Beijing -- The Chinese government and the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement have taken their 2-year-old battle to the United States, using American courts and city halls -- including San Francisco's -- as part of their struggle.
In recent months, Falun Gong activists have sued four senior Chinese officials including the Beijing mayor, who was served a summons at San Francisco International Airport, for allegedly ordering the torture, death and violation of human rights of Falun Gong practitioners in China.
The plaintiffs relied in part on an obscure U.S. law from 1789, originally used to combat piracy, to seek redress for human rights violations committed in China.
The practice has so irritated the Chinese government that it recently asked the Bush administration to help stop the suits. The Chinese have placed the issue on the agenda of law enforcement talks that began yesterday in Washington.
Chinese diplomats in the United States have written hundreds of letters to mayors nationwide urging them to cancel local Falun Gong commemorations or rescind proclamations in favor of the spiritual group.
San Francisco, Baltimore, Seattle, Los Angeles, Decatur, Ill., and Westland,
Mich., among others, have rescinded proclamations issued on behalf of Falun Gong. Earlier this year, Utah reneged on a decision to declare Jan. 8 Falun Gong Day after meeting with Chinese government officials.
Falun Gong is a Buddhist-like practice that combines exercise and meditation with a cosmology involving aliens and flying humans. Practitioners say their goal is self-improvement.
China banned the group in July 1999 after 10,000 practitioners surrounded the Communist Party headquarters in Beijing; officials later passed legislation imposing strict penalties for membership in an "evil cult."
Activists claim that Chinese security forces have killed hundreds of followers during the campaign to crush the group. At least 10,000 more have been incarcerated in labor camps and jails.
The first suit against a Chinese official was filed against Zhao Zhifei, head of public security in Hubei province. Zhao was in the Manhattan Plaza Hotel in New York last July 17 when a process server approached and handed him a court summons.
The case was filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York under the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789 -- which was intended for use in prosecuting pirates for crimes committed outside the United States – and the Torture Victims Protection Act. Human rights activists started using the tort claims act in rights cases in the 1980s.
The plaintiff, Peng Liang, claims that his mother and brother were killed for their beliefs. Peng, in China at the time, was arrested in August with four other Falun Gong practitioners, said Terri Marsh, a Falun Gong practitioner from Washington who represented him.
Zhao did not contest the charges; the plaintiffs won by default. No damages were awarded.
A Falun Gong activist next sued Zhou Yongkang, the top Communist Party official from Sichuan province, who was served as he stepped from a limousine in Chicago on Aug. 27. The plaintiff was He Haiying, whose sister, a teacher in China, allegedly was tortured while in the custody of authorities in Sichuan.
She disappeared last June and hasn't been seen since; her family believes she was executed. This case has yet to go to court.