Above photo: Chan Han Choi thanks supporters waiting at a park to cheer him on as he travels back to his residence of house arrest from his mandatory reporting at a police station. The supporters had gathered following a protest march on 17 December 2020 demanding the dropping of all charges against this socialist political prisoner.

Down With the Cold War Persecution of Chan Han Choi!

Momentum Builds in Campaign to Free Socialist Political Prisoner in Australia

18 December 2020: Support continues to grow for left-wing political prisoner in Australia, Chan Han Choi. Yesterday, braving stormy weather, Choi’s supporters conducted the biggest of our three protests in his defence that we have held during this year of pandemic. Some of the participants were joining an action in defence of Choi for the first time and one group also newly joined the campaign.

Chan Han Choi is now under house arrest after being released on bail last month. He had spent nearly three years in prison in extremely harsh conditions despite not being convicted of any charge. He will finally go to trial this February. Yesterday’s demonstration demanded, “Freedom for Choi – Not House Arrest” and also demanded, “Drop the Charges Against this Left-Wing Political Prisoner.”

Choi is charged with attempting to organise trade deals to help North Korea export her produce abroad – and in one case attempt to import petroleum products – in violation of crippling United Nations economic sanctions on the people of North Korea. However, as the call out for yesterday’s action stressed:

“Even if the claims against him turn out to be true, he is no criminal from the working class standpoint. Quite the opposite! It would simply prove that he is a great humanitarian aiding people who are being ground down by the most extreme and brutal sanctions ever imposed on the people of any country.

“Choi is also a socialist who sympathises with North Korea because he likes that society’s egalitarianism. Whatever one thinks of North Korea’s leaders, the fact is that her people have built a system based upon socialist public ownership of the key banks, industries, agricultural land and mines. In supporting a socialistic system, Choi is also standing by the more than 90% of this country and the world who would benefit from such a system. To those hurt by the present capitalist system causing such misery and economic insecurity for Australia’s working class people, we say that Choi has stood by you. Working class people must in turn now stand by him! Moreover, by defending Chan Han Choi we will also be opposing the murderously crippling economic sanctions that have so devastated the brave people of North Korea.”

As the chair of yesterday’s rally, Sarah Fitzenmeyer – who is also the chairwoman of Trotskyist Platform – stressed, although Choi has been charged with attempting to help the people of North Korea evade the cruel economic sanctions, “the reason that he was denied bail until recently and outrageously kept in prison for nearly three years without being convicted of any charge was because of his pro-North Korea political views.” The rally emcee further explained:

“Whenever Chan Han Choi applied for bail, the Australian Federal Police and Commonwealth prosecutors openly stated that bail should be opposed because of Choi’s sympathy for the DPRK and because he had made statements from prison condemning the economic sanctions on the people of North Korea as being unjust and unfair. This is blatant political discrimination. They are effectively saying that if you support a socialistic country you should have less rights than others.

“… One of the very worrying things about Choi’s persecution is that it is part of a pattern of repression against those who express sympathy for socialistic countries. Last month, a Chinese Australian man, Sunny Duong, became the first person charged under Australia’s draconian, so-called “foreign interference” laws that are aimed at quashing the voices of those sympathetic to socialistic China. Sunny is a highly respected member of Melbourne’s South-East Asian Chinese community. You can bet that this is another beat up!

“Six months ago, a NSW Labor MP Shaoquett Moselmane was forced out of his elected senate seat for several months after the Australian Federal Police made an extraordinarily heavy-handed raid on his home. Their excuse for the raid was that he belonged to a social media chat group where other people made pro-China comments. Can you believe it? And this regime calls itself a democracy! Two months before being raided, Moselmane was witch-hunted out of his position as deputy president of the NSW upper house just because he told the plain truth that China responded very well to the pandemic. So much for free speech!

“Sisters and brothers, by coming out here with courage to defend the biggest victim of McCarthyist persecution, Chan Han Choi, you are pushing back against this new Cold War witch-hunt.”

Yesterday’s protest was held to mark the third anniversary of Chan Han Choi’s arrest. The demonstration was addressed by representatives of Trotskyist Platform, the Australia-DPRK Friendship Society, Therefore in order to stop this malfunction from destroying one’s physical abilities they have introduced the anti-impotency solution cheapest tadalafil uk this that has sildenafil citrate. To be sure, the history of hair loss treatments, hair loss sufferers should approach laser hair therapy with cialis prices in india caution. Some buy bulk viagra users often run out of medication while in the middle of something. Not cheap viagra to mention that with your new found confidence in your sexual performance. Anti-War West Sydney and an activist heavily involved in the campaign to free Julian Assange. Other than supporters of these groups, also participating in the action were representatives of the Communist League as well as individuals who are members of the Communist Party of Australia and of the Australia-Cuba Friendship Society. The action saw some thirty people march through the streets of Chester Hill chanting, “Free Chan Han Choi, Lift the Sanctions Now!” The march route replicated the journey that Choi has been taking for his mandatory reporting to a police station. To the delight of demonstrators, we saw Choi walking just a few metres ahead of us on his way to his evening report to the police station. Then as demonstrators waited in a park near the police station, our hero Chan Han Choi walked past us on his way back to his residence, bowing and waving to supporters. Later back at his residence, Choi expressed his deepest appreciation to all those who joined the protest.

Yesterday’s march won much solidarity from Chester Hill residents. Many people walking or driving past the protest waved in solidarity, yelled out encouragement or tooted their horns in sympathy. Most people in multi-racial, working class Chester Hill are all too aware of the bias against low-income people and those from racial minorities of Australia’s legal and prison system. Thus their natural instinct is to solidarise with someone like Choi who is in the cross-hairs of the regime. Moreover, many of those expressing their appreciation for yesterday’s protest come from backgrounds from the Middle East and other former colonial countries – experiences that have thought them to both hate Western imperialism and to understand the suffering caused by UN economic sanctions, sanctions which when imposed on the people of Iraq between 1990 and 2003 caused the premature deaths of 1.7 million people! Thus these people feel a warm connection with a supporter of the DPRK (i.e. North Korea), a state which they associate with staunch defiance of predatory imperialism. That connection is doubly strong when that person happens to be persecuted for his opposition to murderous economic sanctions. 

Yet, when Chan Han Choi was first arrested, Australia’s capitalist rulers expected that he would have no support. They wanted to demonise Choi in order to create an irrational fear amongst Australia’s population of North Korea and her socialistic Chinese neighbour and ally. The entire mainstream media demonised Choi and then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull hysterically denounced him. The witch-hunt of Chan Han Choi was to be one of the means that the capitalist regime would use to “justify” intensifying their Cold War drive against the socialistic countries. It was to help rationalise their massive Cold War military build up. It was to aid their push to both give even greater powers to Australia’s ASIO secret police and to introduce draconian so-called “foreign interference” laws. The hype against Choi was also one of the regime’s means to “rationalise” their planned state repression against sympathisers of North Korea’s socialistic neighbour, the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). They didn’t count on people supporting Choi! They are very worried about this support. You see by standing by a political prisoner who has been harshly imprisoned for his sympathy for North Korea, we blow to smithereens the credibility of Australia’s capitalist ruling class when they attack North Korea and the PRC over supposed “human rights abuses.” The capitalist rulers thus hate this exposure of their political persecution of Chan Han Choi in the same way that they went apoplectic when a Chinese official tweeted a political cartoon that called out the true horror of the Australian military’s war crimes in Afghanistan.

In the end that is why Australia’s capitalist regime finally had to grant bail to Chan Han Choi last month. They wanted to minimise the political damage to themselves by making this concession. So well done to all those who have participated in the campaign to free Chan Han Choi. Today, the Australian regime made a further very minor concession. Although rebuffing Choi’s plea to be freed from house arrest, they agreed to allow Choi to visit Chester Hill shopping centre on his way from daily reporting at the police station and to reduce his required number of police station reporting from two per day to one per day and with Sunday now made a day off from reporting.

However as Trotskyist Platform spokesman, Samuel Kim stressed at yesterday’s action:

“… let’s remember that our work is far from over. Even today Choi is not free as he is under house arrest. Come February [when Choi faces trial] Choi possibly might be locked up in prison again. For him there is no rule of law but a gangster like rule of the exploiting class ….

“It is not just the laws serving the exploiters that are unfair but the entire legal system that put him [Choi] there is also unfair. The military, the courts, the police, the prisons in Australia form part of a capitalist state that exists to enforce the interests of the corporate exploiters against those of the working class masses and their supporters. This is the case whether it is the Liberals or ALP or Greens who take power. They all have deeply entwined servitude to the sheer domination of the exploiting class. The capitalist system with its drive for profits, its war against workers, cannot be trusted to give Choi a fair hearing. So therefore, that is why we are mobilised here today. And in the future we need more mobilisations, more like-minded souls, more workers, poor, unemployed, students [as] part of our struggle in order to help free Choi….

“We demand: Drop all charges against Chan Han Choi! Down with the barbaric sanctions on the people of North Korea! Resist the Cold War drive against socialistic China and socialistic North Korea!”