering many persons to disturb social order” on May 26th,2005. He was representing 170,000 oilfield owners in bringing suit against the local government of Yilin, Shangxi Province; after four months in detention, he was released on bail on September 26th, 2005;
f. Guo Feixiong, a Scholar, was arrested on the charge of “gathering many persons to disturb social order” on September 13th, 2005. He was representing peasants in Tai Shi Village, Guangdong Province and assisting them to maintain their rights; he was on a hunger strike in jail for 20days and after release he was beat by plain cloth policemem on Feb 3th which provokes the rolling hunger strike against violent movement around world.
43. There is no provision for any Discovery process in the Chinese “judicial” system. Parties have no advance access to documents which will be introduced against them at trial. Moreover, those who have drafted the documents, including expert opinions, are not required to be present in court for cross examination.
44. Lawyers are routinely taken by surprise at trial by massive documents entered as evidence against their clients, but which they have never seen and for which they are entirely unprepared. They cannot cross examine the witnesses who have authored the documents, but the documents are nonetheless taken in evidence and are often cited in the “judgement” as the basis for the decision.
45. According to my experience, being a Falun Gong practitioner and the Vice-Chairmen of FDC Canada Branch, Ms.Wang Dan will definitely face arrested and unfair trial and suffer loss freedom and torture provided that she were deported back China.
Guo, Guoting (Thomas G.Guo)
Chinese Human Right Lawyer
Signed at the City of Courtenay on March 12th, 2006
注：今天是我的第四次七人接力接食抗暴日，撰写修改上述宣誓证词。