(Minghui.org)

Overview

During a speech at a Politburo meeting on June 7, 1999, former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Jiang Zemin announced the launching of a task force to help “quickly handle and solve the issues related to Falun Gong.”

Three days later, the CCP’s “Central Leadership Team for Handling the Falun Gong Issue” was established. Its director was Li Lanqing, a member of the Politburo Standing Committee and Vice Premier of China. Its deputy directors were Luo Gan, a Politburo member and Secretary of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee (PLAC), and Ding Guangen, a Politburo member and head of the Central Propaganda Department. 

Members of the central leadership team came from a number of agencies including the Supreme Court, Supreme Procuratorate, Ministry of Public Security, State Security Bureau, Central Propaganda Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and others. 

The leadership team’s operational agency is “Office of the Central Leadership Team for Handling the Falun Gong Issue.” Because of its launch on June 10, it was referred to as the “Central 610 Office.” The leadership team and 610 Office branches were also established at all government levels, from the CCP’s Central Committee down to local Party committees. 

The “Central Leadership Team for Handling the Falun Gong Issue” is the highest authority under Jiang to persecute Falun Gong. On the local level, the leadership team is often led by a Party Secretary in charge of politics and legal affairs, while the 610 Office is led by a PLAC Deputy Secretary. From the CCP’s Central Committee to the provincial, city, district, and county levels, the 610 Offices often operates under the PLAC at that level. Occasionally, they report to the Party committee directly. They are also part of the overall CCP organization.

From this framework that Jiang established for suppressing Falun Gong, it is clear that the PLAC and 610 Office have been closely connected from the beginning. The Central PLAC drafts the overall persecution policy guidelines while the 610 Office implements them.

1. PLAC Is CCP’s Primary Command System for Persecuting Falun Gong

The Political and Legal Affairs Committee (PLAC), ranging from the CCP’s Central Committee to the local level, is part of the Party organization and operates as an extrajudicial entity. The PLAC is a primary tool for the CCP to enforce its repressive rule by suppressing and killing the Chinese people. While the PLAC directs the persecution of Falun Gong, the 610 Office is responsible for carrying out the directives and executing the plan. 

System of Arrest and Killing: Approved by Party Committee and Enforced by PLAC

China does not have judicial independence, since the CCP always resorts to reckless killing to maintain its iron rule of the country. As the primary manipulator of the so-called “People’s Democratic Dictatorship,” the PLAC system is utilized by the CCP to control the Chinese people though violence. 

Since its early days, the Party committee has been responsible for arresting and killing people. This tradition has continued, with key decisions made by the Party committee and carried out by its affiliated PLAC. For the PLAC at the provincial, city, district, and county levels, its director position is often held by a standing member of the Party Committee. 

For a long time, the CCP has been brainwashing people with the lie that laws are a tool for the ruling class to fulfill its will and maintain its interests. By labeling laws as a tool that serves the ruling class, the CCP can then justify its having the Party committee make decisions about whom to arrest or kill. During a training session for nationwide PLAC secretaries in April 2012, then Central PLAC Secretary Zhou Yongkang said in the opening ceremony, “The surname of PLAC secretaries is Party. That is, following politics is always the most important requirement.” This emphasizes that the Party is above the law, which contradicts any fair, impartial, and open judiciary principles. It has become dogma that the Party is above the law. As a result, the PLAC system has operated under politics, not laws. 

As a branch of the Party committee to control political and legal affairs behind the scenes at all levels, PLAC is the highest authority for the CCP to direct the police, procuratorate, the courts, and judicial and state security agencies at every level. Although semi-invisible, it operates as a privileged system above the law. When important or special cases are filed, the PLAC is often the highest and final “judge” behind the scenes. Because the Party committee and PLAC at all levels operate behind the scenes to intervene in specific cases, no evidence of their interference in the judicial system is left behind. 

With the motto “politics above the law,” the Party committee and PLAC have conducted black box operations for decades. As a result, the Chinese judicial system lacks independence, fairness, and justice. Especially in the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong, the practice of “politics above the law” has run reckless in the PLAC and 610 systems. At the same time, they have been deceiving people under the name of the law. 

The “Joint Meeting” of PLAC

In China, the police, procuratorial, court, and justice systems are supposed to be independent of each other and also monitor one another. If that were the case, were one agency to dare to truly adhere to the rule of law to seek justice for Falun Gong, the CCP’s entire machinery would lose control. To prevent such a situation from happening, the PLAC and 610 Office operate extra-judicially above these agencies, supervising and controlling them to ensure a concerted approach to the persecution. Therefore, the PLAC and 610 Office play a critical role in the suppression of Falun Gong. 

Under such a circumstance, the judicial system in China cannot remain independent, fair, and just. Regardless of which legal pretexts are used, the arrest and detention of Falun Gong practitioners in China lacks legal basis. The so-called legal procedures cited are only to cover up the persecution and deceive outsiders. With the PLAC and 610 Office working behind the scenes, Falun Gong practitioners are arrested, detained, sent to labor camps, imprisoned, and have their terms illegally extended – all of which make the legal system nearly nonexistent in China.

In addition, the PLAC and 610 Office directly interfere with the judicial system and block lawyers from entering not guilty pleas for practitioners. 

The Bloody “Transformation Rate”

Based on its long history of suppression, the CCP determined that the major focus of the persecution should be on “transformation” – that is, using any and all means to force Falun Gong practitioners to give up their belief. To this end, the PLAC and 610 Office assigned the task to prisons, labor camps, brainwashing centers, and other detention facilities, ordering them to achieve certain “transformation rates.” These rates are also connected with officers’ promotion and bonuses in the prisons or labor camps. To increase “transformation rates,” officers not only brutally torture practitioners themselves, but also instigate inmates to do the same by offering them term reduction or other incentives. Some officers have told practitioners, “Without ‘transformation,’ you will be sent to cremation.”

(To be continued)