Spain judge orders arrest of former China president Jiang Zemin

Spain judge orders arrest of former China president Jiang Zemin

 

[caption id="attachment_12208" align="alignnone" width="400"] (Chinese former president Jiang Zemin (C) listens during the closing of the 18th Communist Party Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on November, 14 2012 (AFP Photo/Wang Zhao))[/caption]

 

Madrid (AFP) - A Spanish judge on Monday sought international arrest warrants for former Chinese President Jiang Zemin and four other top Chinese officials as part of a probe into alleged genocide in Tibet.

 

High Court Judge Ismael Moreno ordered Interpol to issue the arrest warrants for the five for genocide, torture and crimes against humanity as part of a case brought against them in Spain by human rights groups.

 

"Jiang exercised supervisory authority over the people who directly committed abuses, which makes him responsible for acts of torture and other major abuses of human rights perpetrated by his subordinates against the people of Tibet," Moreno wrote in his ruling.

 

"He promoted and actively implemented policies whose objective was to populate the Autonomous Region of Tibet with a majority from the Han ethnic group, detain thousands of Tibetans during lengthy periods, torture the detained and submit them to other illegal abuses."

 

In addition to Jiang, the judge ordered the arrest of former Prime Minister Li Peng; former security and police chief Qiao Shi; Chen Kuiyan, a former Communist Party official in Tibet; and Peng Pelyun, a former family planning minister.

 

The High Court in November said it had accepted arguments from Spanish pro-Tibet human rights groups that international reports indicate that the five men may have had a role in human rights abuses and should be questioned.

 

The case against the Chinese officials was brought by the rights groups under Spain's recognition of "universal jurisdiction", a doctrine that allows judges to try certain cases of human rights abuses committed in other countries.

 

The doctrine allowed Spain's former judge Baltasar Garzon to try to arrest and try the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

 

While very few probes opened under the doctrine have seen people brought to trial in Spain, investigations have irked some countries.

 

Last month lawmakers from Spain's ruling Popular Party tabled a bill to limit the Spanish courts' use of "universal jurisdiction".

 

The practice was reformed in 2009 to restrict such cases principally to ones involving Spanish victims or suspects present in Spain.

 

That change came after a case brought against Israel over bombings in Gaza in 2002, a lawsuit which raised diplomatic tensions.

 

(Agence France-Presse, 10 Monday February 2014 The Roman)

 

Spain extreme right leverages crisis, break-up fears

Spain extreme right leverages crisis, break-up fears

 

(AFP, MADRID)

 

With a piercing blue gaze, Spain’s National Alliance president Pedro Pablo Pena openly declares himself a fascist and neo-Nazi, part of a marginal movement that is trying to gain ground at a time of economic pain and national uncertainty.

 

Pena, watched by young party followers, outlines his ideology candidly: “Nation, race and socialism,” words that are painted on the walls of his small Madrid headquarters next to the party’s emblem, which has clear Nazi connotations.

 

It is still a marginal ideology in Spain with barely 0.3 percent of the vote going to the extreme right in the 2011 elections and a dozen councilors sprinkled in the city and town halls of the Madrid, Valencia and Catalonia regions.

 

Yet they are trying to take a stronger role as Spaniards suffer in a double-dip recession, corruption scandals batter the main parties and doubts emerge over the country’s unity, with many Catalans campaigning for their region’s independence.

 

However, unlike France and Greece, analysts largely rule out the dawn of a significant extreme right movement in Spain, where General Francisco Franco’s long dictatorship remains a painful memory, and immigration is widely accepted.

 

“I don’t see movements or parties in Spain like those we are seeing in Europe that really have the capacity to destabilize the political system,” Autonomous University of Madrid political science professor Fernando Vallespin said.

 

In Spain, the ruling, right-leaning Popular Party, in power since scoring a landslide election win in 2011 over the country’s other main political force, the Socialist Party, usually picks up such votes.

 

The Popular Party, a successor to the Popular Alliance founded in 1976 by former Franco minister Manuel Fraga, “has been able to incorporate social sectors that would have joined these movements,” Vallespin said.

 

Such voters manage to feel comfortable with some of the Popular Party’s ideology, he said.

 

Critics say the Popular Party has shown a lax attitude in the past months to Francoism, which it has never condemned.

 

On Oct. 10, the Popular Party used its parliamentary majority to block a motion seeking to criminalize “defense or praise for Francoism, fascism, totalitarianism or Nazism.”

 

The Popular Party said there was no need for such a law because a new criminal code being debated in parliament already punished hate speech or Holocaust denial.

 

Over the summer, various photographs were published of leading young members of the Popular Party with fascist symbols.

 

The recent use of a public school in the Popular Party-controlled Madrid district of Quijorna to host a market selling Franco-era memorabilia also sparked widespread consternation.

 

“Where we see smoke, we imagine fire,” said left-wing Izquierda Unida party lawmaker Gaspar Llamazares.

 

Llamazares asked prosecutors to outlaw National Alliance after some of its members attacked a Catalan cultural center in Madrid on Catalonia’s national day on Sept. 11.

 

Pena said the media focus on the attack actually raised National Alliance’s profile, sending the number of telephone calls from people seeking to join surging from a dozen a month to more than 20 a day.

 

Along with other small extreme right parties grouped under the platform “Spain on the March,” which was formed in July, the party organized a protest against Catalan independence in Barcelona on Oct. 12, rallying some 400 neo-Nazis behind Franco-era flags and fascist-style symbols.

 

In Spain, extreme right-wing movements won support not so much from a reaction against immigration as a desire to create a Spain unaffected by regional separatist movements, Vallespin said.

 

Pena echoed his analysis.

 

“What we aim to do is to regain a segment of the Spanish population that still believes in the virtues of the Spanish people: honesty, discipline, patriotism, religion, manliness. Traditional values,” said Pena, a lawyer by profession who founded the party in 2006.

 

The strength of the economic crisis, which has driven the unemployment rate to 26.3 percent, and widespread corruption also give the extremists a foothold.

 

“The crisis can help us,” Pena said.

 

(TAIPEI TIMES, 28 Monday October 2013 The Roman)

 

Popular Party: Ruling party in The Kingdom of Spain.

 

(R.S.F. toshiki speed news press, Agence France-Presse, 28 Monday October 2013 The Roman)