RAPHAEL MINDER
The New York Times
October 11, 2013
Spain’s national court has approved the indictment of Hu Jintao, the former Chinese president, as part of an investigation into whether the Chinese government tortured and repressed the people of Tibet as part of an attempted genocide.
The court’s decision, made Thursday, follows an appeal by Tibetan exile groups against a June decision by one of the Spanish court’s judges to drop the case.
Instead, a criminal review panel of the national court decided to overturn the judge’s decision and proceed with the indictment, given China’s refusal to carry out its own judicial investigation into the allegations of human rights violations and because one of the plaintiffs, Thubten Wangchen, holds Spanish citizenship.
The Spanish lawsuit was filed in 2006 by a group of exiled Tibetans and also targets other former leaders of China’s ruling Communist party, including Jiang Zemin, Mr. Hu’s predecessor as president. The others had already been indicted. It was filed in Madrid because the plaintiffs also hoped to take advantage of the fact that Spain’s judiciary has long been at the forefront of efforts to apply universal jurisdiction to crimes involving human rights abuses.
Retired Chinese leaders do not travel abroad, and none of the indicted leaders, including Mr. Hu, who stepped down as president in March, is likely to ever face the prospect of defending himself before a Spanish court.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly criticized the Spanish court’s latest decision. A spokeswoman for the ministry, Hua Chunying, said at a daily news conference in Beijing on Friday that China “adamantly opposes any state or individual using issues related to Tibet as a pretext for interfering in China’s domestic affairs.”
The Chinese government has repeatedly rejected accusations that it has perpetrated genocide or other widespread human rights abuses in Tibet, which came under the control of Communist Party forces from 1949. Instead, China maintains that its economic support has been a boon to the region.
Associations defending the rights of Tibetans welcomed Spain’s judicial U-turn and the decision to indict Mr. Hu, who lost his right to immunity after leaving office this year.
Alan Cantos, the president of a Spanish association called Comité de Apoyo al Tíbet that is a plaintiff in the case, said of Mr. Hu, “The person who began the year as president of China, embraced by heads of state, kings and ministers of the economy throughout the world, is since yesterday the Number One accused of genocide in Tibet.”
