Energetic Protest Demands Freedom for
Socialist Political Prisoner in Australia
Sydney, 13 April 2019: More than 40 people participated in a united front protest action today in support of a left-wing political prisoner in Australia, Chan Han Choi. An Australian citizen who migrated from South Korea some 31 years ago, Choi has been incarcerated for the last 16 months. The Australian authorities have refused to give him bail because of his sympathies for North Korea. They have also stripped him of many of the legal rights that should be accorded to other prisoners. The Australian regime has restricted visits to see him, cut off his phone calls, prevented his son from visiting him in jail and blocked visits by his lawyers for several months. Underscoring the reality that this cruel repression flows very much from the nature of Australia’s racist, rich people’s regime is the fact that Choi is being imprisoned in the very same wing of Sydney’s Long Bay jail where 26 year-old Aboriginal man, David Dungay, was murdered by racist prison guards on 29 December 2015.
Choi is accused of facilitating the export of North Korea’s produce abroad in violation of United Nations economic sanctions. Despite the authorities holding this Australian citizen in harsh conditions he has remained defiant and pleaded “Not Guilty.” As the chair of today’s protest, Sarah Fitzenmeyer, who is also the chairwoman of Trotskyist Platform, stressed in introducing the protest demonstration:
“… even if these allegations against Choi turn out to be true, he is certainly no criminal from the standpoint of the working class. Quite the opposite! If Choi actually did try to broker deals to help North Korea this would simply prove that he was taking great personal risks to aid the people of North Korea who are being ground down by the most severe sanctions ever imposed on any country….”
“Choi’s opposition to the sanctions is not only based on his humanitarianism but also on his love for North Korean society’s egalitarianism and warm community spirit. Whatever one may think of North Korea’s particular leaders, North Korea is a workers state based on collective ownership of all the key banks, industries, agricultural land and mines. In supporting this socialistic state based on public ownership, Choi is standing by the interests of all those suffering in Australia from the effects of an economy dominated by capitalist private ownership. He is also standing by Aboriginal people, Muslim people, Asian people, African people and Middle Eastern people right here in Australia who suffer racist violence engendered by capitalist society. So the working class and downtrodden of Australia must stand by Chan Han Choi. We must demand the dropping of all charges against him now.”
After the chair’s opening remarks, a message to supporters that Choi delivered in September last year was played to the rally (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTlumqtaguo). In this message, Choi not only thanks his supporters but, from jail, bravely denounces the UN economic sanctions on North Korea as “both unjust and unfair.”
The first speaker from the protest was Choi’s friend and one of his strongest supporters, Jimmy Yun, who addressed the rally in Korean. Yun emphasised that Choi is being stripped of his rights because he supports a socialistic country, North Korea. He pointed out how Choi has been denied bail and compared that with the granting of bail, prior to trial, in the two highest profile criminal cases in Australia over the last two years: those of Chris Dawson and former Catholic archbishop George Pell. Pell who was found by a jury to have cruelly sexually assaulted two children was granted bail prior to the trial that convicted him of these serious charges. For his part, Chris Dawson who is charged with murdering his ex-wife Lynette was granted bail after spending just two weeks in prison. In contrast, Choi has been denied bail for 16 months! This comparison becomes all the more stark when one compares the very different nature of the “crimes” that Choi has been accused of as against those that Pell and Dawson were charged with. Both of the latter two cases involve serious crimes against victims: in one, murder, and in the other, sexual assault of children. In the case of Choi, who has no criminal record, he is not accused of any crime against a victim. He is not charged with killing anyone, sexually assaulting anyone, bashing anyone, verbally abusing anyone or even stealing from anyone.
In attacking the UN sanctions on North Korea, Yun also put these criminal sanctions in the context of the broader role of the UN. He explained that rather than being the “peacekeeper” that it claims to be, the UN has been a proxy for the United States that has promoted its wars from the Korean War to wars in the Middle East. He pointed out that under the watch of the UN, the people of Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine have endured great suffering and death.
Yun was followed by another speaker of Korean background, Samuel Kim, who is a prominent representative of Trotskyist Platform. He had worked very hard to build today’s protest action. Kim explained why Choi is being so viciously persecuted. He pointed out that the mere presence of workers states like the DPRK (Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, i.e. “North Korea”), the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), Vietnam, Cuba and Laos sets off the most mortal fear of capitalist rulers … that they too will be overthrown. So they persecute anyone like Choi who helps those workers states. Kim also outlined how Australia’s imperialist rulers that so brutally exploit the peoples in this region fear that the masses of PNG, East Timor, Fiji, the Philippines and Indonesia will one day also take the socialist path and give them the boot. As a result, when they see Choi’s efforts to help make the DPRK strong and thus a future beacon for the masses in other former colonies, they fear that this will lead to the potential loss of tens of billions of dollars in profit.
Kim also pointed out that the South Korean and Australian regimes had engaged in a massive spying operation against Chan Han Choi. Of course, it is not only Choi that the Australian regime has targeted. ASIO [and ASIS] spies on determined trade unionists, Aboriginal rights activists, anti-fascists and socialists and East Timorese and Indonesian politicians. But just as telling is who the Australian regime does not monitor. Australian authorities admitted that they did not have the Australian fascist who murdered 50 Muslim people last month under any surveillance despite him having often expressed extreme racial hatred online. It is apparent that the Australian regime does almost nothing to curb violent white supremacists. For the Australian state – no matter whether it is the Liberals, the ALP or the Greens who are in office – are not here to protect the majority of us. Rather they are here for the very opposite reason: to enforce the interests of the rich capitalists over the working class masses. Kim stressed, therefore, that we must rely on mass actions and building greater support for Choi within the workers movement as the way to defend Chan Han Choi.
Kim called not only for people to “work harder to build actions to win the dropping of all charges against the proud, socialist political prisoner Chan Han Choi” but for support for the DPRK, the PRC and Cuba against all attempts to undermine these workers states. He stressed that, “We must demand the unconditional ejection of U.S. troops from South Korea. Australian patrol aircraft and ships get out of the waters near North Korea!”
During the April 13 protest, many passers by stopped to listen to speeches and grab leaflets related to Choi’s case. Particularly popular was a Chinese-language Trotskyist Platform (TP) leaflet locating the persecution of Chan Han Choi in the context of an emerging Cold War style witch-hunt against supporters of socialistic states that has especially targeted Chinese-background residents in Australia who are sympathetic to the PRC (see: https://www.trotskyistplatform.com/zhongwen-emerging-cold-war-witch-hunt/). The pro-Red China section of the Australian Chinese community is now furious about the way they have been attacked by the Australian regime and the mainstream media. That is why we decided to start the April 13 protest in Sydney’s Chinatown. TP placards at the protest, written in both English and Chinese, demanded: Free pro-DPRK political prisoner Chan Han Choi! Resist the emerging Cold War repression against supporters of socialistic states! Stop the witch-hunt against the pro-PRC Chinese community!
The next speaker after Kim was Brennan, representing Aust-DPRK Solidarity. Brennan hailed Choi as “a socialist and loyal friend to all who value public ownership.” He insisted that the barbarity of the Australian ruling class’ imprisonment of Choi was not an aberration and gave examples of other cruel actions of this capitalist class: “the privatisation campaign has led to job losses for workers and more expensive and less accessible social services for working people. Wages are being stolen also by the corporations …. 7-Eleven [the convenience store chain] going even further abusing non-citizens, paying in some cases $5 an hour ….” Brennan then stressed that “by remaining vigilant in his defence of the DPRK workers state, Choi acted in support of all of us working class people here battling the effects of privatisation, theft of wage by greedy bosses and lack of job security.”
Brennan also asserted that the “inhumane and degrading manner” with which the Australian regime has treated Choi “plays into a greater domain, the domain of the continuation of Cold War suppression of pro-socialist rhetoric …. The Australian people are the target of new laws, a pretext in ‘foreign interference’ allowing an undemocratic crackdown on the civil right to protest.” Mocking the claim of Australia’s capitalist rulers that they oversee a “great democracy,” Brennan gave as another example of the suppression of rights the Australian regime’s moves to silence the truth about their treatment of refugees fleeing from persecution [he was referring to the Australian government’s laws outlawing Australians working at the hell-hole offshore detention camp at PNG’s Manus Island from speaking out about the conditions of imprisoned refugees].
The protest then set-off on a march through the crowded streets of central Sydney. From Chinatown we headed north up Dixon Street, then right on Liverpool Street and then headed north up George Street past the Sydney Town Hall, finishing up in the paved area outside the QVB Building. Throughout the march we loudly chanted, “Chan Han Choi – Free this Hero Now!” and “Free Chan Choi! Lift the Sanctions Now!” The march certainly spun the heads of those walking the streets as people turned around to read the banner and placards and take photos and video of our protest. When we arrived outside QVB, a group of teenagers watching on, joined the rally for quite a while and then said to us “good on you for taking a stand on this” when they left.
The first speaker after we arrived outside QVB was Zach from the Stalin Society of Australia. Zach explained that:
“The allegations against Chan Han Choi are this: that he has been involved in facilitating the sale of North Korean products abroad. To this we say: so what! If this is true and he is violating United Nations sanctions we say: so what? The United Nations sanctions against the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea are crimes of barbarity not against the government but against the people of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. North Korea historically never has had enough land or room to produce enough crop for their population. The UN sanctions on them are aimed at starving [them] and causing famine in the country.
“… We are here for something bigger than just Chan Han Choi …. If our government can get away with charging Chan Han Choi with the obviously phony and fake accusations, they can get away with charging anyone who supports the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea or who speaks out on American imperialism – just like Assange.”
A second recorded message from Choi was then played to the rally (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro3RkGojbgY). This statement begins with Choi speaking about some of the many rights that he has been denied following his arrest. The message was introduced by Yuri Gromov – editor of The Spark, the journal of Trotskyist Platform – who detailed some of the other violations of Choi’s rights that Choi was not able to speak about in the recorded message. Yuri highlighted a sinister attempt to have Choi stripped of his legal support, when a shadowy third party – likely ASIO or the Australian Federal Police or the KCIA (South Korea’s spy agency) – pretending to be Choi sent Legal Aid a false flag communication asking for his [i.e. Choi’s] lawyers to be sacked! In this second statement, Choi not only again speaks about his opposition to the UN sanctions on North Korea but explains what it is that he likes about North Korea. He says that while in Australia, for example, it is “just money first” and if you have money you can do anything, in North Korea social life is not about money, “money is not important” it is “humans and humanism” that is first. Choi then speaks of how the genuineness of North Korea’s people gives him a “heart-warming feeling.”
The final speaker at today’s action was Peter Woods, Honorary Patron of the Australia-DPRK Friendship Society. Woods informed the rally of the persecution of another DPRK supporter – this time in France – by the name of Benoit Quennedey. Woods mocked the spurious grounds of Quennedey’s imprisonment:
“It’s important to recognise what has been happening not only here with our great Chan Han Choi but also in France where the president of the [DPRK] Friendship Association in that country, who [by chance] works for the Senate in Paris has been arrested on grounds of supposed espionage. It so happens that he’s the manager of the Parks and Gardens section. So I presume he must have been planting too many red poppies instead of white ones to be charged on this senseless claim of espionage. It’s happening everywhere!”
After Woods speech, protesters chanted “Free Chan Choi – Free Benoit Quennedey!”
In his speech, Woods also rightly skewered the UN “report” attacking the human rights situation in North Korea delivered by Australian judge – and raving monarchist and idol of Tony Abbott – Michael Kirby: “the honorable judge who carried out that report didn’t go into the DPRK, didn’t interview representatives of the population and yet was able to come out with a supposed `learned’ treatise about human rights.” Woods then pointed out that the greatest abusers of human rights in North Korea are those implementing the sanctions against her. He then detailed the severity of these economic sanctions:
“There was a group of North Korean athletes who were touring New Zealand and on their way back through they bought chocolate at the Auckland airport. They were taking it back for their families. That was confiscated. Why? Because under the UN sanctions, chocolate is seen as a luxury good. You might also recognise that the sanctions mean that [medical] drugs and medical equipment cannot be taken into the DPRK. So children are suffering, the elderly are suffering and people in need of medical attention are suffering because of this.
“… Let us ensure that we support the principles that this man [pointing to the picture of Choi in the rally banner] stands for, ensure that his brave actions can be the catalyst to continue the pressure to be applied [for the lifting of the sanctions].”
In addition to the organizations that provided speakers for today’s protest, the following groups, although unable to send representatives to the action, nevertheless endorsed the protest: the Irish Republican socialist group the James Connolly Association, Young Communists – Western Sydney and the Lebanese Communist Party.
When the Australian authorities arrested Choi and the accusations against him were sensationalised by the media, they expected that he would have zero support. Instead, today Choi’s supporters held our second protest in his defence. And today’s action was nearly twice as large in numbers and had even more vigour than the first protest last September. Momentum in the campaign to free Chan Han Choi is clearly growing. But as the rally chairwoman stressed in her concluding remarks, repeating the point stressed earlier by TP spokesman Samuel Kim:
“… there is so much more that we need to do. There is no way the Australian courts in their standard practice will ever give Chan Han Choi a fair trial. These are, after all, pro-capitalist biased courts – and it’s no matter whether it’s the Liberals, the ALP or the Greens in office – they are part and parcel of the racist, rich people’s regime. Only mass, working class-based actions can make the authorities realise that a biased outcome would be against their political interests. So let’s take what we have learnt today from all the speeches and conversations to re-double our efforts and continue building this very important campaign. We should not rest until all charges against this brave left-wing political prisoner are dropped and the cruel, imperialist sanctions on socialistic North Korea are lifted. Free Chan Han Choi!”
For a short video made about this 13 April 2019 protest action, click on the following link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVA5CHJZRlo
For a more detailed exposition of Chan Han Choi’s plight, please click on the following link:
https://www.trotskyistplatform.com/free-left-wing-political-prisoner-chan-han-choi/