The US Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear an appeal by Cisco Systems in which the tech company and US President Donald Trump’s administration are asking the justices to limit the reach of a federal law that has been used to hold corporations liable for human rights abuses committed abroad.
Cisco has appealed a 2023 ruling that breathed new life into a 2011 lawsuit that accused the it of knowingly developing technology that allowed China’s government to surveil and persecute members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement.
The company called the lawsuit, which seeks monetary damages, unfounded and offensive, saying it sold technology to China that is expressly legal under US trade policy.
Photo: AFP
The lawsuit was premised on the Alien Tort Statute, which lawyers use to bring international human rights cases in US courts.
Cisco, with backing from the Trump administration, is asking the court to use the case as an opportunity to limit the reach of the statute.
The lawsuit also alleged a contravention of the Torture Victim Protection Act, which allows for the filing of civil suits in US courts against foreign officials who commit torture.
The Falun Gong plaintiffs alleged Cisco executives had facilitated torture on the part of Chinese officials, and therefore could be held liable under the statute and the act through “aiding and abetting.”
A Cisco spokesperson said the company is pleased with the court’s decision to hear the case and looks forward to oral arguments.
The Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments and rule by the end of June.
Falun Gong combines meditation, slow-motion exercises and moral teachings based on Buddhism, Taoism and leader Li Hongzhi’s (李洪志) sometimes unorthodox theories, such as his belief that aliens have started to take over the world.
The Chinese Communist Party saw the group’s growing popularity as a challenge to its rule and banned it after 10,000 practitioners silently protested in Beijing in 1999, calling it an “evil cult” that threatened national stability and imprisoning some of its members.
The Human Rights Law Foundation sued Cisco in 2011 on behalf of a group of Falun Gong members, accusing the company of designing and implementing the “Golden Shield,” an Internet surveillance system used by the Chinese Communist Party to locate and detain Falun Gong practitioners and other dissidents..
In a 2023 ruling, a panel of the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals said the plaintiffs plausibly alleged “that Cisco provided essential technical assistance to the douzheng [crackdown] of Falun Gong with awareness that the international law violations of torture, arbitrary detention, disappearance and extrajudicial killing were substantially likely to take place.”
The panel said aiding and abetting claims could be brought under both statutes invoked by the plaintiffs.
The Supreme Court said it would focus arguments on whether that holding was correct.
VAGUE: The criteria of the amnesty remain unclear, but it would cover political violence from 1999 to today, and those convicted of murder or drug trafficking would not qualify Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodriguez on Friday announced an amnesty bill that could lead to the release of hundreds of prisoners, including opposition leaders, journalists and human rights activists detained for political reasons. The measure had long been sought by the US-backed opposition. It is the latest concession Rodriguez has made since taking the reins of the country on Jan. 3 after the brazen seizure of then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. Rodriguez told a gathering of justices, magistrates, ministers, military brass and other government leaders that the ruling party-controlled Venezuelan National Assembly would take up the bill with urgency. Rodriguez also announced the shutdown
Civil society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition yesterday filed impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the Supreme Court last year. Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The filings come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiraling scandal over bogus flood control projects. Under the constitution, an impeachment by the
Exiled Tibetans began a unique global election yesterday for a government representing a homeland many have never seen, as part of a democratic exercise voters say carries great weight. From red-robed Buddhist monks in the snowy Himalayas, to political exiles in megacities across South Asia, to refugees in Australia, Europe and North America, voting takes place in 27 countries — but not China. “Elections ... show that the struggle for Tibet’s freedom and independence continues from generation to generation,” said candidate Gyaltsen Chokye, 33, who is based in the Indian hill-town of Dharamsala, headquarters of the government-in-exile, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). It
China executed 11 people linked to Myanmar criminal gangs, including “key members” of telecom scam operations, state media reported yesterday, as Beijing toughens its response to the sprawling, transnational industry. Fraud compounds where scammers lure Internet users into fake romantic relationships and cryptocurrency investments have flourished across Southeast Asia, including in Myanmar. Initially largely targeting Chinese speakers, the criminal groups behind the compounds have expanded operations into multiple languages to steal from victims around the world. Those conducting the scams are sometimes willing con artists, and other times trafficked foreign nationals forced to work. In the past few years, Beijing has stepped up cooperation
RSS