江天勇律师在美国国会的证词

北京时间：2009-11-04 08:08

【新唐人2009年11月4日讯】最近在美国访问的江天勇律师，10月29日在美国国会，就中国法治与宗教信仰的现状发表证词.

江天勇律师就中国法治与宗教信仰的现状在美国国会的证词

各位尊敬的美国国会议员、女士们、先生们：

大家好！

我叫江天勇，来自于中国大陆，是一名律师，所承办的案件中有一大部分是关涉宗教信仰的，人们通常称为“敏感案件”。同时，我也是一个基督徒，需要与主内弟兄姊妹一起聚会赞美神。下面我谈三件事，希望有助于各位了解中国的法治与宗教信仰的实际情况。

第一件事。2007年的母亲节，5月13日下午。我和我主内的弟兄姊妹一起在北京的一个私人场所、一个大房间内聚会﹔我们祷告、我们唱歌赞美神。突然，房间里闯进来近三十人，除十几个穿警察服装外，其他都是便装。其中一个人强迫我们停下来留在原地不能动，更不能离开﹔他们宣称是北京市宗教管理局的执法人员，并说我们的聚会非法，予以立即取缔！他们查封了我们的奉献箱﹔他们中许多人对我们录像、拍照，详细登记我们每一个人的身份信息。之后对我们每一个人进行了长时间的讯问。我是凌晨1点多离开的。从那一天到2009年的7月，我没有地方可以聚会。这是我作为基督徒的经历。

第二件事。2009年4月16日我与李方平律师成为布绒朗活佛的辩护人，他是四川省甘孜藏族自治州布绒朗寺和亚丁寺（Ya-tseg）的主持，被控以非法持有枪支弹药罪和职务侵占罪。但经过详细的调查，我们了解到活佛被控告另有原因。2008年3.14事件之后，藏区的人们被政府组织进行“爱国主义教育运动 ”，僧侣和尼姑们被强迫在寺院里学习，长时间不能出去。他们教育的内容是什么呢？他们被要求批判达赖喇嘛，要骂他是豺狼，要与他划清界限﹔人人被要求以践踏达赖喇嘛的画像和对画像吐唾沫的方式过关。布绒朗寺和亚丁寺的二百多个尼姑无法忍受，2008年5月14日冲出寺院到街上游行，要求宗教信仰自由。活佛作为这两个寺院的负责人被拘捕了。2009年4月21日该案进行了审理，律师和活佛本人都否认控罪。此案至今没有结果﹔但我们担心活佛的命运。

第三件事。从2008年开始我在近20起法轮功案件中为法轮功修炼者辩护。我发现对法轮功的打压的确是严重的人权灾难。他们或仅仅因为修炼被抓捕，或仅仅因为给别人修炼的书籍被审判，或仅仅因为散发揭露迫害事实的材料被判刑。他们往往面临酷刑，有专门的资金、专门的地点、专门的人员和专门的工具对法轮功修炼者实施酷刑。辽宁锦州的黄成，开庭审判时身上的人人都能看见﹔辽宁沈阳的陈新野被打骨折﹔黑龙江哈尔滨的栗志刚被往鼻孔里灌芥末水﹔四川成都的周慧敏被打死。在法轮功案件上法律往往被践踏，被告人的的辩护权难以得到保障。河北唐山孙锋利被剥夺会见律师的权利﹔河北邯郸的葛何菲在不让律师介入的情况下被判刑。法轮功案件中，律师被禁止就法律的适用和事情的性质进行辩护，禁止谈宪法和人权﹔只能说被告人做没做某事。

我和中国的其他人权律师因捍卫宗教信仰自由的案件受到来自官方的骚扰、打压和迫害也越来越严重。

2006 年、2008年我的律师执业证年检注册两次受到北京市司法局的刁难﹔2009年7月9日我的律师执业被北京市司法局宣告注销。我们经常被国保秘密警察跟踪、骚扰、威胁﹔在特殊的日子或有外国领导人访问中国时，我们经常会被禁止出门，比如下个月欧巴马总统访华时我将被迫呆在家里﹔我们的家人也常被骚扰﹔司法局常找我们谈话，禁止我参与某些案件﹔我们的房东因承受不了秘密警察的压力拒绝继续租房给我们，我们常常被迫搬家。

因办理涉及宗教信仰的案件，李和平、黎雄兵、王雅军、唐吉田、刘巍、温海波、谢燕益、韦良玥、张星水等律师和我至今没有通过所谓的“年度考核”，我们无法继续从事律师工作。

中国包括律师在内的法律人、家庭教会成员和其他宗教信仰者没有因为面临打压而放弃自己的权利。中国的公民社会在发育并将走向成熟，我认为在座的各位应该对此保持信心。我们也非常需要在座各位及美国政府的关注和支持。

我建议：

1、更加关注和支持中国民间力量，比如在美国国务院的国际访问者项目（International Visitor Leadership Program）中让更多维权律师参与﹔

2、欧巴马总统或其他政界人士在访华期间能够会见维权人士并参加家庭教会的聚会﹔

3、欧巴马总统访华期间能够向胡锦涛主席、温家宝总理争取刘晓波、陈光诚、胡佳、郭飞雄、郭泉恢复自由，也非常希望欧巴马总统此行能够了解高智晟律师到底身在何处﹔

4、美国驻华使馆官员更经常更广泛的与维权人士、异议人士来往，并且邀请他们参加使馆举行的一些活动。

谢谢！

江天勇

2009年10月29日
“Written Testimony submitted to the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission on the rule of law in China”
By Mr. Jiang Tianyong on Oct 29, 2009 Cannon 210 HOB
Dear members of U.S. Congress, ladies and gentlemen:
How are you? My name is Jiang Tianyong and I come from mainland China. I am an attorney and most of the cases I take on involve religious belief, and are usually referred to as “sensitive cases.” I am also a Christian and as such a person, I need to worship God in gatherings with my brothers and sisters in Christ. I am going to discuss three things, and I hope I can give you an idea of the actual status of the rule of law and religious belief in China.
The first one is an event I would like to share: On the afternoon of Mother’s Day of May 13, 2007, I was praying and singing hymns of God with my brothers and sisters in Christ gathering. It was in a private large room in Beijing. Suddenly, several dozen people broke into the room. Only about a dozen of them were wearing uniforms and the rest were in plain clothes. One of them forced us to stop our activities and to remain still where we were. We were not allowed to leave the place. The intruders claimed that they were law enforcement officers from the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Religious Administration. They said that our gathering was an illegal one and abolished it immediately! They sealed our donation box and took videos and photos of many of us. They also recorded the identification information of every one of us. After that, they conducted a long interrogation. It was after 1 AM that I left the site. Between that day and July 2009, I had no place where I could meet with my fellow Christians in a gathering. This is my experience in China as a Christian.
The second event occurred on April 16, 2009. Attorney Li Fangping and I became the defense counsels for the living Buddha from Burongna Convent in Tibet that day. The living Buddha is the abbot of Burongna Convent and Ya-tseg Convent in the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Ganzi of Sichuan province. He was charged with weapons possession and functionary embezzlement. However, after a detailed investigation, we found the living Buddha was actually charged for some other reasons. After the March 14 Incident in 2008, people in the Tibetan prefecture were organized by the government to engage in a “Campaign of Education in Patriotism.” Monks and nuns were forced to study in the convents and were kept there for a long time. What, then, was the content of their education? They were commanded to criticize the Dalai Lama and to call him a jackal and to break away from him. Every one of them was commanded to trample on the portrait of Dalai Lama and spit on the portrait before he or she was allowed to pass the test. Given such a situation, over 200 nuns from Burongna and Ya-tseg Convents could no longer endure this, and they finally broke out of the convents on May 14, 2008 and went to protest in the streets, demanding religious freedom. As the living Buddha was the leader of these two convents, he was arrested. His case was tried on April 21, 2009 and both of the attorneys and the living Buddha denied the charges. There is still no result from the case, but we worry about the fate of the living Buddha.
The third piece of evidence I would like to share is that starting from 2008, I began to defend Falun Gong practitioners in nearly 20 Falun Gong cases. I have found that the crackdown on Falun Gong is indeed a serious human rights disaster. My clients were arrested simply because of the practice. They were tried simply because they gave practice books to others. Some of them were sentenced to imprisonment just because they distributed materials that expose the facts of persecution. They often face torture and there are special funds, special locations, special people and special tools in torturing Falun Gong practitioners. When Huang Cheng from Jinzhou, Liaoning province was tried in court, everybody could see the scars on his body; Chen Xinye from Shenyang, Liaoning province suffered a bone fracture in the beatings; they poured mustard water into the nostril of Li Zhigang from Harbin, Heilongjiang province; Zhou Huimin from Chengdu, Sichuan province was beaten to death.
When it comes to Falun Gong cases, the law is often trampled and it is hard to safeguard the defendant’s right to defense. Sun Feng from Tangshan, Hebei province was deprived of his right to meet with his attorney; Ge Hefei
from Handan of Hebei province was sentenced while his attorney was forbidden to intervene. In Falun Gong cases, attorneys are forbidden to defend their clients on the proper application of law or the nature of the incident. They are forbidden talk about the Constitution or human rights. They are only allowed to say whether the defendants did something or did not do something.
I and other human rights attorneys in China are suffering an increasing level of harassment, suppression, and persecution [by the government], because we serve as defense counsels in cases of safeguarding the freedom of religious belief.
Respectively in 2006 and 2008, the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice intentionally fabricated complications in the annual inspection and registration of my attorney’s license. On July 9, 2009, the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice announced that my attorney’s license was revoked. We [human rights legal defenders] are often stalked, harassed and threatened by the secret police from Domestic Defense Protection Squad. On special occasions or when foreign leaders visit China, we are often forbidden to leave our residences. For example, when President Obama visits China next month, I will be forced to stay at home. My family members are also often harassed and people from the Bureau of Justice often come to talk with us and forbid me to get involved in some cases. Because our landlords can’t endure the pressure from the secret police, they refuse to renew our leases, and therefore we often are forced to move out.
Because we handle cases involving religious belief, Li Heping, Li Xiongbing, Wang Yajun, Tang Jitian, Liu Wei, Wen Haibo, Xie Yiming, Wei Liangyue, Zhang Xingshui, other attorneys and I have still not passed the so-called “annual inspection.” Therefore, there is no way we can continue to work as attorneys at this time.
However, legal professionals, including attorneys, members of house churches and other religious believers, have not abandoned their rights in face of the crackdown. The civil society in China is growing and will become more mature. I think all of you present here today should keep your confidence in this. We also need the attention and support from all of you present here today, and the U.S. government.
I propose the following:
1. We recommend that you pay more attention and give more support to the non-governmental forces in China, such as the US State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program, so that more human rights attorneys can participate in the program;
2. We recommend President Obama and other government officials meet with human rights defenders and attend gatherings of house churches during their visit to China;
3. We recommend President Obama can talk with President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao and restore the freedom of Liu Xiaobo, Chen Guangcheng, Hu Jia, Guo Feixiong and Guo Quan. We also hope that with President Obama’s visit, we will be able to know the whereabouts of Attorney Gao Zhisheng;
4. We recommend officials in the U.S. Embassy in China make contact with human rights defenders and dissidents more often and more widely, and invite them to attend some activities held at the embassy.
Thank you!
Jiang Tianyong