Chan Han Choi Pleads: “They Are Indirectly Trying to Murder Me”
Left-Wing Political Prisoner in Australia Had Serious Diabetic Condition
Left Untreated for Months
11 October 2020 – Socialist political prisoner Chan Han Choi had a serious and worsening diabetic condition left untreated for over eight and a half months. This greatly endangered his health. Prison authorities refused Choi’s repeated written requests to be seen by a prison doctor. The anguish at seeing his health rapidly deteriorate and the horror of being repeatedly denied treatment caused Choi such severe emotional stress that for a while it caused him serious long-term memory loss. Fortunately Choi’s memory has gradually recovered since.
Chan Han Choi has been imprisoned by the Australian regime since December 2017 on charges of trying to organise trade deals to help the people of North Korea bypass crippling United Nations economic sanctions. He is currently imprisoned without being convicted. By the time that Choi finally goes to trial next February, he would have spent three years and two months in prison! All the charges against Choi refer to his alleged attempts to help North Korea export its produce abroad except for one charge of allegedly attempting to help North Korea import petroleum products. All opponents of imperialism, supporters of socialism and partisans of workers rights should stand by Chan Han Choi regardless of whether the allegations against him are true or not. As Trotskyist Platform spokesman, Samuel Kim, stated at a March 9 united front rally to demand freedom for Choi:
“If Choi turns out to be `guilty’ as charged that means that he sacrificed his freedom to help the people of North Korea bypass these killer sanctions. That would make him a great humanitarian. A humanitarian who should be freed from prison immediately. And if he is found not guilty, he should never have been imprisoned in the first place.”
For over five months in the mid-part of this year, Choi had been pleading to be seen by a prison doctor at the jail where he is incarcerated: Long Bay Prison Hospital. As well as housing inmates on remand like Choi, Long Bay Prison Hospital holds prisoners with medical conditions. Therefore, there are actually more doctors assigned to treat inmates at that particular prison. Yet, the authorities repeatedly refused to allow Choi to see a prison doctor. This is despite health records showing that he submitted at least five written applications to have a doctor’s consultation in that five month period: on March 27, March 31, May 25, June 26 and August 12. Choi maintains that he also submitted additional written requests on at least two other occasions as well: June 30 and July 12.
It would have been visually obvious to prison authorities that Choi was unwell. His friends who had Audio-Visual Link (AVL) “visits” with him during that period reported that Choi had lost much weight and that his face looked gaunt. Furthermore, most of the symptoms that Choi was complaining about – severe weight loss, rashes all over his body, serious stomach problems and very itchy fungal infections – are classic symptoms of diabetes, a condition that prison authorities knew that Choi was already afflicted with. On 31 October of last year, prison doctors prescribed him the oral diabetic medication Metformin. Moreover, 61 year-old Choi was prescribed medication for his high cholesterol.
It was only after Choi sent a protest letter to the director of Justice Health in August stating that “they are indirectly trying to murder me” by denying him medical treatment, that the authorities finally allowed Choi to see a prison doctor. That consultation occurred on August 31. The doctor found that his diabetes condition that previously did not require insulin injections had deteriorated seriously, reporting “declining glycaemic control.” Mr Choi now requires daily insulin injections. However, given that he was suffering from the very same symptoms for months and was not provided with insulin during that time (because he was prevented from even being able to see a doctor) that meant that his diabetes had not been adequately treated for a lengthy period. Untreated diabetes can cause damage to the eyes, kidneys and nerves, increases the risk of strokes and heart attacks and can cause diabetic emergencies involving a serious reduction of a person’s consciousness. Meanwhile, the sudden onset of treatment after it has not been provided in due time can cause unconsciousness or even permanent brain damage.
That August 31 consultation was the first time that Choi had been seen by a doctor in ten months, despite Choi submitting at least seven (and possibly up to ten) written requests to see a doctor from 23 December last year. Indeed health records show that when Choi was attended to by a nurse just four days prior to this late August consultation, this was the first time the known diabetic sufferer had had his blood sugar level checked in eight and a half months! What makes this all the more appalling is that when authorities had previously checked his blood sugar on 12 December last year, the level had been too high and on an increasing trajectory. A person’s blood sugar levels are meant to be between 4 and 8 mmol/L. However, by 12 December 2019 Choi’s levels had reached 11.1 mmol/L rising from 8.4 mmol/L on 15 November 2019 and then 10.5 mmol/L on 28 November 2019. When a nurse finally checked Choi’s blood sugar levels again eight and a half months later it had risen to 13.4 mmol/L and a few days later it was at an alarming 20.6 mmol/L. It was around this time, that the doctor prescribed Choi emergency doses of rapid acting insulin. The situation had become so critical that on 28 August, Justice Health (the government prison agency responsible for providing health care to prisoners) was compelled to put a health problem notification alert to prison guards warning them that Chan Han Choi had “Unstable Type 2 diabetes” with potential symptoms that included confusion, excessive sweating and unconsciousness.
All-Sided “Maximum Pressure” Campaign to Break the Spirit of this Political Prisoner
Fortunately, Choi’s blood sugar levels have finally been brought under control and he now takes regular insulin injections and has his blood sugar levels monitored three times daily. However, the question remains why was his diabetes left unmonitored for so long, why were Choi’s obvious symptoms of a worsening diabetes condition ignored and why were his desperate pleas to be seen by a doctor repeatedly rebuffed?
To help answer these questions, we need to point out that Choi’s diabetes was once well managed in prison. Indeed, in the ten week period leading up to 12 December last year, Choi’s blood sugar levels were monitored on nine different occasions. Yet when this blood sugar reached unacceptably high levels in the last two recordings in that period and on a steeply increasing trajectory – they stopped checking Choi’s blood sugar for eight and a half months! This, even as Choi repeatedly complained of symptoms that trained medical staff would know are diabetic induced problems!
Moreover, Choi’s prison medical records show that during a four a half month period during the early days of his incarceration from mid-January 2018 to early May 2018, Justice Health monitored Choi’s blood sugar levels on 30 separate days. This was furthermore during the period when Choi’s diabetes was well under control and nowhere near as serious as it is now. So why the change in attitude? Well that early part of the period of Choi’s incarceration was at a time when the Australian regime thought that Choi would be totally isolated and intimidated and would roll over and plead guilty to all charges and show “remorse”. The situation has changed a lot since then. The regime has found that this political prisoner is defiant and proud. Far from rolling over he has spoken out bravely from prison against the denial of his human rights and what’s more has denounced the economic sanctions, that he is alleged to have tried to help North Korea to evade, as being “unjust” and “unfair.” By late November last year, Choi was in court pushing a motion for a Permanent Stay in the proceedings against him on the grounds that his rights as a prisoner and defendant were being violated and was openly telling the court that “he is a political prisoner incarcerated because of his socialist political beliefs.” Moreover, this period at the end of last year was a time when Choi was just weeks from going to trial which had at that time been scheduled for February this year. The denial of medical treatment to Choi thus has a distinct smell of being an attempt to apply “maximum pressure” to this political prisoner in the lead up to his trial. Perhaps it was an attempt to pressure Choi into acquiescing to a prosecution plea bargain “offer” that was unacceptable to him. Whatever may be the exact reason behind the denial of medical care to Choi, it needs to be seen in the context of the all-sided “maximum pressure” campaign that has been waged against this political prisoner – from the taking away of his right to telephone friends to the repeated obstructions placed on family, friends and even lawyers and their interpreters gaining access to him.
To be sure on 29 September, Justice Health sent off a letter to Choi apologising for the “delay in care.” But that was after Choi had sent a desperate, strongly worded letter the previous month stating that:
“I’ve put in request form after request form and receive no care for my illnesses. I have rashes all over me and have issues going to the toilet and put medical forms in with no reply. Whatever I ask for gets no reply. I have no human rights here so I am [of the] strong belief that they are trying indirectly to murder me.”
And Justice Heath also likely only sent the apology letter to Choi after they realised that Choi’s supporters had exposed online their repeated refusal to respond to this post 60, known diabetic with high cholesterol’s desperate requests for medical treatment.
The Australian regime knows full well the growing support for Choi that there is amongst pro-working class and anti-imperialist activists. They had better realise that should Choi’s health needs again be denied in the future because of their “maximum pressure” campaign against this political prisoner, Choi’s supporters in both Australia and abroad would surely take their revenge out on Australia’s authoritarian capitalist regime. We would do so by quadrupling our efforts to expose the unjust persecution of Chan Han Choi; and by working still harder to lay bare the connection between the regime’s persecution of this political prisoner and the other crimes that it commits in its relentless drive to further the interests of the exploiting class. Choi’s supporters would be energised to struggle all the more feverishly to unmask the deception behind the regime’s claims to stand for “human rights” and the “rule of law.” We would with renewed vehemence expose to the masses, both here and abroad, the Australian regime’s persecution in the courts of scores of staunch trade union activists (especially those working in the construction industry), their brutal racist killings of Aboriginal people in state custody, their prosecution of whistleblowers and journalists, their McCarthyist repression of those sympathetic to socialistic states, their arrogant trampling of the peoples of the South Pacific and the horrific execution-style murders of unarmed civilians and children that their Nazi and Confederate-flag waving, special forces troops commit in Afghanistan.
Australia’s Authoritarian Capitalist Regime Has Been
Torturing This Socialist Political Prisoner
The repeated denial of medical care to Choi was a blatant violation of Rule 25 of the UN’s Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, which states that: “The medical officer shall have the care of the physical and mental health of the prisoners and should daily see all sick prisoners, all who complain of illness, and any prisoner to whom his attention is specially directed” (https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/TreatmentOfPrisoners.aspx). Let’s remember that the UN is a capitalist-dominated agency that the Australian regime claims to uphold and that it is in the very name of enforcing UN sanctions that the regime here is persecuting Choi. Yet Australia’s authoritarian capitalist regime violates the UN’s own rules. The UN further states that: “The intentional withholding of medical treatment from persons in places of detention or in other State institutions such as orphanages or from persons injured by an act attributable to public officials falls within the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on torture” (https://www.bak.gv.at/en/Downloads/files/UNO/UNO_Folter_Konvention.pdf). In other words, under the UN definition of torture, by repeatedly withholding medical care to Chan Han Choi over a lengthy period, the Australian regime had been torturing this political prisoner.
The withholding of medical care is hardly the only violation of Choi’s rights that the Australian regime has been guilty of. They have made it extremely difficult for Choi’s friends and family to speak to him. The few people able to visit Choi report that it originally took them four to five months to gain approval to visit him and that they then need to get re-approved each year which takes a further couple of months each time. However, the authorities have still banned Choi from making telephone calls to these friends. Moreover, Choi has been prevented from speaking to his infant grand-daughters because Corrective Services NSW blocked his application to make telephone calls to his daughter-in-law. All this is a gross violation of Rule 92 of the UN’s Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, which states that: “An untried prisoner shall be allowed to inform immediately his family of his detention and shall be given all reasonable facilities for communicating with his family and friends, and for receiving visits from them, subject only to restrictions and supervision as are necessary in the interests of the administration of justice and of the security and good order of the institution.” This rule should obviously apply to the authorities detaining Choi. He is clearly an untried prisoner – indeed he has already spent two and three quarter years in custody without being tried. And Choi is definitely no threat to the “security and good order” of the prison: not only does he have no criminal record he is not even charged with committing or attempting to commit any sort of violent act or indeed any sort of act against a victim full stop.
The Australian regime has also violated Rule 90 of the UN’s rules on prisoners, which states that: “An untried prisoner shall be allowed to procure at his own expense or at the expense of a third party such books, newspapers, writing materials and other means of occupation as are compatible with the interests of the administration of justice and the security and good order of the institution.” In particular, the regime blocked repeated attempts by Choi’s friends to pass through the prison system to him issues of the popular Australian Korean-language community newspapers, Hanho Daily and Korean Today, some of which contained articles about Choi’s own case.
One of the most striking violations of Australian citizen Choi’s rights has been the Australian regime’s obstruction of his access to lawyers. They do this, in part, by requiring lawyers to go through a months-long special approval process before they can again access to Choi. As a result, Choi’s new lawyers, who were engaged at his instructions by his friends were for two months not only not able to visit Choi but have even been prevented from speaking to him over the telephone! Moreover, in a 3 November 2019 letter to Choi’s previous lawyers, the Commissioner of Corrective Services NSW (CSNSW), Peter Severin, admitted that his officers had been listening in on their privileged communications (see: https://www.trotskyistplatform.com/socialist-political-prisoner-cannot-get-a-fair-trial-in-australia/). He stated that: “phone calls with `national security interest’ (NSI) inmates, such as Choi, are monitored by CSNSW officers to ensure that they are in English and are with approved contacts.” Such monitoring of phone calls are a blatant violation of Rule 93 of the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners which states that: “Interviews between the prisoner and his legal adviser may be within sight but not within the hearing of a police or institution official.”
Chan Han Choi: A Victim of the New McCarthyist Witch-Hunt
The withholding of medical care to Chan Han Choi recalls the Australian regime’s record of very frequently refusing to grant Aboriginal prisoners timely medical care. Many Aboriginal people have died in state custody after police or prison guards fatally delayed granting them access to urgently needed medical care. Kamilaroi man, Eric Whittaker, died of a ruptured brain aneurysm on 2 July 2017 after guards at Parklea Correctional Centre refused to give him medical care for some three and a half hours after he first started making desperate appeals to get access to care. Thirty-six year-old Whittaker made 20 emergency calls begging for help from 4.52am but guards murderously ignored his pleas. When staff finally attended to Whittaker at 8.08am, he was found crouched in the rear of his cell shouting “please help me” and having urinated, vomited and defecated on himself (https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/please-help-me-eric-whittaker-made-20-emergency-calls-before-he-died-in-custody-20191014-p530gg.html). Fifteen months later, another thirty-six year-old Aboriginal man, Nathan Reynolds, also died after authorities again fatally delayed giving him medical care. A diagnosed serious asthmatic, Reynolds had repeatedly buzzed for help and screamed out, “I can’t breathe.” Other distressed inmates started buzzing for help as they could see Reynolds deteriorating before their very eyes and turning blue in the face. It took forty minutes for help to arrive. One hour and twenty minutes after crying out for help the Anaiwan father of one was dead (https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/aug/25/why-does-it-take-so-long-the-desperate-wait-for-answers-after-a-death-in-custody). Earlier in August 2014, 22 year-old Aboriginal woman, Julieka Dhu, died in police custody in WA of a bacterial infection because police criminally prevented her from getting the medical care that she so desperately cried out for. The night before she died, Ms Dhu had cried out in pain all night but police refused her pleas to see a doctor. They continued to murderously obstruct her getting medical care the next morning even after she vomited repeatedly for over an hour. Instead, a cop threateningly told her, “you will f_cking sit this out.”
Aboriginal people suffer the most intense racist state oppression in Australia. As a person of Asian background, racism is no doubt a factor in Choi’s ill-treatment too. However, there is another more over-riding reason why Choi is suffering the same intense brutality that the racist, rich people’s regime unleashes against Aboriginal people. That is because he is being persecuted for his sympathy for a socialistic state – in this case the DPRK (the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, i.e. “North Korea”). The last few years has seen an escalating anti-communist witch hunt in Australia. This persecution of supporters of the DPRK and more often those sympathetic to the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) is part of the Australian rulers’ role in the U.S.-led Cold War drive against the socialistic PRC and her socialistic neighbour and ally, the DPRK. This witch hunt mirrors the 1950s campaign in the U.S. and Australia against communists and others who expressed even the slightest sympathy towards the then Soviet Union – and to a lesser extent back then also the PRC and the DPRK. A large number of communists, trade unionists, artists and intellectuals, including those who had merely not been “condemnatory enough” of communism, ended up being jailed or purged from their jobs. The ideology of the witch hunt became known as McCarthysim, after the U.S. senator Joseph McCarthy who helped drive the witch hunt with smear tactics and unsubstantiated accusations (extreme right wing federal Liberal MP and Chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Intelligence and Security, Andrew Hastie, is a modern day Australian equivalent of Joseph McCarthy).
The McCarthyist nature of Chan Han Choi’s all-sided persecution has been most evident during his bail applications. In their submissions opposing each of Choi’s bail applications last year, the Crown made Choi’s stated sympathy for the DPRK a central point of their argument. Indeed, they listed as the very second point of their argument on why they claim that, “the Applicant’s alleged offending is objectively serious,” “the Applicant’s repeated statements that he is a loyal subject of the DPRK ….” In other words, because of this Australian citizen’s political sympathy for a socialistic state, the Australian regime insists that he should have less rights – in this case the right to bail – than other people. That is simply an expression of the very basic premise of McCarthyism. And that very same McCarthyist premise was very evident in the judges’ rejection of his bail applications. Two different judges rejected Choi’s two bail bids even though he is not even accused of killing anyone, sexually assaulting anyone, bashing anyone, stealing from anyone, any terrorist acts, espionage or even planning any of these things. By contrast, accused murderers and pedophile high-ranking priests are readily granted bail in Australia.
Chan Han Choi is not the only victim of the new McCarthyist witch hunt. International students from China who organised a thousands-strong demonstration in Sydney in August 17 last year that opposed the anti-PRC forces in Hong Kong were interrogated and intimidated by Australian security agencies (https://news.have8.tv/2636880.html). Australian regime agents told a key female organizer of the march that her actions may have violated Australia’s foreign interference laws and threatened that she could face visa problems. When the Australian secret police intrusively asked her about her family and she responded, “You all know a lot!” the cops menacingly retorted, “Yes, so you have to be careful” and settle down [and stay out of politics!]. Then, four months ago, Australia’s ASIO secret police and the Australian Federal Police (AFP) – the very agencies spearheading the persecution of Chan Han Choi – raided the homes of four PRC journalists based in Sydney (http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-09/12/c_139361950.htm). They interrogated the reporters, seized their computers and smartphones and even demanded that they not report the raids.
Most infamously, the Australian ruling class and its media have launched a witch hunting campaign against NSW upper house MP, Shaoquett Moselmane. Moselmane was pilloried by the mainstream media, Liberal politicians and leaders of his own Labor Party for having the temerity to praise China’s highly successful response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, on April 6, Moselmane was forced to step down from his position as assistant president of the NSW Legislative Council. Then, just seven weeks later, ASIO and the AFP raided Moselmane’s home and parliamentary office. The more than 12 hour-long operation was unleashed under the pretext that “Chinese government agents” had infiltrated his office and were using him as part of a “foreign interference” operation. It has now been revealed who these “agents” are and what their supposed “foreign interference operation” was. The “agents” – the Chinese media reporters who were raided in Sydney and a part-time staffer for Moselmane, John Zhang – supposedly “interfered” because they were in the same social media chat group as Moselmane and had had contact with China’s Sydney Consul. How utterly ridiculous is it to portray that as some sort of sinister “foreign interference”! Yet the Australian media and regime depicted Moselmane as a traitor even though he was not even a suspect in the authoritarian raid. NSW politicians forced him to take leave from his elected position as a state senator and, to this very day, those NSW voters who elected Moselmane remain disenfranchised from their voice in parliament.
Let’s Work Harder to Demand Freedom for Chan Han Choi
The McCarthyist witch hunting is all about silencing the voices of anyone who speaks favourably, however mildly in the case of Moselmane, about a socialistic country. That is, after all, why the Australian regime had denied Choi medical care for a lengthy period, refuses him bail and has stripped him of many of his rights as a defendant and prisoner. Because Choi has stood by his political beliefs and even from prison bravely spoke out about his love for the egalitarianism of North Korean society and against the unfairness of the UN economic sanctions on North Korea, the Australian authoritarian regime wants to punish him, isolate him and demoralise him into submission. They also don’t want him getting bail as they know that this would enable him to speak more easily to the world about the injustice of the UN sanctions and the cruelty of his treatment while in prison.
Yet behind the capitalist ruling class’ strong state repression is, actually, fear. However, it is not Chan Han Choi, PRC journalists, international students from China, Moselmane or Chinese social organisations that they are ultimately most scared of. No, who they are ultimately scared of are the entire working class masses that they exploit. Australia’s capitalists know all too well that on average for every $100,000 of value that a worker adds to an enterprise, they, the capitalists, steal a full $50,000 out of that amount in profit. They know that young workers are frustrated that more than half of them do not have a stable job – and are, instead, consigned to being either unemployed, having less work hours than they want or to working as insecure casuals, gig workers or employees on short-term contract. The capitalist rulers know too that low-income people are angry at the lack of affordable low-rent accommodation. The regime is nervous that Aboriginal people and other anti-racists are furious at ever worsening racist state brutality. They know too that politically aware workers are seething at the job cuts and reduced work hours that workers have copped during the pandemic even as corporate profits surge through the roof. So, the capitalist exploiters are terrified that anyone speaking positively about the world’s largest socialistic country, that is the PRC – or even about her much maligned, small but staunch DPRK neighbour – could make the masses here realise that there is an alternative to capitalism. The capitalist rulers are fearful that this would, in turn, cause an explosion in mass resistance against them. Therefore, the lances that the capitalist regime is stabbing Choi and others with in their Cold War witch hunts are actually meant to pierce right through their immediate victims and onto the rebellious hearts of the broader oppressed masses. That is why it is very much a matter of self defence for the working class and oppressed in Australia to oppose the McCarthyist repression. Let us mobilise in action to demand: Free Chan Han Choi – Drop all the charges now! Down with the persecution of Chinese journalists, pro-PRC international students and parliamentary staffer, John Zhang! Repeal Australia’s draconian “Foreign Interference” laws! Stop the witch hunt of Shaoquett Moselmane – allow this elected MP to resume his seat in parliament immediately!
Chan Han Choi is not merely a victim of Cold War persecution. His arrest, then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s fanatical tirade against Choi at the time of his arrest and the media hysteria surrounding this supposed “North Korean economic agent” were meant to help propel the new McCarthyist witch hunt throughout broader society. And it has! Just six months after Choi’s arrest, the Australian government rammed through its authoritarian “foreign interference” laws. These laws will not only attack those with sympathies for the PRC and the DPRK – its main immediate targets – but also dissident journalists as well as leftists and trade unionists with international connections. And that is a crucial point. The Cold War witch hunt is creating such an obsession with “national security” that its victims are already starting to be much broader than simply those who speak positively about the PRC and DPRK. It is notable that while ASIO first raided the homes of remorseful former Australian spy, Witness K, and his lawyer Bernard Collaery in 2013 – for revealing to the media and the East Timorese government that Australia’s ASIS spy agency had planted listening devices in Timorese government buildings to give the Australian government the advantage in negotiations over an oil and gas dispute with East Timor – the Australian regime did not feel that they could actually lay charges against the two until June 2018, that is in the months following the red scare hysteria that surrounded Choi’s arrest and after the China-bashing campaign had reached new heights. Similarly, military lawyer, David McBride, who faces up to 50 years in jail for informing the media of horrific war crimes by Australian elite forces in Afghanistan and the ABC journalist, Dan Oakes, who broke the story – whom the AFP have called to be charged – are indirect victims of the “national security” obsession that the Cold War witch hunt has created, even though they are not themselves accused of any sympathy for a socialistic state. We should add that the “national security”-obsessed climate created by the new McCarthyist campaign has made it easier, too, for the Australian regime to brush off its despicable complicity in Washington and London’s persecution of Australian Wikileaks journalist, Julian Assange.
That is why those within the political Left who think that they do not need to defend Choi and oppose the new McCarthyism, just because they are not amongst the sections of the Left courageous enough to stand by the socialistic PRC and DPRK, had better think again. Just like the original 1950s McCarthyist witch hunt, its contemporary version is creating such a stifling, repressive political climate that it will eventually target all sections of the Left. Already in the U.S., Trump and his fascistic hard-core supporters brand staunch supporters of black liberation or proponents of universal public health care as China-loving communists. If the new Cold War repression is not resisted, inevitably in Australia, in the future, supporters of public housing, nationalisation of the banks and public ownership of industry will be attacked as “agents of Red China-like and North Korea-like policies.”
The ruling class’ fear-mongering surrounding Chan Han Choi and their railings against “Communist Chinese influence” are meant to also justify their foreign policy agenda. And top of that agenda is to increase military and political pressure on socialistic China and her socialistic North Korean ally and neighbour. Three and a half months ago, the right wing Australian government announced a massive $270 billion defence upgrade targeting the PRC and DPRK. The military build up would see Australia acquire long-range missiles. Why is the Australian ruling class doing this? Crushing socialistic rule in China and North Korea would, by dashing hopes that there is a viable alternative to capitalism, help secure the rule of exploitation by Australia’s capitalist class. However, such a victory for capitalism would be disastrous for working class people. For although socialistic rule in both China and North Korea is fragile and bureaucratically deformed, the PRC and DPRK are, nevertheless, workers states formed through the overturn of capitalist rule by the toiling classes and with economies based on the dominant role of socialist public ownership. Seventy years of socialist rule have brought immense benefits to China’s masses and are an inspiration to every downtrodden person around the world who aspires for justice and a better life. When it comes to uplifting people out of poverty, providing decent health care to all and advancing social equality for women, Red China has far surpassed the other populous countries that were also raped by colonialism but which have remained under capitalist rule (such as India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Egypt, Brazil and Peru) – whether these capitalist developing countries be nominal “democracies” or ones administered by notoriously strong state regimes. Today, the PRC and even the sanctions-ravaged DPRK, along with the other workers states in Cuba, Vietnam and Laos, have been far more effective in protecting their people from the deadly COVID-19 pandemic than most of the capitalist world. The continued existence of these workers states gives hope to the most politically aware activists – amongst the 90% of Australia’s people who would benefit from the overturn of capitalist rule – that we can eventually achieve such a revolutionary victory. In standing by one of these workers states, Chan Han Choi has, thus, bravely stood by 90% of Australia’s people. We must now in turn stand by him!
The Australian regime’s torture of Choi (through their withholding of medical care) proves that there is no way that he can get a fair trial – not even a fair trial under the unjust laws that he is charged under. And the capitalist regime’s violation of many of Choi’s rights as a defendant and untried prisoner prove the very same thing too. Like all capitalist states, the Australian state is a state biased towards the interests of the rich exploiting class and biased against the interests of the working class and those like Choi who stand by the socialist system that favours the working class masses. And if someone like Choi could never get a fair trial in capitalist Australia this is triply so during the current atmosphere of intense anti-communist witch hunting. That is why it is up to class conscious workers, anti-imperialists and opponents of increasing state repression in Australia to stand by Chan Han Choi. In the lead up to Choi’s trial next February, let us work ever harder to build the campaign to demand freedom for this political prisoner – a prisoner who has suffered so much cruelty for his pro-socialist beliefs.