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
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