Members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement filed a criminal complaint against China's former President Jiang Zemin and top official Luo Gan in Spain on Wednesday, accusing them of overseeing genocide and torture.
The complaint was filed in Spain's High Court and seeks to
take advantage of Spanish laws granting its judges universal jurisdiction in
cases alleging crimes such as genocide.
''A criminal complaint has been filed this morning for
acts that...may constitute genocide and torture against followers of Falun
Gong,'' lawyer Carlos Iglesia told a news conference.
''For the last four years, possibly one of the
greatest violations of human rights since World War II has been happening in
China,'' he said.
The complaint was filed on behalf of 15 people from
countries including Australia, China, the United States and Spain who say they
are victims of what they call China's persecution of Falun Gong.
It alleges that Luo, a Communist Party Politburo
Standing Committee member responsible for state security, and Jiang, who
remains head of China's armed forces despite stepping down as president, were
responsible for the crackdown on Falun Gong.
Iglesia said the goals of the complaint were to
''stop the persecution'' and to ensure the alleged crimes against Falun Gong
members did not go unpunished.
The Falun Gong movement was banned in 1999 by
Chinese authorities which label it an ''evil cult.'' It combines a mixture of
Taoism, Buddhism and traditional Chinese breathing exercises with the ideas of
its founder Li Hongzhi.
Iglesia alleged that between 800 and 2,000 people
had been tortured and murdered in China since 1999 for their belief in Falun
Gong and that around 200,000 people had been sent to forced labour camps.
One of the plaintiffs, Dai Zhizhen, an Australian
citizen, said her husband was murdered two-and-a-half years ago because he went
to Beijing to deliver a letter praising Falun Gong.
''Only for this he was detained by the police,
jailed, tortured and murdered,'' the woman said, clutching her three-year-old
daughter and speaking through an interpreter.
The next legal step is to see whether Spain's High
Court accepts the case. One of the court's judges is Baltasar Garzon, best
known for seeking to try former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in Spain,
though there is no guarantee he will get the case.
A human rights abuse lawsuit filed by Falun Gong
members against Jiang in Belgium was thrown out last week.
A Chinese embassy spokesman in Madrid could not
immediately be reached for comment.