Source: phayul.com. 15-03-2011

By Kalsang Rinchen


Dharamsala, March 15 - The Spanish High Court has issued a court ruling allowing the Comité de Apoyo al Tíbet (CAT) and the Fundación Casa del Tíbet to appeal the Audiencia Nacionals’ decision to shelve a lawsuit against three Chinese ministers and five senior communist party officials. 

In February 2010, Judge Santiago Pedráz of the Central Court Nº 1 said the court could no longer handle the case after a new law restricted its powers to investigate human rights cases abroad. Pedráz said the investigation would have to be dropped against the Chinese leaders due to the change in the law regarding universal jurisdiction in 2009, as the lawsuit neither involved Spanish victims nor were the accused on Spanish soil.

Suspects included in the lawsuit are former Defence Minister, Lian Guanglie; Minister of State Security and vice minister of Security, Geng Huichang; and Minister for Public Security, Meng Jianzhu. Also included in the criminal lawsuit are Chinese Communist Party Secretary in the Tibet Autonomous Region, Zhang Qingli; active Politburo member in Beijing, Wang Lequan; director of the Ethnic Affairs Commission, Li Dezhu; General Tong Guishan, commander of the Peoples Liberation Army in the capital of Tibet (Lhasa); and General Zhan Guihua, political commissar of the military command in Chengdu.

On July 9, 2008, the Spanish court accepted the formal lawsuit filed by Comité de Apoyo al Tíbet (CAT) and the Fundación Casa del Tíbet. The complainants accused the Chinese ministers and officials of being responsible for the deaths of more than 200 people and the disappearances of nearly 6,000 Tibetans, and injury to 1,000 in the aftermath of nationwide protests in Tibet in 2008.

A Spanish lawyer Dr Jose Elias Esteve and Alan Cantos of Comité de Apoyo al Tibet (CAT) were in India in February last year to ask Tibetans to testify before the Spanish court after India refused to set up a Rogatory Commission that would allow the Tibetans to testify in India, according to a report by Asian Age dated February 17, 2008.