Beijing’s verdict in Taiwanese human rights campaigner Lee Ming-che’s (李明哲) case is strongly redolent of the “Moscow Trials” held in the Soviet Union during the 1930s.
Between 1936 and 1938, former Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) general secretary Joseph Stalin orchestrated the Great Purge — also known as the Great Terror — during which the three large-scale Moscow Trials became the focus of world attention.
The first trial was held in 1936. The trial’s chief defendants were 16 members of a so-called Trotskyite-Zinovievite counter-revolutionary bloc, including prominent former CPSU leaders Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev.
All of the defendants were sentenced to death and executed.
The second trial took place the following year. On trial were 17 party members from a so-called parallel “anti-Soviet Trotskyite center” within the party, which included Karl Radek, Yuriy Pyatakov and Grigory Sokolnikov.
Thirteen were executed, while the remainder were sent to labor camps where they subsequently died.
The third trial was held in 1938 against 21 defendants from a so-called “bloc of rightists and Trotskyites” alleged to have been led by the former chairman of Communist International, Nikolai Bukharin, and former Council of People’s Commissars of the Soviet Union chairman Alexei Rykov.
All of the defendants were sentenced to death and executed by firing squad.
Following nationwide arrests of human rights lawyers and activists by Chinese officials in 2015, Chinese courts have been gradually passing a succession of verdicts, one of which was in Lee’s case. Although the Moscow Trials belong to a vastly different era, Beijing’s methods are strikingly similar.
First, the Moscow Trials, like China’s, were “open trials.”
During the Moscow Trials, foreign journalists, diplomatic corps and independent observers were invited to attend the hearings. The majority of Western observers believed the trials to be fair.
Denis Pitt, a lawyer and British Labour Party lawmaker — who was later expelled from the party for supporting the 1940 Soviet invasion of Finland — wrote: “…we can feel confident that when the smoke has rolled away from the battlefield of controversy it will be realized that the charge was true, the confessions correct and the prosecution fairly conducted.”
Similarly, during the process of Lee’s trial, the Chinese Communist Party rapidly published updates from the proceedings through state-controlled media and on official Web sites.
“Open” trials are a tool in the toolkit employed by totalitarian governments and they only allow the public to see what it is meant to see.
Details of the imprisonment of the accused — whether or not they have been tortured or mistreated during their confinement — are kept hidden from the public.
Defendants in kangaroo courts are always left with no choice but to be represented by an officially-sanctioned defense lawyer and reject any lawyer arranged on their behalf by their family members. This was especially true in Lee’s case.
Not only was it impossible for a Taiwanese lawyer to attend Lee’s trial, he was also unable to ask any Chinese human rights lawyer whom he had previously come into contact with to take on his case.
Other defendants in Chinese human rights cases, despite having written to defense attorneys with instructions, all had their applications nullified by officials.
Defense lawyers provided by the state are not neutral and they are there to represent the official line: They have no interest in upholding the legal rights of their “client.”
Some official lawyers even take the position of the prosecution and intimidate and vilify their clients. In such cases, defense attorneys are simply ornamental and their job is to keep up appearances.
In show trials, the accused always confess, repent and forgo their right to appeal.
During the Moscow Trials, the whole world watched as none of the eminent former party members defended themselves and they all accepted the prosecutor’s charges, and even exposed their partners and coconspirators.
The defendants described themselves as demons that had to be killed to appease public anger. Every one of them praised Stalin in the most glorious language.
Lee also confessed and rejected the possibility of appeal.
In the 1930s, Westerners from democratic and free societies were unable to understand why the accused would disgrace themselves.
Twenty years later, in the 1950s, the CIA still believed that the Russians had used electroshock therapy and brain surgery on the accused in combination with drugs or hypnosis to achieve these results, and they even invested in long-term research in an attempt to break the Soviet internal security agency, the KGB’s formula; but the KGB did not use drugs.
Today, Taiwanese, living in a society under the rule of law, are equally confused by Lee’s mechanical responses and obedient confession.
Five years ago, I was kidnapped by secret police, placed in isolation and tortured for several days. In the end, I confessed to any accusation they wanted. Just like Lee, I am made of flesh and blood; I am not a hero or a man of steel.
The severity of Lee’s sentence is a sign of how far China is from being a country under the rule of law.
Yu Jie is an exiled Chinese dissident writer.
Translated by Edward Jones and Perry Svensson
In their recent op-ed “Trump Should Rein In Taiwan” in Foreign Policy magazine, Christopher Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim argued that the US should pressure President William Lai (賴清德) to “tone it down” to de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait — as if Taiwan’s words are more of a threat to peace than Beijing’s actions. It is an old argument dressed up in new concern: that Washington must rein in Taipei to avoid war. However, this narrative gets it backward. Taiwan is not the problem; China is. Calls for a so-called “grand bargain” with Beijing — where the US pressures Taiwan into concessions
The term “assassin’s mace” originates from Chinese folklore, describing a concealed weapon used by a weaker hero to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. In more general military parlance, the concept refers to an asymmetric capability that targets a critical vulnerability of an adversary. China has found its modern equivalent of the assassin’s mace with its high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons, which are nuclear warheads detonated at a high altitude, emitting intense electromagnetic radiation capable of disabling and destroying electronics. An assassin’s mace weapon possesses two essential characteristics: strategic surprise and the ability to neutralize a core dependency.
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) said in a politburo speech late last month that his party must protect the “bottom line” to prevent systemic threats. The tone of his address was grave, revealing deep anxieties about China’s current state of affairs. Essentially, what he worries most about is systemic threats to China’s normal development as a country. The US-China trade war has turned white hot: China’s export orders have plummeted, Chinese firms and enterprises are shutting up shop, and local debt risks are mounting daily, causing China’s economy to flag externally and hemorrhage internally. China’s
During the “426 rally” organized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party under the slogan “fight green communism, resist dictatorship,” leaders from the two opposition parties framed it as a battle against an allegedly authoritarian administration led by President William Lai (賴清德). While criticism of the government can be a healthy expression of a vibrant, pluralistic society, and protests are quite common in Taiwan, the discourse of the 426 rally nonetheless betrayed troubling signs of collective amnesia. Specifically, the KMT, which imposed 38 years of martial law in Taiwan from 1949 to 1987, has never fully faced its
RSS