(Minghui.org) The number of criminal complaints filed against Jiang Zemin, the former head of the Chinese Communist Party, for launching and directing the persecution of Falun Gong, passed the forty-thousand mark last week.
Former Canadian senator and co-founder of Canadian Parliamentary Friends of Falun Gong Mr. Consiglio Di Nino was interviewed on this development and believes that this is “a courageous first step that will benefit not just Falun Gong, but all of China.”
He called the increase in the rate of the complaints, forty thousand in two months, a “landslide.”
“I encourage others to continue,” he said. “This is going to mean something, if millions more follow. I believe that they have to do that, if they really are to really have hope in the near future of changing China's position on some of these issues.”
Mr. Di Nino commended the Falun Gong practitioners who have been the first to file these lawsuits.
“What these folks are doing, based on how China treated those who have challenged them in the past, persecution and in effect death, these are very courageous people,” he said.
He hopes that others seeking freedom will follow suit, saying, “There is no question that they are a symbol or a model for other Chinese to follow. It always takes a few to be contrary to challenge others. It is not easy. Sometimes the easy thing to do is to keep quiet, but the more we keep quiet, the less we achieve for humanity.”
Mr. Di Nino said that the lawsuits and similar efforts “will bring the change that the Chinese want. They have to voice their dreams. They have to express as collectivity all together. When it happens, then China will be great nation.”
Recent changes in Chinese law now allow for citizens to be plaintiffs in criminal cases, and many practitioners are exercising that right to file criminal complaints against the former dictator.
Speaking of this new law, Mr. Di Nino said: “An attempt to appease only is the first step, but freedom is the second step. The first step is very important, but the second is critical.”
Although he is skeptical of the Chinese government due its human rights record, he hopes the change in the Chinese legal system is not just symbolic, but a genuine and honest expression of change to come.
Senator Di Nino has been a supporter of the democracy movement in China since the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989. He said he is an optimist, and believes that the problem of human rights in China will eventually be resolved.
Believing in the power of the people to effect major change, he said, “These forty thousand started a new movement in China, which should grow not to just millions, but to hundreds of millions, to demand not just that the perpetrators be punished, but that things change so that China can become a great country.”
As the spearhead in the creation of the parliamentary friends of Falun Gong. Mr. Di Nino believes that “nobody should be subjected to the denial of rights of freedoms. Falun Gong are peaceful protestors for beliefs that are not harmful to the state in any manner.”
Background
In 1999, Jiang Zemin, as head of the Chinese Communist Party, overrode other Politburo standing committee members and launched the violent suppression of Falun Gong.
The persecution has led to the deaths of many Falun Gong practitioners in the past 16 years. More have been tortured for their belief and even killed for their organs. Jiang Zemin is directly responsible for the inception and continuation of the brutal persecution.
Under his personal direction, the Chinese Communist Party established an extralegal security organ, the “610 Office,” on June 10, 1999. The organization overrides police forces and the judicial system in carrying out Jiang's directive regarding Falun Gong: to ruin their reputations, cut off their financial resources, and destroy them physically.
