25 June 2023: Trotskyist Platform chairwoman, Sarah Fitzenmeyer made the following video statement as part of an international campaign of statements by leftist parties around the world in opposition to the U.S. blockade of the Cuban workers state:
Tag Archives: DPRK
Statement by Trotskyist Platform Chairwoman Opposing
FREE LEFT-WING POLITICAL PRISONER CHAN HAN CHOI!
RESIST THE AUSTRALIAN CAPITALIST STATE’S COLD WAR REPRESSION!
FREE LEFT-WING POLITICAL PRISONER CHAN HAN CHOI!
- It is out of deep humanitarian concern for the people of North Korea that Chan Han Choi tried to help her people trade in violation of UN sanctions. He sought no personal gain from these activities.
- The sanctions on North Korea are a form of “legal”, mass murder.
- Australia’s capitalist rulers persecute and slander Choi to “justify” their Cold War drive against socialistic China and socialistic North Korea.
- We must resist the tormenting of Chan Han Choi because by persecuting him for his sympathy for a socialistic state, the Australian regime is attacking the struggle for socialism and is thus attacking the interests of more than 90% of Australia and the world’s population.
- Those who are standing by Chan Han Choi are, by doing so, also resisting the Cold War McCarthyism and repression that Choi’s cruel persecution is meant to fuel.
- If in the hypothetical case that Choi is sentenced fairly, even in accordance with the unfair sanctions laws that he is prosecuted under, he would just get a small fine. None of the five deals that he tried to broker ever went through. Moreover, in all five “forbidden” trades that Choi had started to broker, Choi himself cancelled the negotiations before he was arrested.
- Chan Han Choi will not get a fair sentencing judgement.
- Prison authorities endangered Choi’s life by repeatedly knocking back his requests to see a prison doctor as his diabetes severely deteriorated during the first eight months of 2020.
- Given growing support for Choi, Australia’s ruling class is suffering considerable damage to their reputation by continuing their persecution of Choi.
- We cannot allow compassionate human being, Chan Han Choi, to be thrown back into prison again.
- Let’s fight to lift the economic sanctions that are so devastating the people of North Korea!
16 July 2021: Yesterday, the three-day long sentencing hearing of socialist political prisoner in Australia, Chan Han Choi came to an end. The judge has reserved her decision. The judgement is expected within an approximately one to three week period. Choi had been imprisoned in extremely harsh conditions by the Australian capitalist state for three years since his arrest in late 2017. After finally being granted bail last November, Choi has been under strict house arrest for the last eight months. If Choi is sentenced to a jail period less than what he has already endured, he will finally be free. However, if he is hit with a sentence with a non-parole period greater than the imprisonment period that he has already suffered, he will be thrown back into prison.
In February, Choi accepted a plea deal in which the Commonwealth DPP (Director of Public Prosecutions) dropped some of its blatantly false, hyped-up charges. Choi in turn accepted that he had tried to help the people of North Korea organise exports of iron, coal, instrumentation and arms in violation of crippling UN economic sanctions that ban almost all of North Korea’s exports. Choi had also tried to help North Korea import petrol which is also restricted by the murderous sanctions.
The trade that Choi was trying to help organise is very similar to the trade that Australia engages in. But the people of North Korea are cruelly prevented from carrying out such trade. The resulting shortages and lack of hard currency needed to import food, medicine, medical equipment and agricultural machinery causes immense suffering to North Korea’s people. It is out of deep humanitarian concern for the people of North Korea that Choi tried to help her people trade. He sought no personal gain from these activities. Choi is really only “guilty” of doing very understandable acts. Let’s fight to demand: Free Chan Han Choi! Lift the brutal sanctions on North Korea now!
At his sentencing hearing, Choi, while making clear that he was totally committed to, from now on, following all Australian laws, bravely continued to expose the unjust nature of the sanctions on North Korea. He explained that he would, from now on, oppose the sanctions through protest and other legal means.
It is telling that at the sentencing hearing, the Crown Prosecutors were unable to provide one single victim impact statement. That is because there are no victims to the “crimes” that Chan Han Choi is being sentenced for! Indeed if Choi had gone further in his “offences” and actually brokered the deals to there successful conclusion, then there would have only been beneficiaries – not victims. How many lives would have been saved in North Korea or made easier had the people of North Korea been able to receive badly needed hard currency from the export deals that Choi, for a period, tried to organise?
An independent international report prepared by Western-based medical and aid workers found that the UN sanctions had caused the deaths of nearly 4,000 North Korean people – mostly children – in 2018 from the obstruction that the sanctions caused to the work of aid organisations alone. Even more deaths resulted from the damage that the sanctions did to North Korea’s own provision of food and other basic needs for her people. This October 2019 report titled, The Human Costs and Gendered Impact of Sanctions on North Korea, also found that: “Sanctions also interfere with the ability of North Koreans to develop their economy, earn a livelihood, and attain an adequate standard of living.” Moreover, the report detailed the particular harsh suffering that the sanctions caused to North Korean women:
“Sanctions destabilize North Korean society in ways that have a disproportionate impact on women, resonating with patterns observed in other sanctioned countries….
“Sanctions are directly interfering with the livelihood of women by targeting sectors in which they are heavily represented, such as textiles (82 per cent of workers).”
Australia’s Capitalist Rulers Persecute and Slander Choi to “Justify” Their
Cold War Drive Against Socialistic China and Socialistic North Korea
Sanctions similar to the ones now arrayed against North Korea were imposed by the UN on the people of Iraq from 1990 onwards. They caused the premature deaths of half a million infants in just the first decade of their implementation! In North Korea, the sanctions are also causing terrible suffering. Fortunately, North Korea’s socialistic system allows her to better manage the scarcity resulting from the sanctions and ensure that her people do not suffer to the same degree that Iraqi children did. Even a year after the UN sanctions on North Korea became really extreme in 2016, WHO data showed that the proportion of children who are underweight in North Korea due to malnourishment is considerably lower than in many capitalist ex-colonial countries in Asia like India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the Philippines. Nevertheless, as the 2019 report referred to above described, the sanctions are still causing the premature death of thousands of people every year. Moreover, in the second half of 2017, the very period when Choi attempted to help the people of North Korea to evade the sanctions, the imperial powers ratcheted up the sanctions to still more brutal levels.
Yet the existence of that socialistic system that is protecting her people from suffering to the same degree that Iraqi people did when hit with similar sanctions, is precisely the reason why the imperialist powers are so determined to crush North Korea through sanctions. Although socialistic rule in North Korea is deformed by bureaucratic privileges and a lack of real workers democracy, North Korea has a system based on public ownership which her masses won in a brave struggle to defeat the landlords and capitalist exploiters. This system of collective ownership of the means of production by all of society has created a warm community spirit among North Korea’s people and a friendly society. It is this humanism and egalitarianism of North Korea that has endeared Choi (who came into political consciousness later in life and is thus not especially ideological or versed in Marxist theory) to North Korean society and her people. Yet for the capitalist powers, the existence of any workers state is a huge obstacle to furthering their interests. Washington and Canberra want to destroy socialistic rule in North Korea and thereby also strike a blow against socialistic rule in the world’s largest workers state, the Peoples Republic of China, which is North Korea’s neighbour and ally. They want to do this so that they can turn these countries into huge sweatshops where the corporate bosses that they serve can make fabulous profits from exploiting workers. Capitalist powers also hate the existence of such socialistic states because their mere existence could encourage the masses in other ex-colonial countries to think that they too should give their own Western imperialist overlords and local capitalist enforcers the boot. That would mean a huge loss in profits for the American, Australian and Japanese corporations that loot such wealth out of countries like PNG, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines and East Timor.
So when Australia’s capitalist state is so cruelly persecuting Choi just for trying to help the people of North Korea to trade, what they are really trying to do is strike blows against socialism by enforcing sanctions on a socialistic state. Moreover, when Choi was arrested it was accompanied by massive hype about a supposed North Korean threat from then prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, from the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and from the mainstream media. As well as listing the items that Choi actually really did try to help North Korea trade – like petrol, coal and iron – the regime initially hit Choi with completely bogus charges that he had tried to assist North Korea to export Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) technology. At various times, the Murdoch and other media mis-reported this, almost certainly deliberately, claiming that Choi was charged with trying to help North Korea’s own WMD program. This was of course a blatant lie. Choi was never even charged with trying to import such technology into North Korea. However, equally false was the allegation that Choi had tried to help North Korea export such technology. As a result, this February, the Prosecution had to drop these bogus “WMD charges” as part of Choi’s plea deal. However, the Prosecution continued to claim that Choi had tried to help North Korea export technology for the production of ballistic missiles right up to ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles). Presented with irrefutable evidence to the contrary, the Prosecution a few months ago retreated to the claim that Choi had tried to broker the export of North Korean expertise for the production of now, short and medium range ballistic missiles. However, during Choi’s sentencing hearing, this claim also crumbled in the face of the evidence. The Crown backed off from their claim that Choi had been involved with brokering services to assist a ballistic missile program and instead retreated some distance towards the position that Choi had admitted all along since he accepted the plea bargain: that he had tried for a short period to broker North Korea’s export of technology for the production of MANPADs – which are small, hand-held weapons used for shooting down military aircraft and helicopter gunships. That is a massive difference from all their earlier hype claiming that Choi had tried to broker the export of WMD and ICBM technology!
The Crown’s now discredited assertions depended on them carefully cherry-picking their supposed technical and military “experts.” They chose, exclusively, rabid neoconservatives working for warmongering think tanks like the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism and C4ADS. Like Australia’s own Cold War fanatics in ASPI (Australian Strategic Policy Institute) these supposedly “independent” think tanks are in fact largely funded by major Western defence contractors and Western government agencies all of whom have an interest in hyping up the “threat” from socialistic countries and other “disobedient” states. The IISS was in fact the main source of the infamous “evidence” used by then British prime minister Tony Blair and then U.S. president George Bush to dishonestly claim that Iraq was an imminent WMD threat, which they then used to “justify” launching the horrific U.S./British/Australian invasion of Iraq. Therefore, through their promotion of outright lies and exaggerations about Iraq’s military capabilities and intentions, the IISS have much responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians that resulted from this brutal invasion. Over the last three years, the now-discredited IISS and other similar neoconservative “NGOs” have been at it again – this time providing “expert” evidence to support the Crown’s earlier fanciful assertions that Choi had tried to organise a handful of North Korean experts to go to an underdeveloped third country and help a private company build ICBMs and WMDs. In fact had this proposition not been used to demonise Choi and throw him into prison, then it was so ludicrous as to be of serious comic value. Just, think about it: The Crown and AFP were claiming, purely on the basis of their interpretation of code words about pine trees used by Choi in phone conversations with an East Asian-based private trader, that three to five North Korean technicians would turn up with a few drawings and help the company that this relatively small-time trader was representing to establish a factory in Cambodia for making ballistic missiles – one of the most difficult to produce items imaginable which the very few governments able to manufacture have only been able to do so after tens of thousands of their own scientists, engineers and technicians have spent decades working on their development and manufacture; and which not one single non-state entity (not even those closest to powerful states) has ever been able to manufacture! This absurdly almost implies that ballistic missiles are so easy to build that a person could say to one of his friends:
“Hey, I have some mates who know how to make ICBMs. Why don’t I ask three of them to bring a DIY (Do It Yourself) manual about how to make them down to the park on Sunday afternoon and you, me and the gang can meet them there and build us some ICBMs. By the way if I ask my mates to E-mail us a list, can you go down to Bunnings on Sunday morning and buy the parts?”
Yet all these truly fanciful – and now discredited – claims about Choi’s activities had a purpose. Australia’s capitalist ruling class want to manufacture a “North Korea” threat in order to scare us into accepting their ever more aggressive participation in the U.S.-led Cold War drive against North Korea and her giant socialistic neighbour and ally, Red China. Both the Liberals and the ALP want the masses to accept the diversion of hundreds of billions of dollars of public money – public money that should be used for badly needed public housing, public aged care centres, childcare, public transport infrastructure, TAFE, public hospitals and public schools – into the Australian regime’s ever expanding military budget. Indeed, while the Crown now has to concede that Choi was never involved with deals related to long-range missiles, the Morrison government announced a year ago that it would itself be buying large numbers of long-range missiles. Meanwhile, there are maniacs in the government like Peter Dutton and plenty more in influential right-wing think tanks likes ASPI that are actually pushing towards a hot war with China. It is hardly polite, mild-mannered Chan Han Choi that we need to be afraid of! It is Australia’s war-mongering ruling elite that we should be terrified of! The capitalist rulers are willing to drag us into a catastrophic war with China that could kill millions just to protect their mega-profits and their system of exploitation.
But while confronting North Korea and China is good for the big end of town, such Cold War attacks are harmful to 90% of this country’s – and indeed the world’s – population. For the interests of all working class people – and most middle class people too – lies with defending the socialistic rule that exists in China, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam and Laos, however as yet incomplete and obstructed are their transitions to socialism. The existence of these socialistic states will inevitably strengthen the struggle here for workers rights and for a future society based on public ownership – the system that favours working class people. Only a socialist course can free working class people from the reality under capitalism of insecure jobs, bullying bosses, casualisation and unaffordable housing and will finally create the conditions for a society where women can participate fully in all economic, social and political life and where Aboriginal people, refugees, Asians, Muslims and other people of colour will no longer have to worry about the threat of racist cop and/or redneck attacks. And it is a socialist world that will ensure that the Western imperialist bombardments and war crimes that the people of Palestine, Afghanistan and the Middle East have been subjected to will finally be things of the past.
We must resist the tormenting of Chan Han Choi because by persecuting him for his sympathy for a socialistic state, the Australian regime is attacking the struggle for socialism and is thus attacking the interests of more than 90% of Australia and the world’s population. Working class people, opponents of the imperialist bullying of the former colonies, fighters against privatisation and supporters of public ownership and public housing must all stand by Chan Han Choi.
In standing by Chan Han Choi, we should also oppose the Cold War drive that his witch-hunting is designed to justify. We must defend the workers states in North Korea and China as well as in Cuba, Vietnam and Laos. That means that we must resist the propaganda campaign of lies over “human rights” that is unleashed against these socialistic states.
Escalating Cold War McCarthyism in Australia
The government, police and media hype about a supposed “North Korea threat” that accompanied Choi’s high-profile arrest was not only aimed at furthering the Australian ruling class’ Cold War drive abroad but at justifying their intensification of McCarthyist repression against supporters of socialistic states at home. Just months after Choi’s arrest, the Australian government instituted draconian laws aimed at crushing expressions of sympathy for China under the guise of opposing “foreign interference.” Meanwhile, since Choi’s arrest and the escalation of the anti-China Cold War, Chinese journalists have been raided by the AFP and ASIO, Chinese international students who organised a Sydney rally in support of Red China’s sovereignty over Hong Kong were subjected to a terrifying interrogation by Australian secret police, a respected member of the Indochinese-Chinese community in Melbourne has been charged under the “foreign interference” laws and the pro-Beijing part of Australia’s Chinese community has been intimidated. Last year, even a NSW upper house MP, Shaoquett Moselmane was witch-hunted by right-wing shock jocks and his own Labor Party for merely stating the simple fact that China responded very effectively to the pandemic. Weeks later, Moselmane was hit with an intimidating 16-hour raid of his family home by the AFP and ASIO and then subjected to months of smear and the suspension of his parliamentary seat … before the AFP finally admitted that he had no case to answer.
Meanwhile, the hysterical rubbish about a supposed “North Korea threat” that surrounded Choi’s arrest, the witch-hunt against those sympathetic to the PRC and the generally repressive Cold War climate have all combined to create such a national security obsession that even dissidents and activists not involved in Cold War issues have been targeted by Australia’s, increasingly authoritarian, capitalist regime. It is telling that, while the whistleblower Witness K – and his lawyer Bernard Collaery – who exposed the Australian regime’s spying on East Timor (to aid its despicable theft of East Timor’s gas resources) were first raided by ASIO in 2013, the Commonwealth DPP did not feel confident that they could actually get away with charging the pair until some five years later in June 2018, which was just six months after the high-profile arrest of Chan Han Choi. Then just three months later, David McBride, the former military lawyer who exposed horrific war crimes by the Australian military in Afghanistan, was charged for his whistleblowing acts done in 2016. Meanwhile, the same AFP that targeted these whistleblowers and Chan Han Choi have also conducted intimidating raids against trade unions like the CFMEU. Those who are standing by Chan Han Choi, are by doing so, also resisting the new McCarthyism and repression that Choi’s cruel persecution is meant to fuel.
Chan Han Choi Will Not Get a Fair Sentencing Judgement
Choi’s sentencing hearing took place by Audio Visual Link as the city where the hearing took place has been put into lockdown as a result of a massive COVID spread. Therefore, the Sydney protest rally demanding Chan Han Choi’s freedom that Choi’s supporters had organised to coincide with the start of his sentencing hearing had to be put off. Today, literally half of this country’s population has had to be locked down. This is in good part because of the shambolic vaccine rollout by the Morrison government. Despite this, the Liberal government keeps on telling us that Australia’s pandemic response has been “world-beating”. This is actually a blatant lie! It is true, that benefitting from Australia’s very low population density and by implementing an authoritarian fortress strategy that has virtually banned international travel, Australia so far has a lower death rate from the virus than the U.S. and most of Europe. However, Australia’s death rate per person is eleven times higher than socialistic China’s and 65 times higher than in socialistic Laos. Moreover, the regime here has had to turn to lockdowns far more often than China has, where none of her 1.4 billion people are currently under any sort of lockdown. Furthermore, even numerous capitalist countries like Nigeria, the Ivory Coast and Uzbekistan have much lower death rates than here. In this country, the response is hampered by the failure of the regime and the system to ensure adequate protective clothing (PPE) for cleaners, nurses, paramedics and other crucial frontline workers and enough COVID testing services, especially in the multi-racial working class suburbs where many frontline workers live. As a result, on Tuesday, the first day of Choi’s sentencing hearing, residents in Sydney’s Fairfield Local Government Area, which happens to be where Choi is staying during his house arrest, had to queue for up to six hours just to get tested for COVID!
Yet, while the Australian capitalist regime has failed to provide the masses with adequate vaccines, COVID testing services and PPE it has succeeded in mobilising massive resources to persecute Chan Han Choi – from intercepting Choi’s phone calls prior to his arrest, to unleashing dozens of police in the operation, to the hacking into of Choi’s E-mails and bank records, to the enlistment of numerous international and local “experts” to the engagement of a large team of crack barristers, lawyers and researchers. What all this indicates is that the Australian regime is far more interested in enforcing the interests of the small capitalist exploiting class – a class whose immediate interests lie with crushing workers states through sanctions and Cold War – than it is in protecting the people. In all capitalist countries, the prisons, the courts, the police, the military and the bureaucracy were created – and are daily replenished – for the specific purpose of enforcing the interests of the capitalist business owners against those of the working class and their supporters. This is the case here whether it is the Liberals, the ALP or the Greens who are in office. That is why greedy construction bosses get away with no criminal punishment for getting workers killed by neglecting workplace safety. Yet representatives from the construction workers unions, like the CFMEU, get hit with criminal convictions just for supposedly, “illegally,” inspecting unsafe work sites.
Now it is true that when Australia’s legal system hears say a murder or assault matter which does not have a political dimension to it, it is quite possible that the matter will indeed be dealt with under the “rule of law” principle that the capitalist rulers claim to stand by. However, even in these cases, this is only provided that the matters don’t intersect with questions of class and race. In the latter cases, the anti-working class and racist bias of the system distorts the “rule of law.” That is after all why not one single cop or prison guard has ever been convicted for killing an Aboriginal person in custody despite hundreds of such racist killings in Australia over the last several decades. Moreover, if a case is political, especially where on one side lies the interests of the working class and on the other the capitalists and their regime, the political bias of the racist, rich people’s regime becomes overwhelming. Furthermore, the bigger and higher profile the case, the greater the bias. And one cannot get a higher profile case where the interests of the capitalists and those of the working class are clearly on opposite sides, than the one of Chan Han Choi. Capitalist interests lie with the Crown prosecution and their push to enforce the killer sanctions on the people of a workers state and to incite Cold War hostility to socialistic countries, while the side of the working class and most middle class people lies with Choi. That is why Choi’s sentencing outcome will be decided at least 90% by politics and at most 10% by the law. That is why there is no way that Choi will get a fair sentencing result.
Everything that has happened to Choi since his arrest in 2017 confirms that the regime will not sentence him fairly, even under the unfair laws that he is convicted under. The courts repeatedly rebuffed Choi’s bail bids after the Crown opposed the bail applications, in good part, on the basis of Choi’s political sympathy for the DPRK. This is chemically pure McCarthyism, where a person is denied rights on the basis of their support for socialistic states. In jail, authorities placed special restrictions on Choi – obstructing visits to him by lawyers, translators and friends. For large periods, they even outright blocked visits. Even though Choi was not accused of any violent offence, had no prior criminal record and was not even accused of any espionage, he was imprisoned as a National Security Interest (NSI) prisoner. This meant especially brutal conditions of imprisonment. As an affidavit by the Governor of the prison that Choi spent most of his custody in admitted, Choi had no access to amenities, employment opportunities or educational opportunities due to his NSI classification. Moreover, Choi, whose English is poor, could not even speak on the phone in his native Korean unless he got special permission. Yet when he made a written application to speak to his wife in Korean in the first few months of his imprisonment, the regime rejected this. As a result, Choi could not communicate with his wife properly on the phone, even though by December 2018 she became the only family member or friend that the regime would allow him to telephone. Most seriously, authorities endangered Choi’s life by repeatedly knocking back his requests to see a prison doctor as his diabetes severely deteriorated during the first eight months of 2020. During examination at Choi’s sentencing hearing, a doctor under the pay of Justice Health – the NSW government authority charged with providing medical care to prisoners – Jacques Ette, who incredibly claimed in an earlier written submission that Choi was provided proper medical care while imprisoned, admitted that for an eight and a half month period from mid-December 2019 to the end of August 2020, Choi, who by then was on oral diabetic medication, did not have his Blood Sugar Level (BSL) monitored even once. This is despite the fact that on the last date that his BSL was actually monitored before this period, on 12 December 2019, Choi’s BSL by Dr Ette’s admission was already too high. Dr Ette further admitted under oath that the reason that Choi’s diabetes was out of control by late August 2020 was because his diabetes had not been monitored in the earlier period. Indeed, Choi’s situation became so desperate that when he was finally able to see medical staff in late August 2020, he had to be given emergency doses of insulin – medication that he had previously never needed. His BSL then swung wildly for several days from extremely high to very low thus putting him at immediate risk of brain damage, heart failure, strokes and other life threatening conditions.
Choi’s “Offending” is at the Very Low End –
Even within the Unfair Laws that He is Prosecuted Under
If in the hypothetical case that Choi is sentenced fairly, even in accordance with the completely unfair sanctions laws that he is prosecuted under, he would just get a small fine. And given that he has already done nearly three years in prison and eight months under strict house arrest, the fine would not need to be paid. The reason that Choi should only get a small fine is because all his “offences” were at the very bottom of the range within the laws that he is prosecuted under. Even the judge who despicably knocked back Choi’s second bail bid alluded to this in his December 2019 bail judgement. In the judgement, Justice Harrison conceded that: “… there is a possibly of a fine as a complete substitute for the s 11 offences, if he were convicted or pleaded guilty. The same position applies to the other offences with which he is charged.” Moreover, that was when Choi was facing eight charges. Now he is being sentenced on just two of the charges with both the totally bogus WMD charges and a coal export deal to Vietnam charge completely dropped and three of the other charges rolled into one. Therefore, there is even more reason for Choi to get a very low penalty than there was when Harrison made his bail judgment.
Choi’s “offending” is on the very low end of the sanctions laws because none of the five deals that he tried to broker ever went through. Nothing was ever traded. Moreover, as became clear in the sentencing hearing, in four of the five deals, Choi himself cancelled the negotiations before he was arrested. Although the Prosecution claims that Choi only “suspended” the trades, Choi in fact quashed the deals because the imperial powers were policing the sanctions too tightly; and has he told the court on Wednesday, only intended to try and re-broker the trades once a partial easing of sanctions made the deals legal again. In the other matter, that of a navigation system known as an IMU, which can be used for both civilian ships, planes and drones as well as military applications, Choi’s sum total of “brokering” consisted of forwarding the rough specifications for the device from the inquiring trader to North Korean companies along with the specifications for a much lower quality, civilian-only device that (slipping through the cracks of the draconian sanctions laws) happened to be one of the very few products that the DPRK is actually allowed to legally export. Choi then stopped trying to broker the proscribed type of device and instead sought to organise for the DPRK to export technology to make the product still permissible under the sanctions laws (unfortunately due to the highly deceptive misinterpretation of Choi’s intercepted E-mails and phone calls by the Crown and completely wrong technical evidence by the Crown’s star “expert” witness this truth was obscured from the court). In other words, in all five “forbidden” trades that Choi had started to broker, Choi himself cancelled the negotiations before he was arrested. If one wants an analogy, consider this. Imagine that you drive to a party where you plan to drink alcohol at the party and then drive home. However, at the end of the night, after you get into your car to drive home drunk, you realise that there will be police everywhere and at the last minute you change your mind and call a cab instead. Are you then still guilty of drink driving?
Pushing Back Against the Bias of the Capitalist Legal System
Although Chan Han Choi will not be sentenced fairly, even under the unfair sanctions laws that he is charged under, there are limits as to how much Australia’s authoritarian capitalist regime can persecute him. You see, when the regime first arrested Choi and it and the tycoon and regime-owned media subjected him to a campaign of demonisation, the ruling class expected that most people would hate Choi and he would have no support. Yet nine months later, a protest movement in support of Choi began holding its first actions. Since then the united-front movement demanding freedom for Choi has grown in strength and recognition. Eight further street actions have since been conducted in support of Choi including marches through the city. Although not huge, the street actions in support of Choi have actually been the largest protests in support of any person facing criminal charges in Australia since the movement leading up to the 2008 trial and sentencing of Aboriginal resistance hero Lex Wotton, the leader of the 2004 Palm Island uprising that responded to the horrific racist killing of 36 year-old Mulrunji Doomadgee by a Queensland police officer. Alongside ourselves in Trotskyist Platform, among the groups that have participated in, or supported, the street protests demanding freedom for Choi are Anti-War West Sydney, the Australia-DPRK Friendship Society, the Communist Party of Australia – Western Sydney branch, Communist Party of Australia – Wollongong Branch, Aust-DPRK Solidarity, Social Justice Network and the Irish Republican socialist group, the James Connolly Association. These actions have galvanised others to show solidarity with Choi. When a protest march was conducted by Chan Han Choi’s supporters in Chester Hill last December, right at the very heart of Sydney’s multiracial working class southwest that has been so vilified by the ruling class during this recent COVID upsurge, the overwhelming response from passers by was sympathy. Large numbers of people tooted their horns and waved in support of the protest. Moreover, in recent months, additional groups on the Left have also issued articles expressing their support for Choi including Socialist Alliance through its Green Left Weekly publication. Meanwhile, significant sections of the Korean community in Sydney have swung behind Choi. This has been reflected in the fair coverage of the case by the main Korean language community newspaper in Australia, Hanho Daily, whose online articles have received comments that are mostly in support of Choi. This Korean New Year (which is at the same time as Chinese New Year), Choi was delivered a special New Year’s food gift to his house arrest address from a Korean community cultural association. Meanwhile, sizable chunks of the Chinese community are also behind Choi. The most popular online Chinese language news sites in Sydney, like 今日悉尼 (Sydney Today), have covered protests in support of Choi sympathetically. Meanwhile, support for Choi has spread internationally. From Genoa, Italy, proudly pro-class struggle dock workers asked us to send the design of “Free Chan Han Choi” t-shirts so that they could print out and wear them around Genoa. In Russia, articles and documentaries in support of Choi produced by a Russian-speaking journalist in Australia have gone viral in both online media and social media – with hundreds of thousands of views and tens of thousands of likes and overwhelmingly sympathetic comments. Meanwhile, from New Zealand to Greece to Britain to the U.S., groups have declared their solidarity with Choi and published articles and statements condemning his persecution. Meanwhile, even those not wholly in solidarity with Choi’s pro-DPRK stance have expressed outrage at the violations of his human rights by the Australian regime.
As a result, Australia’s capitalist rulers are paying a significant political price for their persecution of Chan Han Choi. One way that they are doing so stems from the fact that this ruling class is seeking to be at the very forefront of the U.S.-led Cold War against socialistic China and North Korea. To wage this Cold War – which some fanatics in their ranks even want to be a hot war – the regime needs complete unity at home behind this anti-working class campaign. They cannot tolerate even small cracks in this consensus given that they are trying to wage this campaign against the world’s most populous country and one which moreover buys some 40% of this country’s exports. Yet their persecution of Chan Han Choi is already causing cracks in this consensus. Unexpectedly for the ruling class, people are solidarsing with Choi. And in standing by a pro-DPRK political prisoner and opposing the economic sanctions on North Korea, people are implicitly also opposing the entire Cold War against North Korea and by extension that against her giant neighbour and ally, the PRC. Secondly, the cruelty of their persecution of Choi has made many question the claims of the ruling class to stand for “democracy” and “rule of law.” For others already suspicious of these claims, becoming aware of this persecution of a left-wing political prisoner has destroyed their last vestiges of hope in Australia’s state machinery. Thirdly, exposure of the regime’s persecution of Chan Han Choi has undermined the Australian ruling class’s reputation abroad. This is especially harmful since, like other Western imperialist powers, the Australia’s capitalist rulers seek to use “human rights” – invariably in a bogus way – as a stick with which to strike political blows against their adversaries. The fact that the political prisoner that they are tormenting happens to be sympathetic to the DPRK, one of the main targets of Australian and U.S. “human rights” attacks, makes the exposure of their persecution of Choi all the more embarrassing.
In the end the Australian regime will decide whether they should send Choi back to prison by weighing the political benefits of such a course versus the political costs. An indication of the regime’s ambivalence on the issue was seen by the fact that at the sentencing hearing, while the Crown was pushing very hard and certainly was not saying that Choi had already served his sentence, nevertheless did not explicitly call for Choi to be thrown back into prison. Instead they insisted only that his overall sentence (backdated from the time of his 2017 imprisonment) be a full-time custodial sentence, with a large proportion of it non-parole.
As different components and factions of the Australian regime debate what to do about Chan Han Choi’s sentencing they are very much in agreement on one very crucial point – they all want to discredit Choi and, more crucially for them, what Choi represents. This is seen by the dramatic about face done by the Crown on what Choi’s motivations were. For three and half years, the AFP and Commonwealth DPP pushed the line that Choi was motivated by a “higher patriotic duty” and by “loyalty to the DPRK.” They said that he was an “economic agent of the DPRK.” They then opposed bail successfully for nearly three years in good part on the basis of Choi’s “loyalty to the DPRK.” Yet just over two weeks ago, the Crown did a 180 degree U-turn. They started claiming that Choi was instead motivated by personal profit. This is of course ridiculous! If one was really motivated by personal financial gain, trying to act as a broker for North Korea, especially for a person living in a country with a rabidly anti-communist regime like Australia, is the worst course to take. The sanctions on North Korea are extremely tightly policed by the U.S., Japan, Australia and other imperialist powers. Moreover, any broker on the North Korean side could never make much money from such trades because North Korea can only entice potential buyers to break the sanctions and accept North Korean produce if they offer buyers a much lower price than the world market price. If someone in Australia really wanted to make money from brokering illegal trades they would simply be a drug dealer, which Choi is definitely not. The sudden attempt by the Crown to paint Choi as someone motivated by personal gain is a crude, last minute, attempt by the regime to de-politicise a case that they have politicised from the very beginning. It is a realisation by the regime that their Cold War imprisonment of pro-DPRK political prisoner Chan Han Choi has done them a lot of political harm and now they want their best to show that Choi was never a political prisoner and … his matter was never about politics!
At the sentencing hearing, Choi emphatically stated that none of the commissions that he was slated to receive were going to be used for his own personal benefit. He clearly explained how any commissions that he was to have received were to be put back into helping develop new trade for the DPRK. Choi was able to point to the Crown’s own evidence which included an E-mail detailing how Choi was to use money made from the proposed coal export deal to Indonesia to pay for a delegation from North Korea for another of the planned deals. As a result of the sanctions – and due to over compliance by banks seeking to avoid regulatory punishment –it is very hard for the DPRK to send money out. Moreover foreign hotels and airlines are reluctant to receive payment sent out from North Korea. As a result, foreigners like Choi need to pay for any trade delegations from the DPRK. Moreover, that Choi was not seeking personal profit from his brokering work for North Korea is confirmed by the fact that, although Choi brokered some pretty big, commodities export contracts for North Korea in the period when ever-tightening sanctions had not yet proscribed such trade, Choi lived an austere life. When he was arrested, he lived in a modest rented apartment, owned no property, had no car and had just $6,000 in savings. At the time, Choi was working as a hospital cleaner.
In the face of this truth, the Prosecution came up with a third and most bizarre theory about Choi’s motivations. Speaking about one of the particulars of one of the charges, the prosecution quietly backed away from claiming that Choi was seeking personal gain from the once-planned deal but also insisted that the DPRK would not benefit from the deal either! Instead they claimed that Choi just wanted to deal in arms – implying, but not quite saying, that Choi was akin to an evil villain in a James Bond-type movie who seeks destruction for destruction’s sake. Cross-examining Choi, the lead prosecutor put to Choi that he had no regard for the deaths that would be caused by the arms deal that he had once tried to broker. Choi calmly responded that unfortunately all arms can kill people and it does not matter which country makes them. We should add that it is extremely hypocritical for the Australian regime to complain about people trying to trade arms. In July 2017, Australia’s then defence industry minister announced that he wants Australia to become one of the top arms exporters in the world. By then Australian had already become the world’s 20th largest weapons exporter (https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/defence-industry-minister-christopher-pyne-wants-australia-to-become-major-arms-exporter-20170715-gxbv4m.html) despite only being the world’s 53rd most populous country. Over the last few years, Australian arms manufacturers have been exporting large quantities of weapons to Saudi Arabia and UAE who are both engaged in a bloody war in Yemen that has created the world’s worst humanitarian disaster (https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jul/25/australian-weapons-shipped-to-saudi-and-uae-as-war-rages-in-yemen). We could further add that given that the countries causing most of the death and destruction in the world – that is the Western imperialist powers and their proxies, the ones who killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan (including the Australian special forces in Afghanistan who on many occasions tortured and murdered Afghan farmers and prisoners and who shot dead all the Afghan farmers in one neighbourhood just to ensure no witnesses to one of their earlier murders), who regularly unleash terror against the Palestinian people, who destroyed Libya, who are devastating the people of Yemen etc – are always able to get their own sources of weapons, it is possible that arms manufactured by smaller entities may actually find their way into forces fighting genuine liberation struggles. Palestinian liberation fighters, as well as Kashmiri people standing up to India’s murderous occupation of their land, sure do need weapons to defend their people. Had the Palestinian people of Gaza had effective MANPADs, would the Israeli military be so unrestrained in launching air strikes against Gaza’s residential apartment blocks? More importantly, given that the extreme tightening of sanctions against North Korea in 2017 threatens wholesale immisiration of many of her people, it is morally and politically justifiable for North Korea to try and sell almost anything to get the hard currency needed to meet her people’s basic needs. For the actual killing is not being done right now by any weapons that North Korea may manage to sell but by the heinous sanctions against her people. The sanctions on North Korea, like the ones on Iran, are a form of “legal”, mass murder. And the real killers are the imperialist rulers who repeatedly arm twisted much of the world to acquiesce to successively more severe sanctions. The ASIO and AFP officers, prosecutors and judges involved in Choi’s persecution and thus in enforcing these sanctions also bear some responsibility for the death and suffering that these sanctions have caused.
Throughout the sentencing hearing, it seemed that although the Crown was pushing extremely hard to hit Choi with as tough a sentence as possible, they were perhaps even more obsessed with trying to destroy Choi’s reputation. The judge too got in the act. Towards the very end of the hearing, she made an intervention to this effect from left field, after all the witnesses had already given their testimony. Despite Choi never raising mental health as a factor that should influence his sentencing and despite the Prosecution, in this case actually quite correctly, submitting that a psychiatric report performed weeks before the hearing found that Choi had no “mental illness or disorder as contributing to the commission of the offence”, the judge suggested that maybe mental health issues were a factor. She pointed to an old report done by a doctor in April 2020 which assessed that while Choi was fit for trial and even to self-represent at a trial, also claimed that Choi had symptoms of a “delusional disorder.” However, what the doctor described as “delusions” may have more to do with difficulties in translation and the doctors’ own frank admission that he had “difficulty following his [i.e. Choi’s] account due to a combination of cultural factors, language and likely my limited understanding of the political landscape about which I am no expert.” Moreover, that April 2020 report was based on interviews with Choi when he was still in custody under brutal conditions and in a very poor emotional state. Choi was at the time furious about his repeated requests to see a prison doctor being rejected. Unknown to him at the time, Choi’s then physical symptoms which he sought treatment for were caused by his diabetes condition badly deteriorating. Uncontrolled diabetes is known to cause intense mood swings. When the same doctor assessed Choi weeks after he was granted bail and after his diabetes had been brought under control, the doctor concluded that “I would not diagnose him with a psychiatric condition.” Then the report performed by another doctor, weeks prior to Choi’s sentencing, found not only that “Mr Choi does not have any cognitive impairment and does not have a mental illness or mental disorder” but that Choi is “functional intelligent.” So why would the judge then even mention mental health in relation to Choi’s matter? Well it seems like the judge was laying the basis to, in her final judgement, raise the possibility (she will not be able to go any further than this given the overwhelming evidence given by doctors to the contrary) that Choi’s actions were, in part, influenced by a “delusional disorder.” That way the judge – who while being a woman of considerable intellect and no doubt personal integrity too is well-known to be a political conservative, that is a right-winger – can impute that people wanting to help North Korea breach economic sanctions and anyone having solidarity with the DPRK and her system are pushed to such a stance by their own mental illness. That may end up being part of the judge’s means to “solve” an issue that has troubled the ruling class from about 24 hours after they, with great sensationalism and hype, arrested Chan Han Choi in 2017: How do we respond to the inevitable reality that people are going to ask themselves why a person who has lived in both South Korea and Australia would have such sympathy for North Korea and her people that they would want to put their own freedom at great peril to help North Korea trade in violation of economic sanctions? Australia’s capitalist rulers fear that other “functional intelligent” people exploring what could be Choi’s motives will break through the wall of anti-DPRK propaganda and themselves realise that a lot of what capitalist powers say about North Korea is a lie; and that the economic sanctions on North Korea are murderously cruel measures that are not only unjust but are causing enormous suffering to North Korea’s people.
From the Crown’s spectacular, eleventh-hour gymnastic performance of flips and backflips as to Choi’s motivation to the judge’s last minute lobbing of mental health as a factor, the Australian ruling are doing their best to obscure what actually drove Chan Han Choi and – more importantly for them – what he represents. So let’s clarify who is Chan Han Choi and what motivated his “offending” actions. Chan Han Choi is a very compassionate and polite human being. He grew up in capitalist South Korea and then has lived the last 34 years of his life in Australia. At the time of his arrest he was an Australian citizen. Choi has worked as a civil engineer on major construction projects and as an engineering consultant on housing and smaller-scale developments. He has also worked as a cleaner. For most of his life, Choi bought the anti-DPRK propaganda that he was fed from childhood. However, from the mid-noughties, Choi began to do his own research on the question. Then in 2007 he made his first trip to North Korea. Like many people who go to North Korea with a truly open mind and without the expressed aim of themselves adding to anti-DPRK hostility – which is certainly why mainstream Western journalists go to North Korea – he really liked North Korean society. Choi fell in love with the egalitarianism of a society where he found that workers seem to have more rights at work than factory directors, where people’s interrelationships are not driven by money and where the warmth of friendship between ordinary people is very evident. At the same time, Choi saw economic hardships caused by the effects of sanctions, economic blockade and U.S.-led military pressure – the latter forcing North Korea to divert considerable resources to self-defence in order to avoid her people meeting the same fate as Iraq’s people. The suffering seen in one journey to a rural area during Choi’s first trip to North Korea had a particularly profound effect on him. He resolved to do what he could do to help North Korea’s economy and thereby improve the life of her people. Choi volunteered himself as an unofficial trade representative for the DPRK’s public sector enterprises that dominate her economy (note the label thrown around by the AFP, the Crown Prosecutors and the media for three and a half years, that Choi is an “economic agent” of North Korea, is deliberately intended to make something so very benign as being a trade representative sound sinister. After all, are Australia’s own trade representatives and those of her capitalist corporations ever referred to as “economic agents”?). Choi had considerable success in brokering trade deals for North Korea, deals which at the time were legal. Bank records and E-mails hacked into by the police after they arrested Choi showed that in a two-month period in 2008 alone, Choi organised two export deals for the sale of North Korean coal and pig iron respectively that were together worth $US1.3 million. Later Choi helped to put North Korean exporting firms together with contacts in China, South Korea and elsewhere so that the respective parties could themselves arrange deals. He also brokered bartering deals where North Korea coal, iron and other commodities would be directly exchanged for rice and corn from China. Partly through the efforts of people like Choi and even more so through the work of North Korea’s own people and with the help of increased trade with socialistic China’s booming economy, by ten years after Choi’s first trip to North Korea, North Korea was actually able to better feed all her people than the majority of other developing countries in Asia. However, Choi watched with horror in 2016 and 2017 as successively more draconian sanctions were imposed on North Korea. He rightly feared that North Korea’s people would now have to endure even more hardships than that which he saw in his early trips to North Korea in the mid-late noughties. So in the latter half of 2017, Choi made a renewed push to broker trade deals for North Korea’s people. However, the goal posts had moved. The deals that he had brokered previously, which had once been legal, were now proscribed by the sanctions. Worried about the plight of the people and society that he so cared about, Choi pushed through with some brokering efforts. But seeing the stringency of the imperialist policing of sanctions, Choi pulled back and cancelled the deals. This is the sum total of what Choi’s “offending” consists of and what drove it. In a fair society Choi would be given medals and awards for compassion. But here he was demonised and thrown into prison in especially brutal conditions for three years.
We cannot allow this compassionate human being, Chan Han Choi, to be thrown back into prison again. And we cannot allow them to prolong Choi’s suffering by hitting him with a period of parole either. In the last few days before the sentencing judgement is handed down and while the regime weighs up its political benefits versus political costs of prolonging Choi’s suffering, let us do our best to increase those political costs by building more support for Choi and popularising knowledge of the cruel violations of his rights while imprisoned. In doing so, let’s simultaneously resist the anti-working class, Cold War drive that the demonisation of Choi was designed to “justify”! And let’s fight to lift the economic sanctions that are so devastating the people of North Korea!
Choi’s Efforts to Help the People of North Korea Evade Killer Sanctions Were Heroic
Free Chan Han Choi – Socialist Political Prisoner in Australia
Choi’s Efforts to Help the People of North Korea Evade Killer Sanctions Were Heroic
The Imperialist Warmongers Who Crafted the Sanctions Are the Real Criminals!
- Chan Han Choi accepts plea deal.
- Choi tried to broker import of oil to North Korea and export of North Korean coal, pig iron and other items.
- Prosecution withdraws bogus charges about brokering assistance to WMD programs.
- Choi no longer charged with brokering export of missiles but accepts charge of export of arms.
- It was to help the people of North Korea provide for themselves that Choi brokered deals to help them trade in violation of the cruel economic sanctions.
- Lift the starvation sanctions on the people of North Korea!
- The sentencing hearing will not be fair! All organs of the Australian capitalist state discriminate against Choi because of his sympathy and allegiance to the socialistic DPRK.
- McCarthyist repression in Australia threatens the workers movement, whistleblowers and democratic rights.
- In supporting a socialistic system, Choi is also standing by the more than 90% of Australia’s and the world’s population who would benefit from such a system. We must now stand by him.
- Let’s demand: No criminal conviction at all for Chan Han Choi!
- In a fair society Choi would be given not jail time but showered with awards and medals for heroism and compassion!
10 February 2021– Chan Han Choi today pleaded guilty to two charges of attempting to broker trade deals that would have violated crippling United Nations economic sanctions on the people of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, i.e. North Korea). This followed a plea deal with the Australian regime which saw the capitalist regime withdraw its two most sinister sounding charges against Choi. Those charges had alleged that Choi tried to broker deals to help the DPRK export items that could help a weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program. As we have long said, those WMD charges were thrown in purely to hype up the case and build up public hostility against Choi. They never had a factual basis. The regime’s dropping of these two charges confirms the witch-hunting motivation behind their inclusion in the original indictment.
Sixty-two year-old Choi will soon face a sentencing hearing. This will likely be within two to four months. He had already been imprisoned for nearly three years from the time of his arrest in December 2017 until he was finally granted bail last November. Even when Choi was granted bail, the bail conditions imposed on him were one of house arrest. So even as Chan Han Choi heads into his sentencing hearing, this Australian citizen, who migrated from South Korea 33 years ago, remains a left-wing political prisoner in Australia. Now prosecutors want to throw Choi back into jail arguing that the three years in prison is not enough.
Today the Australian regime’s prosecutors tried to have Choi’s bail revoked in the lead up to his sentencing hearing. However, the judge rejected their bid. The prosecutors’ main argument was the same wacko conspiracy theory that they had pushed at all his earlier bail hearings: that North Korean agents would sneak into Australia and secretly spirit Choi away. Like the creators of the loony, far-right, QAnon “theory”, the Australian regime does not itself believe this conspiracy theory that it is spreading.
In today’s deal, Choi pleaded guilty to trying to broker the export of coal from the DPRK to an entity in Indonesia. The other charge Choi pleaded guilty to sees several attempted deals brokered by Choi rolled into a single charge – the import of petroleum products from Iran to the DPRK, the export of DPRK inertial measurement units (used for steering aircraft, drones and other items) and the export of arms from the DPRK. An additional concession by Choi was that he attempted to broker the sale of pig iron from North Korea to a company in South Korea. This brokering service will, however, (as per a schedule pursuant to Section 16BA of the Crimes Act) not receive a separate sentence but may be taken into account at his sentencing on the two actual charges.
Lift the Starvation Sanctions on the People of North Korea!
The capitalist regime and the big business and regime-owned media have tried to hype Choi’s case by focusing on one of the original charges that the regime alleged against Choi – that he attempted to broker the export of North Korean missiles abroad. The prosecution ended up making a concession on this by modifying the charge to one of brokering the sale of arms rather than missiles. What these arms actually are is being contested between the prosecution and defence. But most of the deals Choi tried to organise are ironically some of the very same quantities that form the bulk of Australia’s own trade. He tried to organise the exports from the DPRK of iron and coal and the import of petroleum products. Yet, while entities in Australia are able to engage in huge amounts of such trade, the people of North Korea are prohibited from engaging in any such trade by the UN sanctions. Indeed, the sanctions are so severe that they ban almost all of North Korea’s exports. Given that North Korea is a country with steep mountains and harsh winters with a population almost identical to that of Australia’s, while having a 64 times smaller area, the country must import food and medicines to feed and provide health care for her people. Thus, by cutting off her exports and thus her ability to acquire the hard currency needed to buy food, medicines and other essential items for her people, the UN sanctions are causing the premature deaths of tens of thousands of Korean people. The sanctions imposed upon the people of North Korea are the most severe sanctions ever imposed on any people of any country. Less severe sanctions imposed on the people of Iraq from 1990 onwards caused the premature deaths of some 1.7 million people. Even the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), an agency under the very same United Nations that imposed the sanctions on Iraq, admitted that in the first ten years of the sanctions about half a million Iraqi children under age of five had been killed by the sanctions (see: https://www.independent.ie/world-news/sanctions-have-killed-500000-iraqi-children-26114461.html).Although the DPRK’s economic system based on public ownership and socialist planning is better able to manage the extreme scarcity caused by sanctions than capitalist Iraq was, the sanctions still cause enormous suffering to her people.
It was to help the people of North Korea feed and provide for themselves that Choi organised deals to help them trade with people abroad in violation of the cruel economic sanctions. Choi was motivated by a compassionate desire to help the people battered by sanctions and not at all by personal gain. Especially after seeing first hand the suffering of people living in rural areas caused by both the sanctions and the military pressure that the U.S.-led imperial powers have imposed on North Korea (which has forced North Korea to divert much greater resources to defence than she would want to), Choi resolved to do whatever he could to help the people.
Choi’s actions can be compared to that of a handful of Solomon Islanders and Australians who in the 1990s used speedboats to run a blockade of Bougainville Island and smuggle in medicines to the people of the island. The people of the PNG island of Bougainville had risen up in the late 1980s after Australian-owned mining giant CRA (now part of Rio Tinto) arrogantly refused to compensate the Bougainville people for destroying a large part of the island through a massive copper and gold mine. In order to protect the super profits of CRA’s corporate bosses, the Australian regime provided arms, training, mercenaries and military advisers to its PNG puppets in order to get them to wage war on Bougainville’s people. The blockade alone killed some 15,000 people. However, the actions of the heroes who violated the blockade to provide medicines to the Bougainville people saved the lives of so many who would have otherwise also died.
Chan Han Choi’s efforts to help the people of North Korea evade sanctions can also be compared to those people who during the Nazi regime in Germany and the Nazi occupation of other countries risked their own lives to provide sanctuary to communists, Jews, Roma and gays and lesbians being hunted down by the fascist regime. Like the deeds that Choi has pleaded guilty to, their actions were also illegal but completely correct, heroic and compassionate.
Photo credit: Trotskyist Platform
Although we completely defend and honour Choi’s brave efforts to help the people of North Korea evade crippling sanctions, we strongly urge people in Australia not to themselves attempt such actions. For although such deeds would be completely correct from a moral point of view, the chances of getting caught are way too high. When one is aware of the massive policing and spy resources unleashed in the surveillance, arrest and prosecution of Choi – including intercepts of phone calls – it becomes obvious just how focused the Australian regime is on persecuting supporters of socialistic states. After all, the police and spy agencies in capitalist countries like Australia exist not to defend the interests of the masses but only those of a small wealthy exploiting class. And part of enforcing the interests of the capitalist exploiting class is to attack those states formed from the overthrow of capitalism – like the DPRK, Cuba and the Peoples Republic of China. We do not want other kind-hearted people who see the cruelty of the sanctions on the people of North Korea to suffer the way that Choi has. Let’s not forget that Choi was not only imprisoned for three years but made to endure especially harsh conditions in jail. Choi spent most of his time in prison in one of the Australian regime’s most notorious prison camps – Long Bay Prison “Hospital.” This was the very same prison and section of Long Bay jail where six racist prison guards crushed to death 26 year-old Aboriginal man, David Dungay, in circumstances very similar to the infamous racist police murder of George Floyd in the U.S. in May of last year.
We in Trotskyist Platform believe that the best strategy to serve the interests of working class people is not individual covert action – however heroic – but open, collective, mass action. We call on all those who see the terrible cruelty of the sanctions on the DPRK to join the political campaign to get the sanctions lifted. And here again Chan Han Choi is significant. Because by standing strong on his political opposition to the sanctions and even bravely denouncing these sanctions while in prison (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTlumqtaguo), Choi has inspired opposition to these sanctions. Choi’s brave stance combined with the political movement in his defence, which has from the start combined the demand to free Choi with the call for the lifting of the economic sanctions on North Korea, has meant that the campaign against the sanctions is now stronger in Australia than it has ever been. And with China now openly calling for the easing of the sanctions on North Korea, a determined global activist campaign against these sanctions can have a serious impact.
The Real Criminals and What Drives Them
The list of real criminals involved in Choi’s matter definitely does not include Chan Han Choi himself. The biggest criminals involved are the imperialist rulers who repeatedly arm twisted the world to acquiesce to successively more severe sanctions on the DPRK. Chief of these were the leaders of the United States. But they were enthusiastically supported by the Australian, Japanese, South Korean and British regimes. Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George Bush, Scott Morrison, Malcolm Turnbull, Tony Abbott, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Shinzo Abe: these are biggest criminals in this matter. They have helped enact sanctions on the people of North Korea that are an indirect form of murder. The ASIO and Australian Federal Police officers, prosecutors and judges involved in Choi’s persecution – and, thus, in enforcing these sanctions – also bear some responsibility for the death and suffering that these sanctions have caused.
The excuse that the imperialist rulers make for imposing sanctions on the people of North Korea is that it is punishment for the DPRK’s nuclear weapons program. This is breathtaking hypocrisy! The U.S. has 5,800 nuclear warheads, France 290, Britain 215, India 150 and Israel 90 while the DPRK has just 30 to 40. Meanwhile, just two weeks ago, Australia joined with other countries most opposed to the DPRK like the U.S., Britain, France, Japan and South Korea in refusing to sign the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Let’s never forget too that it is not the DPRK that has dropped atomic weapons on human beings. It was the U.S. regime that did that when they heinously dropped nuclear weapons on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Indeed, completely contrary to all the Western propaganda about North Korea, the DPRK is no military threat to any peoples. The DPRK and the PRC are, in fact, the only two nuclear powers that have not been involved in any wars over the last forty years. It is not North Korea’s army that killed hundreds of thousands of people by invading and occupying first Afghanistan and then Iraq. That was the American, British and Australian regimes that committed those crimes.
The DPRK’s development of nuclear weapons is not for predatory imperialist purposes but as deterrence against attack from the capitalist powers. Their aim is to protect the people of socialistic North Korea from a capitalist attack like that seen during the 1950-1953 Korean War. That war resulted in some two to three million North Korean people perishing when the DPRK was attacked by a combined force of the U.S., Australia, South Korea and other U.S. allies who heinously and repeatedly obliterated entire North Korean cities by burning them to the ground with napalm dropped from the air (the DPRK with the PRC’s assistance did heroically manage to fight the invading armies to a standstill in that war).
The DPRK’s intentions are proven by what happened soon after the DPRK achieved a demonstrable nuclear deterrence capability at the end of 2017. The DPRK’s development of a deterrence capability actually quickly led to greater stability in the region – at least in the short and medium terms. The U.S. and South Korean regimes realized that the DPRK could not be bullied as easily as previously. The South Korean capitalist regime went from joining the U.S. and Australia in massive threatening war games against North Korea to jointly fielding an ice hockey team with their North Korean counterparts at the February 2018 Winter Olympics – the first time that the two Koreas have ever fielded a joint team at an Olympic Games. Two months later – just five months after North Korea’s last and most successful intercontinental ballistic missile test – the first summit in 11 years between the leaders of North and South Korea was held. A further six weeks later, the first ever summit between a leader of North Korea and a president of the U.S. was held – which was less than nine months after then U.S. president Trump had threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea.
So why are the rulers of the U.S., Japan, Australia and certain other countries so hell-bent on squeezing the people of North Korea? There are two closely related reasons. Firstly, the DPRK is a socialistic state where the working class masses hold state power – albeit in a bureaucratically deformed manner. Secondly the DPRK is a neighbour and ally of the world’s most powerful socialistic state, the Peoples Republic of China. By putting the squeeze on the people of North Korea through severe economic sanctions, the capitalist powers hope to undermine socialistic rule in both North Korea and China. They want to do this for three reasons. Firstly, as long as the working class hold state power in China and North Korea – in however an imperfect and tenuous form – the powerful capitalists who dominate the economies of the richer countries are not able to “freely”exploit the working class masses of these countries the way that their corporations superexploit and plunder the capitalist developing countries in Asia like the Philippines, Bangladesh, India, Thailand and Indonesia. Secondly, the mere existence of states like the DPRK and PRC that have freed themselves from domination by wealthy Western and Japanese capitalists frightens the imperialist rulers of the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Britain. For they fear that this could encourage the masses of the ex-colonial countries to themselves give the imperialists the boot. Thirdly, there is the U.S. and Australian capitalists’ still greater fear. That is that if socialistic rule succeeds in the likes of China, North Korea and Cuba, workers in their own countries will be inspired to themselves start to challenge capitalist rule. When they see threats to their profits, the greedy capitalists will not recoil from using any means – even if that involves starving people through killer economic sanctions.
In that light, it is not at all wrong for a workers state whose people are being strangled by sanctions to raise money by selling arms. Choi’s attempts to raise badly needed hard currency for the people of North Korea by brokering the sale of arms is actually a life-saving act. Moreover, it is the height of hypocrisy for the Australian regime to be repressing others for allegedly selling weapons. The right-wing Coalition has openly proclaimed its intention to make Australia a top ten global arms exporter. Meanwhile, as an exposé by The Guardian revealed, Australian company Electro Optics Systems (EOS) has shipped large quantities of weapons to the militaries of Saudi Arabia and the UAE – the very militaries which have been spearheading the brutal Saudi-led war on Yemen that has killed over 233,000 people, displaced another three million people and brought mass starvation in what is today the world’s worst humanitarian disaster (see: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jul/25/australian-weapons-shipped-to-saudi-and-uae-as-war-rages-in-yemen). Among the weapons that Canberra allows EOS to sell to the murderous Saudi and UAE militaries is the R400s weapons station for remotely operating missile launchers and cannons.
To be sure weapons do kill. However, the fortunate thing about any arms sold by the DPRK is that because the most dangerous imperialist warmongers are also the DPRK’s greatest enemies, one can be confident that any arms sold by the DPRK do not end up being used in the most hideous imperialist invasions and acts of national oppression. So we can be confident that DPRK arms will not end up in the hands of the troops that torture and massacre unarmed Afghan peasants and civilians (Australia’s SAS special forces), the forces that committed unspeakable atrocities in their invasion of Iraq (the U.S.-British-Australian forces), the militaries that killed tens of thousands of Libyan people and sent Libya into bloody turmoil ever since through their 2011 regime-change invasion (the U.S./NATO militaries) and the army that murderously oppresses the Palestinian people (the Israeli military). Instead, DPRK arms could actually end up with genuine liberation forces like Palestinian resistance movements.
Let’s Demand: No Criminal Conviction for Chan Han Choi!
None of the deals that Choi has pleaded guilty to brokering were actually finalised let alone proceeded to the actual trade of goods. In nearly all, if not all, the brokering that Choi did, even the prosecutors acknowledge that Choi himself cancelled the deals before he was arrested by police. If one wants an analogy, consider this. Imagine that you drive to a party where you plan to drink alcohol at the party and then drive home. Your friends tell you during the party that you should stop drinking because you plan to drive home. But you rebuff them. At the end of the night you get into your car to drive home drunk but at the last minute you change your mind and call a cab instead. Are you guilty of drink driving? No! But Choi is deemed guilty of brokering services because the laws enforcing the sanctions on the DPRK are so severe that even if you once try to broker a deal that you then cancel, that is deemed an offence. Of course the above analogy has limitations. Drink driving can be dangerous and can cause accidents that in the worst case can be fatal. In complete contrast, if Choi went ahead with the deals and was able to bring them to fruition he would have brought scarce hard currency to the consolidated revenue of the DPRK which would have enabled her to buy desperately needed food, medicine, fuel and agricultural machinery for her people. This would have actually saved people’s lives.
Given that what Choi is accused of are largely thought crimes and that none of the deals he brokered for a period actually came to fruition his offending is on the very low end of the laws that he has been prosecuted under. Moreover, Chan Han Choi has no prior criminal record whatsoever. All this means that even under the profoundly unjust laws that he is charged under, Choi should not get any punishment approaching a custodial sentence, let alone one in excess of three years that he has already been imprisoned for. Choi should only get a modest fine. However, that is only if the sentencing hearing is fair – notwithstanding the unfair laws that he is being charged under. The problem is that the sentencing hearing will not be fair! Everything that has happened to Choi since his December 2017 arrest proves that all organs of the Australian capitalist state discriminate against Choi because of his sympathy and allegiance to the socialistic DPRK. As Trotskyist Platform chairwoman, Sarah Fitzenmeyer, stated about Choi’s period in jail at a February 1 rally held in Choi’s defence:
“Prison authorities obstructed Choi’s access to legal representation. His previous legal team was not able to make a physical visit to Choi for almost a whole year. Furthermore Korean-English interpreters were not allowed to accompany legal visits for a period of 16 months. The prison system also specially blocked Choi from being able to make phone calls to friends and even some family members. They also obstructed visits to Choi. They used dirty tricks to do this. For example, when friends first applied to visit Choi, Corrective Services for weeks said that they were processing the applications but then suddenly no applications could be found in their system. The following year when a key friend who was finally able to visit had to renew his annual permit to visit Choi, Corrective Services conveniently claimed to have again lost the application.
“The worst example of the discrimination that Choi has faced from the Australian regime occurred when prison health authorities refused his repeated written appeals to see a prison doctor over more than an eight month period. Choi’s health was deteriorating. He was suffering from severe unintended weight loss, stomach problems, rampant rashes and more. He was only finally seen by a doctor after he wrote a letter to Justice Health saying that they are indirectly trying to murder me and his supporters published this letter online. When finally he was allowed to receive treatment for this [it became apparent that] his diabetes had spiraled out of control. They found that this was the cause of most of his symptoms. The medical staff found that Choi’s blood sugar level had reached emergency levels. He needed emergency doses of insulin. However, he should have been receiving insulin treatment much earlier. The simple fact that he did not receive such treatment put him at great risk of suffering a heart attack or a stroke. Even the United Nations states that the withholding of medical treatment from persons in places of detention is a form of torture.”
Meanwhile, for nearly three years, the capitalist regime rejected bail for Choi largely not because of the actual charges that he was facing but on the basis of the prosecution’s insistence that his political sympathy for the DPRK and his outspoken opposition to the cruel sanctions on the people of North Korea were a reason to reject bail. In other words, Choi’s imprisonment was a classic case of Cold War McCarthyist witch-hunting where a person’s sympathy for a socialistic state is deemed enough of a reason to deny that person’s rights – in this case the right to bail – that is otherwise afforded to others. Then when Choi went on trial last week (today’s plea deal ended the trial part-way through), he faced a playing field sloped steeply against him. Despite the research needed to address the complex technical aspects of his case, Legal Aid only allowed funding for Choi to have one barrister (who only came aboard in recent weeks after Legal Aid restored the funding that they had earlier cut off); while the regime arrayed massive resources dedicated to persecuting Choi including a legal team consisting of two barristers and an instructing solicitor who have spent years on the case; as well as a large number of police who have spent more than three years collecting “evidence” and seeking out “expert” witnesses. During the trial, the prosecution sought to sway the jury by slickly appealing to anti-communist prejudices that have been stirred up amongst the population by government and mainstream media and also by calling as witnesses war-mongering “experts” belonging to neo-conservative think tanks. Rather than exposing the obvious political bias of these “experts,” Choi’s Legal Aid-organised then barrister joined with the neo-conservatives in attacking North Korea and thus further prejudicing the jury against Choi. Due to a non-publication order imposed by the judge, we are unable to report why this barrister and Choi parted company two days ago. The judge ordered that the trial was to re-commence today at 10am after a new legal representative later announced to the court that he had taken up Choi’s case. However, the plea deal negotiated by Choi’s new legal representative and the Prosecutors went through this morning instead. The judge has censored all reporting of the circumstances that provided particular challenges to Choi’s new legal representative who took up the case just yesterday. However, we can report that these difficulties influenced Choi’s decision to accept a plea bargain on the eve of the trial’s scheduled re-commencement this morning.
In addition to the particular features of the way that Choi’s aborted trial proceeded there is over-riding political bias in the entire Australian court system. The courts are key organs of a capitalist state – that also includes the police, military, spy agencies, prisons and bureaucracy – that was created and is maintained for enforcing the interests of the numerically small, labour-exploiting class against the gigantic masses of the working class. A person could not rise to become a judge – especially a Supreme Court judge – unless they had already proven their loyalty to the capitalist order countless times on their way up. Although judges may preside over, let us say, a complicated murder trial in a fine way provided that the case does not intersect the questions of class and race, whenever a case touches these questions or, more so, when a case sees the interests of the working class and capitalist class arrayed on opposing sides, then the pro-capitalist bias of the judiciary comes to the fore. Chan Han Choi’s case is entirely a political one. And as a sympathiser of a socialistic state prosecuted for his acts in support of that state, Choi is fully on the receiving end of the pro-capitalist bias of the courts.
The capitalist regime really wants to impose a severe penalty on Choi. For one they want to deter others from helping the people of North Korea evade crippling sanctions. However, the regime’s main motivation to hype up Choi’s “offences” is to create an irrational fear of North Korea and by extension her PRC neighbor and ally. The Australian ruling class wants to use such fears to justify to the masses their incessant Cold War drive against the PRC and DPRK. They want us to wear the $270 billion of public funds that could be used for badly needed public housing, public aged care, TAFE and childcare being diverted into the purchase of new long-range missiles and other weapons. They want us to accept ever more repressive laws justified on the basis of “protecting national security” – like the draconian “foreign interference” laws. And they want us to acquiesce to a witch-hunt against other supporters of socialistic states – particularly sympathizers of Red China within Australia’s Chinese community.
Fortunately, there are also factors that give the Australian regime pause in how aggressively they hound Choi. For by engaging in an obviously political persecution of Chan Han Choi, the capitalist regime exposes the fraudulence of its stated commitment to the “rule of law” and “democracy.” This in turn undermines the ability of the regime to meddle abroad and attack its Cold War enemies on the basis of supposed “human rights” concerns. This is doubly so when one of the people that they are persecuting at home happens to be a supporter of one of the main targets of their [false] attacks over “human rights”. None of this bothered the capitalist regime when they first arrested Choi in December 2017. They expected that he would have no support and that the whole population would follow their demonisation of Choi like sheep. However, much to the Australian capitalist ruling class’ surprise things have turned out quite differently. A determined and active united front protest movement has been built in defence of Choi. The movement has exposed to people at home and abroad the ways that Choi’s rights have been violated and has brought to the fore the injustice inherent in the prosecution of a person trying to help people evade starvation sanctions. Now there is a political cost to the regime if it engages in the further persecution of Chan Han Choi. In the end that is why they had to reluctantly grant him bail last November. However, we defenders of Chan Han Choi should not rest on our laurels. The political climate can turn for the worse quickly and significant components of the capitalist regime are still hell bent on sending Choi to prison again.
That is why in the lead up to Choi’s sentencing we must intensify our agitation and action in his defence. Let us build on the united front rally that we held early in the morning of February 1 in the lead up to Choi’s pre-trial hearing (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hup24xnKxUQ). We need to especially look to mobilize politically aware workers behind the campaign. This is very possible because defending Chan Han Choi is definitely in the interests of working class people. For one, as well as being a great humanitarian, Choi is 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 Australia’s and the world’s population who would benefit from having such a system themselves. To those hurt by the present capitalist system that causes such economic insecurity for working class people, that denies millions of youth stable, permanent jobs and that inflames such racist far-right violence and such turmoil in the U.S., Australia, India, Israel and other capitalist countries, we say that Choi has stood by you. We must now stand by him!
By defending Choi we are opposing the imperialist Cold War drive that his persecution is meant to fuel. The Australian capitalist regime’s Cold War drive is squarely against working class people’s interests. In targeting workers states abroad, this Cold War drive will inevitably be accompanied by attacks on workers’ unions and other workers’ organizations at home – just like the last Cold War against the Soviet Union. We don’t want exports to China that provides every Australian household with $17,000 extra in income on average to be disrupted because of the capitalist class’ obsession with crushing socialistic states.
What is also at stake in Choi’s trial is the future of the Australian regime’s anti-communist witch-hunt that Choi’s own persecution is very much part of. Many supporters of socialistic China have also been targeted in this McCarthyist witch-hunt. After organising a mass rally in Sydney in August 2019 that supported Red China’s sovereignty over its Hong Kong autonomous region, Chinese international students were subjected to threatening interrogations by ASIO. Even a NSW ALP politician was witch-hunted merely for praising China’s response to the pandemic. Meanwhile, Cold War repression has created such a national security obsession that it has made it easier for the Australian regime to persecute others with no direct connection to Cold War issues. Within nine months of their arrest of Choi, the Australian capitalist regime charged whistleblowers Bernard Collaery and Witness K for exposing the Australian state’s spying on East Timor and then David McBride for revealing the extent of Australia’s brutal and so shameful war crimes in Afghanistan. At the same time the national security obsession has enabled the Federal Police to conduct intimidating raids on trade unions like the CFMEU and the AWU. It has also made it easier for the regime to abet the U.S. and Britain’s persecution of Julian Assange.
McCarthyist repression in Australia threatens the workers movement, whistleblowers and democratic rights. Let’s strike a blow against it by defending its biggest victim: socialist political prisoner Chan Han Choi. Let’s also strike a blow against the Cold War drive more broadly – a war drive that is completely against the interests of more than 90% of Australia and the world’s people. And let’s strengthen the movement against the cruel economic sanctions on the people of North Korea. Let’s do all this by mobilizing with great energy to stand by compassionate human being, Chan Han Choi, in the lead up to his upcoming sentencing hearing. Chan Han Choi must not receive any criminal record whatsoever let alone be thrown back into prison for trying to help the people of North Korea evade killer sanctions. In a fair society Choi would be given not jail time but showered with awards and medals for heroism and compassion!
Momentum Builds in Campaign to Free Socialist Political Prisoner in Australia
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.
Western Sydney, 17 December 2020: Demonstrators gather in the multi-racial working class suburb of Chester Hill to demand the dropping of all charges against Chan Han Choi.
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!”
Australian Regime Releases Socialist Political Prisoner into House Arrest
Above: Chan Han Choi at his residence of house arrest shortly after his release from prison on bail on the evening of 12 November 2020. Choi is here reading a copy of the main Korean language community newspaper in Sydney, Hanho Daily. The then current issue of Hanho Daily contained an article on the campaign to free this socialist political prisoner.
Photo Credit: Trotskyist Platform
Free Chan Han Choi – Drop All Charges Now!
Australian Regime Releases Socialist Political Prisoner into House Arrest
13 November 2020 – After nearly three years in prison without being convicted of any charge, Chan Han Choi was yesterday finally released on bail. However, the bail conditions imposed on him are so strict that they amount to house arrest. Choi is not allowed to leave his bail residence except for his twice daily reporting to a nearby police station or for essential medical care. Apart from being subjected to a strict curfew, his use of the internet is greatly restricted. Moreover, Choi “must, on request, disclose to the officer in charge any caller or phone number appearing on his accounts.” This is a blatant attempt to assist the police to carry out intimidation and surveillance of Choi’s many friends and supporters.
Despite the harsh bail conditions imposed on him, Choi is certainly happy to be out of prison. He spent most of his nearly three years in prison in one of the Australian regime’s most notorious prison camps. Moreover, the capitalist regime imposed extra severe conditions on this socialist political prisoner. They obstructed visits to Choi by lawyers, translators and friends. They banned him from making any telephone calls to his friends whatsoever – a right accorded to other prisoners. More recently, they failed to monitor his diabetes and repeatedly knocked back his requests to see a prison doctor over an eight and a half month period as his diabetes significantly worsened. Choi was finally allowed medical care again only after sending off a strong August 15 letter to prison health authorities stating “that they are trying indirectly to murder me” by rebuffing his repeated written requests to be seen by a prison doctor. By the time that Choi was seen by prison medical staff on August 27, his blood sugar levels had reached alarmingly dangerous levels. He required emergency doses of insulin. Later he was put on a program of daily insulin injections and thrice daily sugar level monitoring. It turned out that, unbeknownst to Choi at the time, most of the symptoms that he was desperately seeking medical attention for – severe unintended weight loss, rashes all over his body, very itchy fungal infections etc – were the result of his diabetes going out of control. The fact is that Choi should have been receiving daily insulin up to eight months before he was finally treated in this way. The regime’s delay in treating his diabetes not only caused the symptoms that he suffered from but put Choi at greatly increased risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke. Apart from being potentially deadly, the Australian regime’s refusal of medical care to this left-wing political prisoner caused him extreme stress that for a period affected his mental health.
Even on his very last day in jail prior to being released on bail, the callous neglect of Choi’s health needs continued. Yesterday, Choi asked to see the nurse on duty so that he could get a certificate about the medication that he is taking in order to give it to a doctor once he is released. However, senior guards blocked him from accessing a nurse. Thus prevented from having any official record of the medication that he has been prescribed, today Choi and his supporters spent the afternoon in a panic as they feverishly attempted to deduce – with the help of his new GP and pharmacist – what daily insulin dose he was being prescribed and what other diabetes and high cholesterol medication he requires.
Photo Credit: Trotskyist Platform
Chan Han Choi is accused of trying to help North Korea’s people conduct trade with entities abroad in violation of UN economic sanctions. He is scheduled to face trial next February. All the eight charges against Choi relate to alleged brokering of the export of produce from North Korea to entities in third countries, except for one of the charges. That latter charge alleges that Choi attempted to broker the import of petroleum products from Iran to the DPRK. Choi has pleaded not guilty to all the eight charges. However, as asserted by the chair of a united front rally held in Choi’s defence on the Saturday prior to his November 10 bail hearing:
“We say that whether the charges are true or not, Choi should be freed and all the charges dropped. Because even if they are true, he has committed no crime from the standpoint of working class people. On the contrary he would have carried out a great act of humanitarianism. Because these sanctions are cruel and brutal. Similar sanctions imposed on the people of Iraq, in just their first eight years of implementation, from 1990 to 1998, killed half a million Iraqi babies. They caused a half a million babies to die prematurely through a lack of food and medicine – this is according to the United Nations, the body that imposed the sanctions. In the end about 1.7 million people in Iraq died as a result of those sanctions. Now, North Korea has a socialistic system so they’re better able to protect their people from these sanctions. But still it causes enormous suffering. Choi has been to rural areas of North Korea and he has seen that suffering caused by the sanctions. And that is why he is opposed to these sanctions and wants to help the people of North Korea.
“But Chan Han Choi is also a socialist. He likes North Korea’s egalitarianism. He likes the society’s community spirit. Now people can have different ideas about North Korea’s leadership. But the fact is that the people of North Korea have built a socialistic system based on public ownership of the banks, the mines, the factories and the agricultural land. Now that system is a system that favours working class people. So by standing by such a system, Chan Han Choi has stood by all the people in Australia and around the world hurt by the capitalist system. He has stood by the millions of workers, many young and women workers, who’ve been forced into insecure casual labour. He has stood by the hundreds of thousands of workers who have been thrown out of their jobs over the last few months after their toil made their bosses huge profits… He has stood by the people who are struggling with rent or mortgage repayments because there is so little public housing. He has stood by the people hurt by privatisation. So by standing by a system of public ownership, he has stood by 90% of Australia’s population. We must now stand by him!”
Resist the Rise of Cold War McCarthysim!
Although Choi was initially charged for allegedly trying to break the sanctions on the people of North Korea, the reason he was imprisoned and denied bail until now was largely because of his sympathy for socialistic North Korea. In their submissions opposing each of Choi’s bail applications, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (CDPP) insisted on each occasion that Choi’s stated sympathy for the DPRK was a strong reason to reject bail. Meanwhile, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) claimed that Choi’s statements from prison that he is a political prisoner and attacking the economic sanctions on the DPRK as unfair and unjust are also reasons to deny bail. In other words, because of Choi’s sympathy for a socialistic country and his avowed opposition to the cruel sanctions on the people of that country, the Australian regime is insisting that Choi should have less rights than others. This is blatant political discrimination! It is what Cold War McCarthyism is all about – where people’s sympathy for a socialistic country or advocacy of communism is equated with criminal acts. It makes a mockery of the Australian regime’s claims to run a “democratic system” where “everyone has the same rights regardless of their political stance.” Such discrimination against sympathisers of socialistic states is all the more disgusting because those standing by such systems based on public ownership and working class rule – in however a bureaucratically deformed manner that it may currently exist in North Korea and the Peoples Republic China – are standing by the interests of the entire working class of Australia and the world; and most of the middle class as well.
Meanwhile, the CDPP and AFP also opposed Choi’s bail on the grounds that his supporters providing bail surety and bail residence to him are associated with groups like Trotskyist Platform, “that make statements undermining the Australian legal system and showing a lack of respect for the processes associated with adjudicating criminal guilt.” Thus, people expressing distrust in Australia’s capitalist legal system – a system that is both racist and biased towards the rich business owning class – are branded as being necessarily more likely to commit criminal acts than others. Indeed, the regime went even further. They made a big deal about the people offering bail surety having, on certain days, worn t-shirts containing the flag of the DPRK! Shock horror! Their Cold War anti-communism is so intense that they even deem people wearing t-shirts with the flag of a socialistic country as would-be criminals.
Alongside such fanatical anti-communist arguments, the CDPP and AFP also resorted to other spurious “grounds” for opposing bail. For one they constructed a completely bonkers conspiracy theory that Chinese, North Korean or even Russian agents would assist Choi to flee Australia – despite the COVID ban on travel out of this country – should Choi be granted bail. Then, they made a huge song and dance about Choi’s family’s supposed minimal contact with him since his arrest. However, as Choi’s legal team noted, his family members were themselves raided at the time that Choi was arrested and there “is an irresistible inference that the lack of contact between the Applicant [Choi] and his family, and vice versa, may be prompted out of fear for the safety” of family members “as opposed to a permanent state of degradation in their familial relationship, and hence the diminishment of the Applicant’s community ties.” Moreover, until well into 2019, Choi had regularly been speaking to his wife on the phone. This communication only ceased after two members of the Corrections Intelligence Group visited Choi in prison and made the chilling threat that should he ever speak on the phone in Korean again, he would be sent to Goulburn Supermax prison. Soon, Choi found that he could not adequately communicate with his wife since both are far from fluent in English. Moreover, there was a danger that either one of them could unthinkingly break into Korean during a phone conversation which could cause Choi to be sent to Goulburn Supermax and out of easy reach of the friends who have been visiting him in custody. As a result he stopped calling his wife. However, making a mockery of the prosecution’s emphasis on his supposed “minimal contact with family members,” the first thing that Choi did this morning – after having been given an approved phone late last night – was to make phone contact with his family… and a lengthy conversation followed!
Upon his release from prison into house arrest, Choi expressed his deepest appreciation to all the people who have supported him. He said that without their support and actions there is no way that he would have been released on bail. When Choi was arrested in December 2017, then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, Australian Federal Police leaders and the mainstream media launched vicious verbal attacks on him. They sought to use the case to create a hysterical fear of North Korea. Choi was a bogeyman for the Australian capitalist regime to justify increased McCarthyist repression at home and a greatly intensified military build up against the DPRK and her socialistic PRC neighbour and ally. However, soon, the regime and the capitalist class that it serves found that many people did not buy their propaganda. Many sympathized with Choi and a vibrant movement mobilising street protests in defence of this socialist political prisoner emerged. The regime realised that the Choi case, rather than being a propaganda bonanza, has turned into a headache for them. In particular, the efforts of Choi’s supporters to expose the regime’s cruel treatment of this political prisoner and the resulting sympathy for Choi emerging from within a sizeable section of Australia’s Korean community (see: http://www.hanhodaily.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=64867) – and part of the Chinese community too – was threatening to lay bare to many the fraudulent nature of the ruling class’ claims to stand for “rule of law” and “human rights.” Thus, the exposure of the Australian regime’s profoundly unjust persecution of Choi is also undermining its attempts to attack the PRC, DPRK and other socialistic countries over supposed “human rights abuses.” It seems that decisive sections of the Australian ruling class have hence calculated that its interests would be better served by releasing Choi into house arrest until his trial.
Congratulations to all those who have joined the street protests in defense of Chan Han Choi and supported him in other ways. You made a real difference! Alongside Trotskyist Platform, many other groups joined this united front campaign. Among the organisations that have either participated in or supported the various rallies supporting Choi are Trotskyist Platform, Anti-War West Sydney, Social Justice Network, Australia-DPRK Friendship Society, Communist Party of Australia – Wollongong branch, Communist Party of Australia –Western Sydney branch, Aust-DPRK Solidarity, Lebanese Communist Party and the Irish Republican socialist group James Connolly Association.
However, we supporters of Choi cannot rest on our laurels. His trial is approaching fast. Moreover, there is a lot at stake. For, although Choi is the biggest victim of Cold War McCarthyism in this country he is far from the only target. Just a week before Choi was released from prison, a Chinese Australian man, Sunny Duong, became the first person charged under Australia’s draconian so-called “foreign interference” laws – laws that are aimed at quashing the voice of those sympathetic to socialistic China and the other workers states. Sunny is a highly respected member of Melbourne’s South-East Asian Chinese community. The Australian regime have given scant details about the charges. But you can bet that this is another beat up! They say that he was conspiring to interfere in Australia’s political affairs. What do they mean by that: was he was planning to merely issue some social media posts sympathetic to China?
Five 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 a heavy-handed and intimidating raid on his home. It turns out that he never had any case to answer. 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 that? And the regime here 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 truth and said that China responded very well to the pandemic. So much for free speech!
Meanwhile, last year, Chinese international students were subjected to an intimidating interrogation by Australia’s ASIO secret police. The students were targeted because they organised a large march in Sydney opposing the pro-colonial, anti-China rioters in Hong Kong. Then this year, ASIO and the Federal police staged a Gestapo-style raid on Chinese journalists working in Australia, seizing their computers and phones and terrifying their children.
Like all bullies, those leading the Cold War McCarthyist drive in Australia depend on their potential victims being intimidated. That is after all how witch-hunts work. First the witch-hunters target one person and hope that others who would support that target are intimidated and stay silent to avoid being targeted themselves. Then the persecutors move on to the next victim who often could be one of the people who decided to stay silent. That is why we must not stay silent when anyone is being persecuted for their sympathy for socialistic states; or in Moselmane’s case for having merely said a few words in praise of China. Now is the time to put our heads up – not duck for cover! The way to defeat witch-hunts is through courage! We must say an injury to one is an injury to all! By working harder to defend the biggest victim of McCarthyist persecution in Australia, Chan Han Choi, we are pushing back against this Cold War witch-hunt on all fronts.
The struggle to win freedom for Choi and to oppose the broader McCarthyist witch-hunt will need to be waged through mass street actions and political exposure. We can have no illusions in justice originating from the Australian regime’s legal system. As Trotskyist Platform spokesman, Samuel Kim, concluded in a speech made at the 7 November “Free Chan Han Choi” protest:
“The prisons, the courts, the police and the state bureaucracy in this capitalist country exist to enforce the interests of the corporate owners against those of the working class masses and their supporters. This is the case whether it is the Liberals, the ALP or the Greens who are in office as the capitalists also heavily influence these political parties. That is why greedy construction industry bosses get away with industrial manslaughter and murder – where on average 30 construction industry workers are killed on the job every year. Yet representatives from the construction workers unions get hit with criminal convictions for inspecting unsafe work sites.
“This system is geared towards the rich and powerful – and Choi, a hospital cleaner and someone charged with standing up for a workers state will receive discrimination from this system. So that is why we have mobilised on the streets with our physical bodies and we are loudly voicing these injustices. The only way we can bring true justice for Choi or any working class struggle – like for higher wages, struggles against police brutality or for affordable housing – is through street actions and protest actions of the good people. We need future mass actions of politically aware working class people and our allies. This, comrades and friends, is the most powerful way to oppose the decaying capitalist system of increasing inequality. We demand:
“Freedom for Chan Han Choi!
“Down with the barbaric sanctions, military threats, and trade war on the people of North Korea!
“Down with the Cold War witch-hunt against supporters of socialistic states!
Left-Wing Political Prisoner in Australia Had Serious Diabetic Condition Left Untreated for Months
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.
Australia’s Authoritarian Regime Denies Socialist Political Prisoner Medical Care
Photo Above: More than 40 people marched through the streets of Sydney on 13 April 2019 demanding freedom for Chan Han Choi and an end to the brutal sanctions on North Korea.
Australia’s Authoritarian Regime Denies Chan Han Choi Medical Care
Socialist Political Prisoner’s Health Deteriorating at Long Bay Prison
September 6, 2020 – Recently, left-wing political prisoner Chan Han Choi’s health has severely deteriorated after he was repeatedly denied medical care by the Australian regime. The Australian regime has jailed Chan Han Choi since December 2017 on charges of trying to help the people of North Korea to evade UN economic sanctions. 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 severe sanctions ever imposed on any country. Two and three quarter years after his arrest, Choi is imprisoned without conviction. He is yet to go to trial and Australia’s “legal system” has denied him bail.
On several times since May, Choi submitted written forms to request to see a doctor at Long Bay Prison. However, authorities at the prison refused the requests. Desperate, last month, 61 year-old Choi, with the assistance of fellow prisoners (his English is limited), sent a protest letter to the director of Justice Health noting that his health is deteriorating rapidly and that he is suffering from severe weight loss. This political prisoner also stated 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.”
It was only after authorities received that letter that, finally, on the very last day of last month, Choi was allowed to see a doctor. The doctor found that Choi’s diabetes had worsened greatly and he now needed to be injected daily with insulin. Choi had been a diabetic prior to being imprisoned but was only a mild case requiring no insulin treatment. The symptoms that he had complained about while being denied treatment – severe weight loss, rashes all over his body, skin infections – are all classic symptoms of diabetes. The fact that this was left untreated for months and he was not given insulin when he needed it months earlier is deadly dangerous and, indeed, potentially fatal. It is possible that the insulin treatment he is finally receiving may be too little, too late. At last report his blood sugar levels had still not stabilized. It is still touch and go whether or not the serious delay in giving Choi insulin treatment will cause permanent serious damage to his health … or even worse!
We should add that the part of Long Bay where Chan Han Choi is imprisoned, Long Bay Prison Hospital, was the scene of the gruesome December 2015 murder of Aboriginal man, David Dungay. David Dungay was suffocated to death after being crushed in the facedown position by five big burly prison guards. The guards ignored Dungay’s desperate pleas that he shouted out over 12 times, “I can’t breathe.” The infamous police murder of George Floyd in the U.S. in May has drawn more attention to the very similar killing of 26 year-old Dungay. Like Chan Han Choi, Dungay was also a diabetic. It is ironic that Dungay was killed by guards claiming to be trying to “protect” him from diabetic-induced complications when they stopped him eating biscuits by suffocating him to death while today the very same prison authorities have endangered Choi’s life by for months denying Choi urgently needed treatment for his own worsening diabetic condition.
What Chan Han Choi is today being subjected to is a cruel saga of a political prisoner simply being denied his legal and human rights in Australia. Chan Han Choi has been detained as a “National Security Interest” prisoner, which means that he is treated as a “High Risk”, “High Security” inmate. This despite Choi having no criminal record and despite not even being accused of killing anyone, bashing anyone, sexually assaulting anyone or even stealing from anyone. Assisted by this “National Security Interest” pretext, the Australian ruling classes’ state has obstructed Choi’s lawyers access to him, denied him further Legal Aid coverage for legal representation and even obstructed his right to speak to family members. Then they effectively even took away Choi’s right to see a doctor when ill, which amounts to a form of torture. Meanwhile, the restricted visitation rights to his family/friends/lawyers, the curbing of his right to make phone calls to his family, the outright denial of his right to make phone calls to his friends, now mixed in with the COVID-19 ban on all prison visits have added further to his social isolation and to the decay of his well-being.
Choi at the time of his arrest was a humble hospital cleaner living in the migrant working-class suburb of Eastwood. Choi was born in South Korea where he obtained a technical engineering qualification. He is an Australian citizen. Despite the political influences he has been subjected to in both South Korea and Australia – most notably the barrage of Cold-War propaganda against North Korea – Choi felt compelled to help the people of North Korea. Prior to the toughening of U.N. sanctions over recent years proscribing many exports from North Korea, Choi organized many legal deals to assist North Korea to export commodities like iron ore. He was motivated by both humanitarian concern and by sympathy for North Korea’s socialistic system. Notably, according to the very words of the Australian Federal Police, Choi was helping North Korea for personally profitless motives and out of loyal sympathy for the North Korean state.
What Choi has done is truly remarkable and heroic not only for the sanctions-crushed people of North Korea but from the standpoint of the oppressed working class of Australia. For by standing by the DPRK (the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea – i.e. North Korea), which for all of its bureaucratic deformities is a workers state, Choi is standing by the interests of the working class and most middle class people of Australia. The Australian and American capitalist-imperialists’ hostility to the DPRK is part of their Cold War drive against the world’s most powerful socialistic country, the Peoples Republic of China, which is the DPRK’s ally and neighbour. This Cold War drive is aimed at securing the capitalist order at home at the expense of 90% of Australia’s population. The more that their system is unable to meet the needs of the masses, the more that the capitalist rulers here attack the socialistic countries so that working class people here do not see any alternative to the capitalist order. The U.S. and Australian rulers have another reason for targeting the DPRK. They are still today angry about the fact that they were not able to defeat the DPRK in the Korean War and that the DPRK remains unbowed in the face of all their subsequent threats and diktats. So by standing by the defiant, ex-colonial DPRK, Choi is surely also on the side of all the underdog masses in the post-colonial countries that are still so ravaged by Western imperialist crusades
– the crusades that murderously kill and subjugate people for the ambitions of empire and capitalism (as in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia etc).
Today, as the pandemic globally gathers more victims at the hands of careless capitalist governments, as greedy bosses throw workers out of jobs even as their profits and stock prices soar, as inequality increases during the pandemic and as poverty and unemployment rises, the need for a socialist solution to society’s problems – that is, a solution based on public ownership of the economy and working class state power – becomes clearer and clearer. By standing by the DPRK’s system based on such public ownership and working class state power – despite the imperfections that must necessarily exist in a country like North Korea that is so cruelly sanctioned and strangulated and so threatened by nuclear armed U.S. bombers and by the over 70,000 American troops that surround her – Choi is in effect aiding the struggle for that badly needed socialist solution to the masses’ problems here in Australia as well as in the rest of the capitalist world. In doing so Chan Han Choi is standing by 90% of Australia’s people. We and, in particular, our most politically conscious core – including working class radicals, trade unionists, socialist political dissidents, black rights activists, anti-imperialist activists, public housing advocates and anti-racist activists – must now in our turn stand by Chan Han Choi. We must demand his immediate freedom and the dropping of all charges against him.
Step Up Our Struggle to Free Socialist Political Prisoner in Australia Chan Han Choi
Step Up
Our Struggle to Free Socialist
Political Prisoner in Australia Chan Han Choi
8 June 2020: Left-wing political prisoner in Australia, Chan Han Choi continues to languish in prison. He has been jailed since December 2017 on charges of trying to help the people of North Korea to evade UN economic sanctions. 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 severe sanctions ever imposed on any country.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic struck, life for all prisoners has become even tougher. For the last nearly three months all visits to NSW prisoners have been blocked. This has been especially tough on Choi as the prison system has specifically banned him from making telephone calls to his friends. This is supposedly on “national security” grounds. The only person Choi is permitted to call is his wife. However, the authorities have stipulated that all conversations must be in English. But since his wife speaks little English and Choi’s English is also limited, in practice he cannot speak to his wife either. He long ago stopped calling her after authorities threatened that if they broke into Korean in conversation on the phone he would be transferred to Goulburn Supermax prison! Thus, for over two months, Choi was effectively prevented from having any contact with any family or friends. Finally, two weeks ago, Choi’s friends have started being able to speak to him again in a limited way. Authorities have now allowed prisoners to receive AVL (Audio Visual Link) “visits” as a substitute for physical, contact visits. However, these weekly AVL “visits” are only for 25 minutes, whereas the usual physical visits were for two hours per weekly visit.
Today, at the Long Bay Prison Hospital where Choi is imprisoned, we saw both the stress that prisoners are under since their visits have been blocked and the brutality that they face from guards. Aerial media footage from helicopter shows guards unleashing tear gas and attack dogs against prisoners in a yard. The footage then shows the guards moving into another yard where all the inmates were lying face down on the ground at the command of guards and totally compliant. However, apparently for sadistic pleasure, guards begin throwing tear gas at the motionless prisoners lying on the ground and then start ferociously clubbing some of the inmates with batons. One prisoner is meanwhile bitten by a dog. We do not know if Choi was one of the prisoners assaulted. Prison authorities claim that the guards were reacting to a fight between prisoners over drugs but the footage does not show any skirmish. Instead, the media footage taken from helicopter shows six prisoners using materials to spell out “BLM”, which stands for Black Lives Matter. It is thus possible that the authorities attacked the prisoners because they expressed their political support for the struggle against racist oppression. On its Facebook page, the Abolitionist and Transformative Justice Centre (an alliance of lawyers, social workers and activists in support of Indigenous Australians) called it an “ongoing Black Lives Matter uprising”. “There is massive resistance,” their post said.
Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic means that the health of all prisoners are at great risk. In the conditions of a prison, where many people are indoors together, a virus outbreak could spread like wildfire. Inmates like Choi are especially vulnerable as he is over 60 years of age and has a major pre-existing medical condition that has become more serious while imprisoned.
Chan Han Choi had been set to go on trial on March 9. Supporters of Choi organised a protest rally outside court to mark this trial commencement. However, at the last moment, the trial was postponed. As rally organisers were unable to contact everyone who was planning to attend, some of Choi’s core supporters went ahead with the rally anyway and were joined by some of the other supporters who were not able to be notified of the trial postponement. We print below, in lightly edited and condensed form, the speeches of two of the speakers at the demonstration: rally mc Sarah Fitzenmeyer, who is also the Chairwoman of Trotskyist Platform and Samuel Kim a leading Trotskyist Platform activist. Comrade Kim is of Korean background.
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Sarah Fitzenmeyer (rally introduction): Thank you to everyone who has come here to support today’s action which is calling for freedom for left-wing political prisoner right here in Australia, Chan Han Choi. Choi has been imprisoned for two years and three months for his sympathy for socialistic North Korea. Today was to be a huge day for Choi because it was supposed to be the start of his trial but at the last minute it has been postponed…. This, however, certainly isn’t any reason for us not to be here today protesting loudly against an injustice that really needs to be condemned each and every day. Indeed, we won’t stop protesting until our brave socialist comrade, Chan Han Choi, a heroic political prisoner right here in racist, capitalist Australia is finally set free!
Firstly, let us acknowledge that we are on stolen Aboriginal land. This is the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. Aboriginal people continue to suffer in this country. And in standing by a victim of persecution today, Chan Han Choi, it is our duty to also commit to stand by the Aboriginal people’s struggle for liberation. In the very same wing of the prison that Chan Han Choi is incarcerated in, the Prison Hospital wing of Long Bay Jail, a 26 year-old Aboriginal man, David Dungay, was crushed to death by six racist prison officers four years ago. David Dungay’s family still have not received justice. Neither have any of the other families of Aboriginal people who have been killed in state custody by racist state personnel. The same racist, rich people’s regime that unleashes brutal terror against Aboriginal people is today persecuting socialist political prisoner Chan Han Choi.
Chan Han Choi was arrested for allegedly trying to organise deals to help the people of North Korea evade crippling United Nations economic sanctions. But the reason that he is still in jail is because of his political views and the fact that he proudly continues to maintain his opposition to the sanctions against North Korea. The Australian Federal Police in their submission to the courts openly gave as one of their reasons for opposing bail the fact that Choi has made defiant statements from prison identifying the economic sanctions on North Korea as being unjust and unfair. So for expressing his opposition to these cruel sanctions, Choi is stripped of his human rights and kept languishing, locked up in jail.
Choi’s entire experience being locked up over the last two years has been one of discrimination because of his political stance. Choi has been denied many of the rights that should be accorded to all prisoners. Most concerning has been the obstructing of legal access to him. When Choi had a government-appointed lawyer who was pressuring Choi to plead “Guilty,” that lawyer had ready access to Choi. But after Choi sacked this lawyer and found alternate representation, the new lawyers’ access to Choi became obstructed once it became clear to authorities that they were not going to pressure him into pleading “guilty.” Even after Choi’s legal team could finally see him, suitably qualified Korean-English interpreters were still blocked from accompanying legal visits. This lack of access to interpreters was the main grounds for Choi’s second bail application that was heard on December 20. The judge again denied bail but said that if an interpreter was not found by December 31, bail would become highly likely. Suddenly, however, after a few days, Corrective Services NSW granted access to an interpreter. So after qualified interpreters were completely blocked for over 16 months, suddenly one was cleared to come and translate for him within days! This was organised with such speed simply to ensure that Choi would not get bail! That shows how corrupt and biased the Australian regime agencies are. This is the same Corrective Services NSW that took over four months to approve visits to Choi from his friends.
All the eight charges against Choi relate to alleged brokering of the export of produce from North Korea to entities in third countries, except for one of the charges, which alleges that Choi attempted to broker the import of petroleum products from Iran to the DPRK. Choi has pleaded not guilty to all the eight charges. Yet 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 was aiding people who are being ground down by the most severe sanctions ever imposed. Similar sanctions imposed on Iraq caused the deaths of over 500,000 babies in just the first eight years of their implementation from 1990 onwards. Although the DPRK’s socialistic system has enabled her to avert such catastrophic consequences, the sanctions still cause terrible hardship to her people.
Choi is a humanitarian who has seen the suffering that the sanctions have caused. He is also a socialist who sympathises with North Korea because he likes the society’s egalitarianism. Whatever one thinks of North Korea’s leaders, the fact is that her people have built a system based upon public ownership of the key banks, industries, agricultural land and mines. It is a state that was won by the masses in brave struggle to defeat the former capitalists and landlords. In supporting such a socialistic system, Choi is also standing by the interests of those in Australia hurt by the capitalist system – that is, those suffering from the effects of privatisation, casualisation of employment, job slashing by bosses, bullying by banks, sell-offs of public housing and rising rents. Choi can be considered an anti-privatisation warrior and a champion of public ownership – a champion of a system that would favour the working class majority of this country and the world. Working class people must in turn now stand by him!
Our next speaker is Samuel Kim representing Trotskyist Platform, the group that has initiated today’s united front action. Samuel has worked as hard as anyone over the last couple of years in the campaign to free Chan Han Choi.
Samuel Kim: So far Choi has been jailed in Sydney’s notorious maximum security prison for the last 27 months. But what is our friend Chan Han Choi accused of? He is a peaceful man who never assaulted anyone, he did not steal from anyone, he is softly spoken, and he was a humble working class hospital cleaner at the time of his arrest. All Choi is accused of doing is arranging trade deals to help the people of North Korea to evade cruel UN economic sanctions. These sanctions ban nearly all of North Korea’s exports and many imported items too. It means that the people of North Korea do not have the hard currency needed to buy food, medicines and medical equipment. The sanctions on North Korea are so extreme that even the Red Cross said that the outbreak of the coronavirus would hurt North Korea without temporary sanctions relief. Today sanctions are preventing North Korea from getting urgently needed testing kits and protective gear.
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.
Despite not being accused of a single crime against a victim, Chan Han Choi has been refused bail. In contrast many people charged with even murder get bail. So why has Choi been refused bail? The prosecution opposed bail claiming that Choi’s supposed offending is objectively serious because of his loyalty to the DPRK. In other words because of Choi’s political views the Australian regime say his alleged offences should be considered more serious. This is blatant political persecution!
Choi has had many of his rights as a prisoner and defendant stripped. To this day Choi is still not allowed to make telephone calls to his friends. He has even been refused the right to call his daughter-in-law and therefore to speak to his infant grandchildren. The Australian capitalist class say that they run a “democratic” system. They say that everyone has the same rights here regardless of their political views. But Choi had his bail opposed because of his sympathies for a socialistic state and because he has spoken out from prison against the cruel sanctions on North Korea. The Australian regime and their media say that they respect “human rights” but human rights are routinely violated and ignored by the government and corporate media.
Many Aboriginal people know all too well what the Australian regime’s talk of “human rights” actually means: in the last three decades 450 indigenous people have died in state custody, many simply killed by racist police or prison guards.
The U.S. and Australian imperialist rulers and their South Korean allies say that the sanctions are needed to stop the supposed nuclear threat from North Korea. But we ask what threat? It is not North Korea that criminally nuked the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And it is not North Korea that killed hundreds of thousands of people in invading Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. Nor is it North Korea that is today threatening a bloody assault against the people of Iran. No that is the work of the very people who have imposed sanctions upon her.
The real reason that the capitalist powers have imposed sanctions upon North Korea is that they want to starve her people into abandoning their socialistic system. Although socialistic rule in North Korea is deformed by bureaucratic privileges and a lack of real workers democracy, North Korea has a system of public ownership that was won in the struggle against landlords and capitalist exploiters. Capitalist powers hate the DPRK workers state because its mere existence could inspire the masses of other former colonies to engage in rebellious struggles against exploitation and neo-colonial subjugation. That would mean a huge loss in profits for the American, Australian, British and Japanese corporations that loot wealth from the Philippines, Indonesia, East Timor, Thailand, PNG and Fiji.
By targeting North Korea, the capitalist powers are also squeezing her neighbour and ally, the Peoples Republic of China. Washington and Canberra want to smash socialistic rule in these countries so that they can turn them into huge sweatshops where the corporate bosses that they serve can make fabulous profits from exploiting workers.
But while attacking North Korea and China is good for the big end of town, it is harmful to the interests of 90% of this country’s population. The existence of socialistic states strengthens the struggle here for workers rights, and helps create a movement for a future society based on public ownership. By standing by a society based on public ownership, Choi is in effect standing by working class people and by most middle class people as well. Working class people in Australia, opponents of imperialism, fighters against privatisation and supporters of public ownership have a strong interest in standing by Chan Han Choi. We must demand the immediate dropping of all charges against him. It is also in our interests to defend socialistic rule in North Korea and China – however far from the ideal it may be – as well as to defend socialistic rule in Cuba, Vietnam and Laos. We must demand an end to all sanctions on North Korea as well as an end to the U.S. blockade on Cuba. We need to oppose the U.S. and Australian regimes’ military build up against North Korea and China. We must also oppose their propaganda campaign of lies against these socialistic countries.
The struggle to free Choi is especially crucial because he is not the only person being persecuted for their sympathy for a socialistic state. Today, the Australian regime is waging a McCarthyist type witch-hunt which especially targets supporters of the most powerful socialistic country, the People’s Republic of China. International students from China who express their support for Red China are being demonised. Last Spring, the Australian government announced the creation of a new taskforce to attack pro-Red China students under the guise of looking into supposed “foreign interference” on campuses.
The democracy in this country is only a democracy for the ultra-rich, big end of town. The prisons, the courts, the police and the state bureaucracy in a capitalist country exist to enforce the interests of the capitalist business owners against those of the working class masses and their supporters. This is the case whether it is the Liberals, the ALP or the Greens who are in office. That is why construction bosses get away with industrial murder of workers. Every year, over 30 construction industry workers are killed on the job. Yet construction unions are the ones getting hit with criminal convictions just for protesting and inspecting unsafe work sites.
There is no way that this capitalist legal system is going to give a hospital cleaner who was charged with illegally standing up for a workers state a fair hearing. The only force that can bring justice for Choi is good people taking action. We need mass actions consisting of politically aware working class people and our allies. We cannot trust these racist, rich people’s courts that do not represent the labouring and ordinary people. The legal system is filled with bias, the system is rigged for the ruling class. Free Chan Han Choi! Down with the cruel sanctions on the people of North Korea! Resist the Cold War witch-hunt against supporters of socialistic states!
Sarah Fitzenmeyer (interim remarks): I want to tell you a bit about political prisoner Chan Han Choi. He was born in capitalist South Korea and migrated here 32 years ago. He is an Australian citizen who is 61 years old. When he was arrested he was a hospital cleaner living in a modest rented apartment. He is a husband, a proud father of a son in his mid 30s and a proud grandfather to two infant grand-daughters. He likes Western classical music and Japanese food.
One of the very worrying things about Choi’s persecution is that it is part of a pattern of growing political repression in Australia. In the first place this repression targets supporters of socialistic states, that is supporters of the DPRK like Choi but mostly supporters of the world’s biggest socialistic state, the Peoples Republic of China. Increasingly over the last period, supporters of socialistic China living or studying in Australia have been demonised and targeted.
However, the repression in Australia is going even beyond that. The same AFP [Australian Federal Police] and Commonwealth DPP [Director of Public Prosecutions] who are prosecuting Choi are also prosecuting Witness K, the former Australian intelligence agent who revealed to journalists how the ASIS spy agency had bugged East Timorese government buildings in order to give the Australian government and corporations the advantage in oil resource negotiations with East Timor. Witness K and his lawyer, Bernard Collaery, today face imprisonment for their decent act of revealing to the world this bullying, colonialist outrage. The same forces persecuting Choi, Witness K and Collaery are also prosecuting David McBride, the military lawyer who blew the whistle on war crimes by Australian troops in Afghanistan. We should fight for the dropping of all charges against Chan Han Choi, David McBride and Witness K!
Yet, it is not only the AFP that is engaged in repressing whistleblowers and dissidents. The whole Australian capitalist regime is being unleashed. A key victim of growing repression in Australia are trade unionists. Anti-union laws have curtailed the right to strike and have led to repeated fines and prosecutions of scores of representatives of construction workers’ unions. Last year, the ABCC so-called “independent” construction industry watchdog slapped 99.2% of its huge $4.25 million in fines on workers and their union and just 0.08% on the filthy rich and notoriously criminal-infested construction industry bosses! Now, the government is trying to push through the Ensuring Integrity Bill, extreme legislation that will make it easier for the government to deregister militant trade unions and drive out staunch unionists from leadership positions.
The workers movement, supporters of workers states, anti-racist activists, whistle-blowers and those concerned about the environment all have an interest in resisting growing repression in this country. And that means we must all stand with Chan Han Choi against the political persecution that he is facing.
Sarah Fitzenmeyer (rally conclusion): All working class people, whistle-blowers and opponents of imperialism have an interest in standing by Chan Han Choi. But given the Australian regime’s manifestly political persecution of him, there is no way that Choi can get a fair trial. The courts are themselves biased and are a core part of the brutal racist state that is designed to enforce the interests of the capitalist big end of town at the expense of working class people. That is why we are here today. To send a message that there are many people supporting Choi and watching what the court does. And we and many more will not tolerate the continued Cold War, McCarthyist political persecution of Chan Han Choi.
Let’s intensify our struggle to free Chan Han Choi and to abolish the murderously cruel sanctions on the people of North Korea.
Socialist Political Prisoner Cannot Get a Fair Trial in Australia
Capitalist Court Rejects Chan Han Choi’s Permanent Stay Application
Socialist Political Prisoner
Cannot Get a Fair Trial in Australia
6 December 2019 – Yesterday, a judge in the NSW Supreme Court knocked back a motion by socialist political prisoner, Chan Han Choi, for a Permanent Stay in the proceedings against him. Since his arrest, Australia’s racist, rich people’s regime has violated many of the rights that Choi should be entitled to as a prisoner and defendant. As a result, Choi submitted a motion for a Permanent Stay which was heard last Friday. If the motion had succeeded, Choi’s trial would have been put off indefinitely on the grounds that he cannot get a fair trial and he would have been released from custody having been found neither innocent nor guilty. Curiously, not only did the judge give no reasons in court for dismissing Choi’s application but the court later announced that the judge’s detailed statement outlining his decision will not be published on the court’s website until after the trial. That will, all too conveniently, shield the blatantly unfair judgement from some of the detailed public scrutiny that it deserves.
Chan Han Choi has spent nearly two years in prison now, jailed largely because of his political sympathy for socialistic North Korea. Choi is an Australian citizen who migrated here from South Korea 32 years ago. At the time of his arrest, Choi was working as a cleaner in a public hospital. This working class man was living in a modest rented unit in Eastwood. Choi is a worldly, knowledgeable person who loves Japanese food and Western classical music. He is also a husband, a proud father of a son in his mid-30s and the proud grandfather to two infant granddaughters below the age of five. Nineteen days ago, Choi marked his 61st birthday locked up in harsh conditions in a maximum security prison in Sydney.
Choi was arrested in December 2017 on charges of attempting to help the people of the DPRK (Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, i.e. “North Korea”) circumvent crippling UN economic sanctions by brokering trade deals to help the DPRK export its produce abroad. An additional charge was later added that Choi allegedly attempted to broker a deal to enable the DPRK to import petroleum products, which she is cruelly prohibited from doing under the sanctions. Choi has pleaded Not Guilty to all charges. Indeed, the “evidence” in the charges brought against him is rather thin. Even the Australian Federal Police (AFP) acknowledge that none of the alleged deals that he is charged with brokering actually went through. Indeed, the AFP’s Statement of Facts on the case has to concede, when speaking about many of the individual alleged deals, that those alleged deals were cancelled by Choi himself or canned by the DPRK months before his arrest.
However, as Choi’s supporters insisted in the call out for a protest held just prior to the Permanent Stay hearing:
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 was aiding people who are being ground down by the most severe sanctions ever imposed.
Choi is a humanitarian who has seen the suffering that the sanctions have caused to North Korea’s people. He is also a socialist who sympathises with North Korea because he likes the society’s egalitarianism. Whatever one thinks of North Korea’s leaders, the fact is that her people have built a system based upon public ownership of the key banks, industries, agricultural land and mines. It is a state that was won by the masses in brave struggle to defeat the former capitalists and landlords. In supporting such a socialistic system, Choi is also standing by the interests of those in Australia hurt by privatisation, casualisation of employment, job slashing by bosses, bullying by banks and rising rents. Choi can be considered an anti-privatisation warrior and a champion of public ownership – that is of the system that would favour the working class majority of this country and the world. Working class people must now in turn stand by him!
Even within the context of the pro-imperialist sanctions laws that Choi has been charged under, Choi cannot get a fair trial. The reason is very simple: political prejudice. The Australian capitalist regime is determined to persecute Choi because of his resolute sympathy for a socialistic country. Thus, in response to Choi’s bail application, which was rejected by a Supreme Court judge two months ago, a major part of the Prosecution’s 10 October written submission opposing bail was the claim that Choi’s alleged offending is “objectively serious” because of his loyalty to the DPRK. In other words, the Australian regime is insisting that not simply because of his alleged actions but because of his political views – of strong sympathy for a socialistic country – Choi should be accorded less rights than he otherwise would be. The Australian Federal Police (AFP) Statement of Facts on the case carries the same line. In this Statement of Facts, the AFP give as a reason for opposing bail Choi’s statements from prison (subsequently posted to YouTube) identifying the economic sanctions on North Korea as being unjust and unfair. So, for expressing his views and his opposition to the cruel imperialist sanctions on North Korea, Choi is being persecuted. This is blatant anti-communist discrimination very reminiscent of the McCarthy era, Cold War witch hunts. And it is because of this political discrimination that Choi was denied bail even though he is not accused of killing anyone, bashing anyone, sexually assaulting anyone, stealing from anyone or even of espionage. By contrast, the racist Northern Territory policeman charged with the shooting murder two weeks ago of Aboriginal teenager, Kumanjayi Walker, was given bail straight away. So was former Archbishop George Pell after he was charged with sexually assaulting children.
It is not only in response to his bail application that Choi has endured political discrimination. He and his family have been subjected to it from the time of his very arrest. In prison, Choi has had special restrictions imposed on him far in excess of those imposed on convicted murderers and rapists. For the last year, Choi has been banned from making any telephone calls to his friends. The only person that he is nominally allowed to call is his wife. However, the authorities insist that any communication on the phone that Choi makes must be in English. This makes communication between Choi and his wife practically impossible given that her English is very limited and his own English is far from fluent. Earlier this year, two officers from the Corrections Intelligence Group “visited” Choi and threatened that should he speak in Korean on the phone he would be sent to Goulburn Supermax prison. Choi soon found out that he could not communicate with his wife in any meaningful way now and it was risky too – an inadvertent break into Korean could see him isolated in Goulburn Supermax. So that line of communication became completely cut.
To break Choi’s spirit the authorities have gone to great lengths to isolate Choi from his entire family. When Choi was arrested, his adult son’s house was also raided and his son and daughter-in-law subjected to threatening interrogations. Although police did not charge his son they made it clear that any support for, or association with, his father could see him in trouble. Thus, his son has been effectively barred from communication with Choi. Meanwhile, prison authorities also refused permission for Choi to even telephone his daughter-in-law. As a result, since his arrest nearly two years ago, Choi has not been able to speak to, let alone see, his own son, daughter-in law and infant granddaughters. To further try and break Choi’s resolve, Australian regime agencies have had Choi’s son sacked from a senior, skilled role at a reputed IT infrastructure company. The AFP told Choi’s son that he would not be able to work in a professional role again.
Meanwhile, even as he was preparing to enter a plea and then to prepare for his upcoming trial, Australian authorities restricted Choi’s access to his lawyers. Thus, for over a whole year since their initial visit on 11 September last year, Choi’s current lawyers were only able to visit him twice in jail and only on one of those visits were they able to be accompanied by an interpreter. By contrast, Choi’s previous regime-appointed lawyer, who was pressuring him to plead guilty, was able to visit him with an interpreter once a week. It seems that once the regime realised that Choi’s current lawyers were not going to pressure him to plead guilty, they started curbing their access to Choi. So, after not having any problem getting an initial visit to Choi, these lawyers and any interpreters were suddenly required to be vetted for special approval to visit an NSI (National Security Interest) inmate. This approval finally came through less than three months ago – a whole year after they had first visited Choi. The timing of that approval is also rather “interesting” – it happened to be around the time that Choi submitted his motion for a Permanent Stay!
Australian Regime Intercepts Choi’s Communications with His Lawyers
Given the blatant Cold War discrimination that Australian state institutions have subjected Choi to, it is obvious that these same institutions are not going to give Choi a fair trial. Therefore, the grounds that Choi has for a Permanent Stay are both compelling and very numerous. In the hearing last Friday, Choi’s barrister chose to focus on two key grounds. Firstly, he detailed how Choi can have no confidence that his communications with his legal representatives are not being intercepted by state agencies. With such well-founded fears, not only can he not properly plan his own trial defence with his legal representatives, Choi can have little confidence that privileged communication between him and his legal representatives are not being passed on to the Prosecution. Concerned about this, Choi’s lawyers wrote to various government agencies seeking assurances that they have not been intercepting communications between Choi and his legal representatives. However, by the time of the Permanent Stay hearing, ASIO had failed to respond. Meanwhile, the AFP’s response refused to give any assurance, only stating in a non-committal manner that: “The Australian Federal Police (AFP) does not comment on operational matters before the court.”
Of all the responses received by Choi’s lawyers from government agencies, the most striking was the 7 November response of the Commissioner of Corrective Services NSW, Peter Severin. In his letter to Choi’s lawyers, which the lawyers submitted as part of their affidavit to the court, the Commissioner of Corrective Services NSW admits that prison officers are indeed intercepting phone calls between Choi and his legal representatives. Severin claims that this is necessary because Choi is an NSI inmate. He tries to divert from this admission by stating that: “correspondence, including faxes and emails from a legal practitioner to a NSI inmate must be delivered to the inmate without opening, inspecting or reading the contents.” However, one can have little confidence that the prisons are actually following even this policy. This is especially the case when one considers what occurred when Choi’s lawyers sent him, by post, several months ago crucial legal documents and evidence. Choi did not receive these documents as they were likely intercepted too!
The Commissioner of Corrective Services NSW (CSNSW) attempts to minimise the significance of their interception of communications between Choi and his legal representatives by claiming that “it is the practice of CSNSW that officers periodically ‘drop in’ to the line, listen for long enough to check that English is being spoken and that the call is with the approved recipient ….” However, even if CSNSW officers were actually confining themselves to such a procedure, they would still be on line long enough to potentially listen in on important legal tactics being discussed between Choi and his legal representatives.
Of course, one would have to be extremely naive to think that state personnel assigned to listen in on communications between Choi and his legal representatives are confining themselves to short bursts of snooping. This is especially when one knows that Australian state agencies have a sordid history of spying on privileged communications between others in order to suit the interests of the capitalist masters that they serve. During Australia’s 2004 negotiations with East Timor over oil and gas resources in the Timor Sea, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) planted huge numbers of listening devices in order to listen to the negotiation strategy discussions of East Timorese ministers and negotiators and thus give the Australian government – and the filthy rich corporate bigwigs of Woodside Petroleum and BHP whose interests they were representing – the advantage in the negotiations. If that is what Australian state agencies do to gain an unfair advantage in a dispute with what it calls a “close friend”, they will surely have no hesitation in snooping in on the discussions between a person accused of aiding what they deem to be a “criminal state” and his lawyers in order to gain the advantage in their prosecution of him.
The other important aspect of the Australian state spying on East Timorese negotiation strategy discussions is the extent to which they went to cover up this snooping. In 2013, as the remorseful ASIS officer (“Witness K”) who led the bugging was set to travel to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague to expose the operation and to act as a witness for the East Timorese government in its case against the Australian government over the spying, ASIO raided the home of this Witness K and seized his passport thus preventing him from testifying at The Hague. They also raided Witness K’s lawyer, Bernard Collaery. Five years later, the same AFP and Commonwealth DPP that are prosecuting Choi hit up Witness K and Collaery with charges of revealing to the media and the East Timorese government the 2004 bugging operation. Both face charges that could see them imprisoned for years. If Australian regime agencies are capable of such extreme measures to cover up their spying of those that they are in dispute with, they would not blink an eyelid to simply lie to cover up the extent of their spying on the privileged communications between Choi and his lawyer.
12 September 2018, Canberra: People protest the Australian state’s persecution of “Witness K” and his lawyer Bernard Collaery for revealing to the world that Australia’s ASIS spy agency had spied on East Timorese ministers and negotiators to give the Australian government an unfair advantage in oil negotiations with East Timor. If Australian regime agencies are capable of such extreme measures to cover up their spying on supposed “friends” that they are in dispute with, they would not blink an eyelid to simply lie to cover up the extent of their spying on the privileged communications between Choi and his lawyer.
The second main ground that Choi’s barrister focussed on in last Friday’s hearing is the difficulty that his legal representatives face in preparing his defence because of restrictions blocking interpreters communicating with Choi. Choi can roughly speak some colloquial English. However, his English is far from adequate to understand complex legal concepts and legal evidence when presented in English. He needs Korean-English interpreters to communicate with his lawyers and barristers. However, CSNSW have determined that any interpreter visiting Choi or even interpreting in an Audio-Visual Link (AVL) connection with him must have special clearance for contact with NSI inmates. The problem is that none of the Korean-English interpreters available have NSI clearance and none of the regular interpreters want to go through the process of getting approval (it is time consuming and intrusive). Although a non-regular interpreter with clearance was later found, when she was used for a 21 November conference between Choi and his lawyer and barrister, she was unable to communicate chunks of what was being communicated to Choi from English to Korean. There were many English words that she simply did not understand. Midway, through the conference, the interpreter said, “I will contact the agency as I do not understand this. This is too serious and hard for me. I am only Level 2. I will let the agency know next time they should send someone more advanced in English for this matter.” Except the agency has no one else with NSI clearance or willing to seek it! We will not name the interpreter involved as she is an innocent thrown in the deep end as a result of a draconian system to keep Choi and others like him isolated. However, the long and short of the matter is that Choi and his legal representatives are unable to properly prepare his legal defence because they cannot access the interpreters needed to adequately communicate with each other.
All this is compounded by the fact that funding granted by Legal Aid for interpreters in Choi’s matter has been extremely limited. This is almost certainly no accident. It bears an eerie resemblance to what is going on in another case of political persecution – that of Witness K. In late August, Witness K’s counsel angrily announced that his client had received almost no funding from Legal Aid despite having applied for it more than a year previously! Witness K’s counsel, Haydn Carmichael, accused Legal Aid of an “extraordinary unexplained roadblock.”
Even If Choi Gets Bail in the Future He Still Can’t Get a Fair Trial
During last Friday’s hearing, the sitting judge intimated that should Choi be able to get bail in the future following a fresh application, the issues raised in his Permanent Stay application would be resolved. However, this is definitely not the case. The issue of getting interpreters to speak to Choi would be partially resolved in that they would no longer be obstructed from contacting him. However, the problem of inadequate Legal Aid funding to hire interpreters would not go away one bit. More importantly, Choi would still face the threat of having his communications with his legal representatives intercepted. Let’s recall that ASIO and the AFP have both refused to give assurances that they are not even now intercepting Choi’s communications with his lawyers and barristers. And given that Corrective Services NSW is openly admitting to intercepting Choi’s communications with his legal representatives, one can have little confidence that other government agencies would not do this even if Choi is granted bail. After all, the Australian capitalist regime’s perception of Choi would not change one iota if he is granted bail in the future. Given that they believe that his communications with his legal representatives should be intercepted now, they would still believe that they should be intercepted in the future. It is instructive to again recall what an Australian state agency did in East Timor a few years ago. They did not merely bug phone calls amongst East Timorese politicians and negotiators. Instead, under the cover of an aid project to refurbish government buildings, the Australian regime planted hundreds of listening devices in East Timorese ministerial and government buildings. If they are prepared to undertake such a massive, complex and expensive operation abroad against a “friendly country”, they would not hesitate, even in the least, to plant a couple of listening bugs and phone wiretaps in the future bail residence of a person who they believe is politically loyal to a country they deem a “criminal state.”
Moreover, we already know for certain that Australian state agencies have placed Choi’s supporters under intensive surveillance. Point 124.J of the AFP’s Statement of Facts states that:
several members who attended the rally specified in (i) [the 13 April 2019 Free Chan Han Choi rally that the AFP report on – actually complain about – in their previous point], have visited and been in regular telephone contact with the Accused while in NSW Corrective Services custody. Several of these member [sic] have attended NSW Central Court on dates where the Accused appeared for mention. On one occasion (4 July 2018), one of the Accused’s associates removed their business shirt while in Court to reveal a t-shirt containing the words “See You in Pyongyang”, positioning themselves to feature on a video-uplink with the Accused.
There are three key points apparent from this statement. Firstly, to be able to determine that amongst the dozens of people attending the 13 April 2019 united front rally in defence of Choi are the three people visiting Choi in custody, the AFP and/or ASIO and/or other regime agencies must have placed the 13 April 2019 protest under surveillance and must also have specifically honed in on the people allowed to visit Choi. Secondly, to be able to determine that some of these people have “been in regular phone contact with the Accused” (actually they should have said “had been” since for the last year Choi has been barred from phone contact with these friends), regime agencies must have been monitoring Choi’s calls to them. Thirdly, given the position that Choi’s supporter (who we spoke to) was sitting in the court room on 4 July 2018, there was no way that any AFP/ASIO officers present at the court room that day could have by their own eyes determined that, “one of the Accused’s associates removed their business shirt while in Court to reveal a t-shirt containing the words `See You in Pyongyang’, positioning themselves to feature on a videouplink with the Accused.” They could only have determined what “one of the Accused’s associates” was trying to do by listening in on phone communications amongst Choi’s supporters.
The level of surveillance of Choi’s supporters by the Australian regime is further emphasised in Point 20 of the Crown’s 10 October 2019 submissions opposing Choi’s bail application. It states that:
On two occasions when the Applicant’s matter has been before Central Local Court for mention, supporters have attended with one of them wearing a t-shirt bearing the flag of the DPRK above the words “See you in Pyongyang” which was displayed prominently (the first time, in the foyer of the court; the second time, in the body of the court during the mention of the matter) and then covered up. On the first occasion, those supporters also photographed the outside of the court including members of the Prosecution who were walking down the steps and then immediately attending an internet café before splitting up.
Choi’s supporters who were involved in this highly “subversive” act of “wearing a t-shirt bearing the flag of the DPRK” and then “attending an internet cafe” immediately after attending court said that they were in the Internet cafe and then talked together outside for a combined period of over an hour before “splitting up.” That means that the AFP/ASIO officers who stalked them not only tailed them the hundreds of metres from the court to the internet cafe but also carried out surveillance on them for over an hour!
So, we can draw from these two statements by the AFP and the Commonwealth DPP the following conclusions about the level of Australian regime surveillance of Choi’s supporters:
- Australian regime agencies have stalked Choi’s supporters and on at least one occasion monitored them for over an hour.
- Regime agencies carried out surveillance on at least one solidarity rally with Chan Han Choi and honed in on those supporters of Choi visiting him in custody.
- Regime agencies have monitored the phone calls between Choi and his friends.
- Regime agencies have listened in on phone communications amongst Choi’s supporters.
If this is the level of surveillance that the regime is placing on Choi’s supporters, what would they be doing to Choi himself should he get bail? They would certainly be intercepting all his communications – including with his lawyers and barristers.
There is another crucial point that should be made here. Because of the obstruction of access to Choi for lawyers and language interpreters, Choi has had to rely on his supporters visiting him in prison to act as go-betweens with his lawyers. Indeed, his access to lawyers and the necessary interpreters became so constricted that on 28 July of this year, Choi formally wrote a signed document to make one of his supporters (who we will refer to as Comrade P) his Power of Attorney. This Comrade P is one of the people referred to in the AFP’s Statement of Facts who both attended the 13 April 2019 Free Chan Han Choi rally and has been visiting Choi in custody. He is also the person the AFP refer to who on 4 July 2018, “removed their business shirt while in Court to reveal a t-shirt containing the words `See You in Pyongyang’, positioning themselves to feature on a videouplink with the Accused” and is also one of Choi’s supporters who the Prosecution’s 10 October 2019 submission reveals was stalked [by Australian/spy agencies] to an internet cafe. The key point is that since, as is evident from the AFP and Commonwealth DPP’s own submissions, Australia’s state agencies are intercepting the communications of – and putting under surveillance – Comrade P and other Choi supporters, these regime agencies are effectively intercepting Choi’s indirect communications with his lawyers. This is especially the case since 28 July when in legal terms the person that Choi made his Power of Attorney, Comrade P, effectively became Choi as far as consultations and instructions to lawyers are concerned. By intercepting this Power of Attorney’s communications, which no doubt means his communications with Choi’s lawyers too, the Australian regime are again intercepting communications between Choi and his lawyer.
In summary, whether it is Choi’s direct communications or his indirect ones via his supporters – and in particular the person he made his Power of Attorney – communications between Choi and his lawyers, that are meant to be privileged, have been intercepted by the agencies of the very state that is prosecuting him. There is thus no way Chan Han Choi can get a fair trial! Even if he was in the future finally granted bail and through some miracle the Australian regime stopped spying on him, they may well have already determined enough information about his intended legal strategy to compromise his defence. As an analogy, consider the Australian intelligence agencies spying on East Timorese officials. The key point that the Australian regime wanted to find out in order to gain the advantage in the oil and gas negotiations, is what East Timor’s bottom line was, i.e. how low they were prepared to settle for. Once they had this information then it would not matter if the spying stopped; Australia would already have a huge unfair advantage in the negotiations. Similarly, once key aspects of Choi’s legal strategy have been determined by the Australian regime through spying, the damage is already done: any (quite hypothetical) ceasing of the spying is not going to reverse the unfair advantage already gained by the prosecution.
But Wait … There’s More!
The main affidavit submitted by Choi’s lawyers to his Permanent Stay hearing included a copy of a 1 November 2018 letter by Legal Aid to Choi threatening that should Choi sack his current lawyers, his “grant of legal aid will be terminated.” Except, as the affidavit stated, “at no stage did he [Choi] communicate with legal aid about wishing for the grant to be assigned to another lawyer.” Although the affidavit itself does not draw any conclusions from this, this fact has much significance. For, since it was not Choi that tried to sack his lawyers and given that Legal Aid was against Choi supposedly sacking his lawyers, it is apparent that a shadowy third party masquerading as Choi sent Legal Aid a phoney communication sacking Choi’s lawyers. Who could this third party be? We cannot be sure. However, to pull off something like that and fool Legal Aid those responsible would almost certainly have been a state actor. It is obvious that they were trying to ensure that Choi would not be represented by his current lawyers. They no doubt hoped that given that Choi was so isolated in prison and communication with him so impeded, a mere forged letter to Legal Aid in Choi’s name would have been sufficient to end these lawyers’ representation of him. So, what would their motivation be for doing this? Prior to Choi retaining his current lawyers, Choi had a government-appointed lawyer who was pressuring him to plead Guilty. In contrast, Choi’s current lawyers were intent on allowing Choi to make the ultimate decision on how he should plead and leant towards recommending that he fight the charges. So, whoever tried to get Choi’s lawyers sacked were obviously enemies of Choi and the DPRK who wanted to see him plead Guilty. That as good as narrows it down to either Australian regime agencies like ASIO or the AFP or to the CIA or the South Korean intelligence agency, the KCIA.
November 1, 2018 letter by Legal Aid to Choi threatening that should Choi go ahead and sack his current lawyers, his “grant of legal aid will be terminated.” Except, at no stage did Choi ask to sack these lawyers! Since it was not Choi that tried to sack his lawyers and given that Legal Aid was against Choi supposedly sacking his lawyers, it is apparent that a shadowy third party masquerading as Choi sent Legal Aid a communication sacking Choi’s lawyers.
This is hardly the only time that Choi’s adversaries have used dirty tricks methods to try and isolate him. Take the way that CSNSW have attempted to obstruct visits from Choi’s friends. When the three friends visiting Choi in prison first applied to visit him in early March last year – a detailed application was required as the authorities had classified Choi in the most stringent prisoner category (EHR-R/NSI) – CSNSW told them that it would take four to five weeks to process their applications. When they did not receive any feedback by the end of this period, they called CSNSW’s Visits Restrictions Unit on two occasions over the following weeks to find out the status of their applications. On each occasion they were told that their applications were being processed and a decision would be forthcoming soon. However, when they called a third time, now some seven weeks after their applications were lodged, the CSNSW unit now told them that … there was no record whatsoever in the CSNSW system that any of them had made any applications! Fortunately, Choi’s friends each had copies of their own applications and each of these was witness signed by a CSNSW officer. Nevertheless, the supposed “loss” of their applications was used to slow down the processing of these applications. Indeed, these supporters of Choi were not informed that they had been approved to visit Choi until four and a half months after their initial applications! Moreover, CSNSW only began to inform them that their applications had been successful after one of them sent an E-mail inquiring about the status of their applications. CSNSW responded to that E-mail by E-mailing a copy of a postal letter, dated three weeks earlier, informing the applicant that his application to visit Choi had been successful. However, the address on this letter was wrong: the unit number in the address was written as 1 instead of 11. As a result, the letter sent in the post was never received. Meanwhile, another one of the applicants also never received any letter in the post informing him that his application had been successful. If all that is not enough, after two of these friends in April simultaneously applied to have their visits to Choi extended for a further year (after all the hassle to get approved CSNSW only grants successful applicants a one year period of visitation!) one of them (Comrade P) was again told, when he inquired with the relevant CSNSW unit a month after his application was lodged, that “we have not received any paperwork from LBH [Long Bay Hospital]”! This is despite the other friend of Choi who applied together with this friend – and whose application was indeed witness signed by the same CSNSW officer at the very same time – not having his application lost. Now, one could possibly put one of these “errors,” that delayed Choi’s supporters from getting access to him, down to bureaucratic incompetence. But for all these “mistakes” to occur is simply not possible unless there was a conscious effort by relevant units of CSNSW to use dirty tricks to impede visits to Choi by his supporters.
The fact that dirty tricks were apparently used by an Australian regime institution to try and keep Choi isolated from his supporters adds further weight to the conclusion that forces hostile to Choi had used dirty tricks to try and have his current lawyers sacked. This has much significance for assessing whether Choi can get a fair trial. For, if Australian state agencies – and possibly allied foreign intelligence agencies – are prepared to violate their own stated rules to isolate Choi from both supporters and legal representation, then how can this same state conduct a fair trial of Choi? It can’t! Moreover, the fact that this capitalist state – and possibly allied foreign intelligence agencies – are prepared to use under-handed methods against Choi reinforces the notion that the direct and indirect communications between Choi and his lawyers that are being intercepted by regime agencies could be used to greatly disadvantage Choi in his upcoming trial.
Also included in the main affidavit submitted to Choi’s Permanent Stay hearing is a media report that includes the public statements made by then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull at the time of Choi’s arrest. Turnbull as good as pronounced Choi guilty, threatening anyone thinking of assisting North Korea that “the AFP [Australian Federal Police] will find you” and then ranting hysterically in connection with Choi’s arrest that, “North Korea is a dangerous, reckless, criminal regime threatening the peace of the region. It supports itself by breaching UN sanctions, not simply by selling commodities like coal and other goods, but also by selling weapons, by selling drugs, by engaging in cyber crime.” Needless to say, when the then chief political officer of the country makes such highly publicised, extreme statements against Choi it is going to prejudice any jury that will sit on Choi’s trial.
There were also many additional reasons why Choi cannot get a fair trial that were not included in the formal Permanent Stay application. One of these is that the AFP or their sources (which could be ASIO, the Australian Signals Directorate, the CIA or the KCIA) apparently tampered with evidence submitted in the case. The apparent tampering of submitted documents does not directly affect the case against Choi. Rather, it covers up information that is extremely politically damaging to the Australian and U.S. regimes and even more destructive to the credibility of their South Korean allies (see below for further details). However, it shows that the evidence supplied in the case cannot be relied on. After all, if the AFP or their sources have secretly deleted politically embarrassing information (without putting any note stating that the information is redacted) from documentary evidence in one area, what other evidence have they tampered with? How can Choi get a fair trial if one can have little confidence in the authenticity of the evidence supplied in the case against him? In the next few weeks, we hope to be able to confirm with absolute certainty if there has been under-handed tampering of documents in the prosecution’s supplied evidence as almost certainly seems to be the case. Watch this space!
When one puts the numerous grounds for a Permanent Stay in the proceedings against Choi together, one gets a unified picture of why Chan Han Choi cannot get a fair trial. And this is because, from the prejudicing of any jury by the extremely hostile public statements against him made by the then prime minister at the time of his arrest, to the impeding of Choi’s access to lawyers, to the restriction of access to this very day of competent Korean-English interpreters, to the very limited and tardy legal aid funding for interpreters, to the efforts to break his spirit by blocking communication with his family, to the interception of Choi’s privileged direct and indirect communications with his legal representatives, to the apparent dirty tricks used to try and isolate Choi from both his lawyers and his supporters, to the denial of his bail application based on his political sympathy for the socialistic DPRK, Chan Han Choi has, because of his political loyalty to a socialistic state, faced blatant discrimination from the agencies of Australia’s capitalist state – the very state that is supposed to “fairly” adjudicate his case. If Choi’s Permanent Stay application was indeed adjudicated on fairly it would surely have succeeded.
However, the legal system that adjudicated on Choi’s Permanent Stay application is itself biased. As Trotskyist Platform spokesman, Samuel Kim, put it at a 23 November march through the centre of Sydney demanding freedom for Chan Han Choi:
“… this so-called justice system, is not just, it is unjust. The legal system at its core, is part of the ruling class’ machinery that works against the interests of the working class masses and their supporters. The state exists for the corporate bosses and capitalist investors… Whether it is the Liberals, the ALP or the Greens who are in office, it will always be a state for the capitalist rich ruling class.”
That is why business owners, from corporate bigwigs to restaurant and cafe owners – big and small alike – are able to get away with illegally underpaying their workers without facing any criminal punishments (and at most being hit with minor fines), while trade unionists who stand up staunchly for workers rights get hit with criminal convictions and exorbitant fines. This legal system that attacks those who stand up for the rights of workers is even more implacably hostile to those like Choi who stand up for workers states like the DPRK and the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). Meanwhile, since the courts are united with the other agencies of Australia’s state – the police, the military, the AFP, ASIS, ASIO, the DPP, the Australian Signals Directorate and the prisons – by a common subservience to the same wealthy capitalist class they also act as apologists for these other state organs. This was evident in a high-profile coroner’s report handed down exactly a week before Choi’s Permanent Stay application was held. The coroner’s report was into the death of 26 year-old Aboriginal prisoner, David Dungay. Dungay was killed by six prison guards four years ago at the very jail and the same wing of that jail where Choi is currently being held: the Hospital wing (which also serves as a remand jail) of Long Bay Prison. The guards caused Dungay’s death by crushing him with their combined weight and then continuing to choke him in this prone position as he cried out desperately more than a dozen times, “I can’t breathe!” Outrageously, the coroner recommended no criminal charges or any other sanction against any of the CSNSW officers who caused Dungay’s death. Similarly, the NSW Supreme Court judge who heard Choi’s Permanent Stay application grossly downplayed the harm done by the actions of CSNSW and the other regime agencies that have been violating the rights of Chan Han Choi.
Chan Han Choi’s Fate Will Be Decided by the
Outcome of the Clash of Political Forces
Like the other enforcement personnel of the capitalist state, magistrates and judges are tied by thousands of threads to the wealthy capitalist class. Magistrates and judges are themselves on very high salaries. Many of them no doubt invest part of these salaries in large shareholdings, in wealth management products indirectly investing in shares and in multiple investment properties. That means that their own economic interests lie very much with the interests of capital and against those like trade unionists who militantly stand up for workers rights. Having such interests would also make them especially hostile to states – like the DPRK – formed through the overthrow of capitalist rule. Moreover, a person could not rise to become a judge – especially a Supreme Court judge – unless they had already proven their loyalty to the capitalist order countless times on their way up. Then there are all the personal connections that tie the judiciary to the capitalist elite. Judges’ and magistrates’ connections to corporate bigwigs, ruling class politicians and the leaders of other state agencies are cemented through private school old boys networks, common membership of exclusive social and sports clubs, marriage, neighbourly relations in expensive suburbs and, in some cases, even through shared patronage of the same high-priced prostitutes.
We must add that in such high-stakes, high-profile, political cases like the one of Chan Han Choi’s, any judge sitting on the case is hardly going to make any key decisions by themselves. You can bet that influential capitalist billionaires, government leaders, heads of repressive agencies and other judges will be banging in their ears. Such interference in the case might take place casually during the course of, say, an extravagant dinner at an expensive restaurant. Or it might occur in a more deliberate manner through members of the ruling class elite specifically calling up the relevant judges or taking them “aside for a chat.” Think of how prime minister Scott Morrison rang up his mate – and former neighbour – NSW Police Commissioner, Mick Fuller to “enquire” about the police investigation into the alleged forging of documents by his energy minister, Angus Taylor … and multiply that by about a hundred!
Since the Australian ruling class is determined to persecute Chan Han Choi, the pressure on the judge – and his own class instincts – will be toward ensuring that this occurs. However, that does not mean that Choi’s cause is hopeless. Choi has his support. When the Australian authorities arrested Chan Han Choi nearly two years ago, Australian ruling circles expected that Choi’s imprisonment would meet with universal approval and that they could break Choi’s spirit by cruelly impeding his access to family, friends, lawyers and Korean-English interpreters. Instead, Chan Han Choi has defiantly spoken out from prison against the Australian regime’s violation of his human rights and has stuck by his political opposition to the cruel economic sanctions on the people of North Korea. What has really caught the Australian regime by surprise is the significant and growing support for Choi that has arisen both in Australia and around the world. Here in Sydney, Trotskyist Platform has been joined in the united front rallies to free Chan Han Choi and oppose the economic sanctions by a growing number of people. Among the organisations endorsing the street protests are groups as diverse as the Irish republican socialist group the James Connolly Association, Australia-DPRK Friendship Society, the Lebanese Communist Party, Communist Party of Australia – Western Sydney Branch, Aust-DPRK Solidarity, Young Communists – Western Sydney and most recently the Social Justice Network, a multi-racial progressive group with a strong base amongst refugees and migrants from the Middle East and South Asia. Alongside the street protests in defence of Choi, his supporters, from Australia to as far away as Genoa, Italy have been making and wearing T-shirts calling to “Free Chan Han Choi – A Socialist Political Prisoner in Australia.” Other individuals and groups have expressed their solidarity with Choi on social media. Despite Choi’s supporters in Sydney facing intimidation and surveillance from the repressive agencies of the Australian regime, just prior to Choi’s Permanent Stay hearing we held our fourth street demonstration in solidarity with Choi. Six days earlier, we boisterously marched through the streets of Sydney city chanting, “Chan Han Choi – Free This Hero Now!” and “Free Chan Choi – Lift the Sanctions Now!”
What this solidarity movement means is that the more the Australian regime continues with its persecution of Choi, the greater the political cost it will suffer. Its pretensions of being “democratic” will be exposed, the cruelty of the sanctions regime on the DPRK that it supports will be highlighted and the nature of the Australian regime as a dictatorship of the big end of town will be bared for all to see. In the end, influential members of the capitalist ruling elite will have to decide whether their hostility to Choi and what they gain in persecuting him is worth the political cost of conducting this persecution. In other words, Chan Han Choi’s fate will mostly not be decided by points of law and evidence presented in the courtroom but by the clash of forces in the political arena. The more that we can increase the political cost of attacking Choi for Australia’s racist rich people’s regime the more chance we have in forcing them to back off from their completely unjust persecution.
Why the Ruling Class Is So Hell Bent on Persecuting Chan Han Choi
As Choi has himself told his supporters, the ferocity of the Australian rulers’ persecution of him represents a channelling of all their hostility to the DPRK onto Choi. So why is the Australian regime so hostile to the DPRK? To the imperialist ruling classes of the likes of the U.S., Australia and Japan the existence of states created by anti-capitalist revolutions in the DPRK and in its massive neighbour and ally China (as well as in Cuba, Vietnam and Laos) are simply unbearable. For the existence of these socialistic states means that there is a chunk of the world where these imperialists cannot exploit workers, plunder natural resources and dominate markets the way that they do in most of the rest of the world. Moreover, the imperialists fear that the existence of independent, socialistic countries in the Asia-Pacific could embolden the masses of the countries in this region bullied by capitalist powers to think that they too should give the imperialists the boot and take up the socialist path. The Australian imperialists fear that if the PRC continues to grow stronger and if the DPRK is allowed to do so, the masses of PNG, East Timor, Fiji, the Philippines and Indonesia will be encouraged to defy their Australian neocolonial oppressors. Furthermore, the mere presence of workers states sets off the most mortal fear of capitalist rulers: that their own working class will be inspired by this to one day sweep them away from power.
The capitalist rulers have specific reasons for wanting to persecute Chan Han Choi. For one, by prosecuting Choi on charges of violating the sanctions on the DPRK, the Australian rulers hope to intimidate anyone thinking of assisting the people of North Korea. Alongside its U.S. senior partner, the Australian imperialists have been amongst the most rabid supporters of the sanctions. Australian ships and maritime surveillance aircraft are currently deployed in the waters off Korea helping the U.S. to enforce these sanctions. These sanctions are aimed at arm-twisting the people of North Korea to kowtow to the imperialist powers, abandon their socialistic system and allow Western, Japanese and South Korean speculators, bankers and sweatshop bosses to take over her economy, plunder her natural resources and turn her well educated workforce into a big labour pool to be exploited. For the capitalist ruling classes of the U.S., Australia and Japan, the terrible hardships and shortages of medicine and food that the sanctions inflict on the people of “North Korea” are just “collateral damage” in the pursuit of their “higher” purpose of … greater profits!
The Australian regime’s arrest and demonisation of Choi was also aimed at fuelling the launch of their new Cold War witch hunt against supporters of socialistic states. Choi’s arrest came just as the main weapons in this latest Cold War were being set for blast off. The number one target of this Cold War – which has seen the mainstream media and government launch one anti-China attack after another – are supporters of socialistic China. Any Chinese international student who speaks out in support of the PRC and any prominent Chinese immigrant who refuses to condemn the PRC could get witch-hunted. However, supporters of the DPRK – which is the PRC’s ally and neighbour – like Choi are also naturally targeted. The persecution of Choi has both added to the anti-communist hysteria targeting supporters of Red China and has been in turn bolstered by this anti-PRC Cold War. Just four days ago, the Morrison government announced the granting of yet more tens of millions of dollars for ASIO so that this sinister spy agency could establish a new taskforce against supposed [mythical] “foreign interference” by China. Pro-communist activists, pro-PRC Chinese international students and other supporters of Red China will be the real target.
The purposes behind this anti-communist witch hunting are to justify to the public increased military mobilisation behind the U.S.-led war drive against the PRC and DPRK, to justify support for anti-communist forces within China – like the pro-colonial, rich kid rioters in Hong Kong – and to crush opposition at home to the Australian regime’s anti-PRC policies. The effect of this Cold War drive has been to whip up a national security obsession so intense that it has ended up targeting people who are in no way supporters of socialistic states. Thus, although Witness K is certainly no red, the Cold War-derived national security fixation has certainly rebounded against him. So even though Witness K was first raided by ASIO in 2013, the Commonwealth DPP only actually decided to charge him in mid-2018, six months after the arrest of Choi and as the witch hunt against supporters of Red China was quickly intensifying. Many others have also been submerged in the national security tide. These including David McBride, the military lawyer who exposed horrific war crimes by Australian special forces troops in Afghanistan. Even mainstream journalists, who have done so much to whip up the anti-China hysteria, have been subjected to AFP raids on the rare occasions that they actually do a decent investigative report that holds Australian regime institutions to account.
Parallel with the Cold War witch hunt that has targeted Chan Han Choi and pro-Red China Chinese students and migrants has been increased persecution of trade unionists. Anti-union laws have curtailed the right to strike and have led to repeated fines and prosecutions of scores of representatives of construction workers’ unions. Despite a recent parliamentary setback, the right-wing Coalition government continues to try and push through its Ensuring Integrity Bill, extreme legislation that will make it easier for the government to deregister militant trade unions and drive out staunch unionists from leadership positions. It is little surprise that Cold War witch-hunting and union-busting are going hand in hand. That is what happened in the last Cold War against the Soviet Union too. Both attacks on workers’ economic defence organisations – like our trade unions – and attacks on workers states are driven by the interests of the capitalist ruling class. And the more that the capitalist system is unable to ensure secure, permanent jobs for workers, the more that it can’t provide affordable rental accommodation and rising wages, the more we see that the ruling class fears the presence of both militant unions and socialistic states. That is why it is in the interests of the entire workers movement to oppose the Cold War anti-communist witch-hunting. Let us demand: Down with the attacks on our unions, down with the attacks on supporters of socialistic states! Stop the persecution of pro-Red China Chinese immigrants and international students! Stop the persecution of Chan Han Choi – free him now! Dump the anti-“foreign interference” laws and taskforces!
Fraudulent Nature of “Rule of Law” in “Liberal-Democratic” Australia
Gets Exposed
In pursuing their persecution of Chan Han Choi, Australia’s capitalist rulers are paying a considerable political price. Due to his own defiant statements from prison (see for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTlumqtaguo) and the efforts of his growing band of supporters, more and more people are hearing about the harsh conditions of Choi’s imprisonment. As a result, an increasing number of people are seeing the hypocrisy of the ruling class’ claims to run a “liberal-democracy” committed to “human rights.” Meanwhile, the fact that the Prosecution successfully opposed his bail in good part based on his stated political sympathies for the DPRK – as opposed to just his alleged deeds – has helped to shatter the myth that Australia is a country where everyone is treated equally before the law regardless of their political allegiances.
All this hurts the ruling class’ predatory machinations abroad. Like its U.S. senior partner, the Australian ruling class often uses the guise of defending “human rights” to intervene in countries abroad. In particular, they cynically wield the club of “human rights” to attack socialistic China and the DPRK itself. Right now Australia’s rulers, including prime minister Scott Morrison, are berating China for allegedly violating the rights of an Australian detained in China on espionage charges, Yang Hengjun. Recently, Yang’s supporters have made many unsubstantiated claims that have been reported as fact by the mainstream media. Yet, the truth is that Chan Han Choi has faced far harsher conditions than what is actually confirmed about the detention of Yang Hengjun. Yang has been restricted by China’s authorities for the last 11 months, while Chan Han Choi has been imprisoned for the last 24 months without going to trial. Notably, while Yang Hengjun spent the first six months that he was held in the comparatively comfortable conditions of house arrest (he was only moved to a detention facility in mid July), Choi has spent the entire 24 months imprisoned in harsh conditions in various Sydney prisons, the last 20 months of which has been in one of the Australian regime’s most notorious prison camps, Long Bay jail. Australia’s foreign minister, Marise Payne, has accused China’s authorities of restricting Yang Hengjun’s access to lawyers and family. Yet Yang Hengjun has at least been allowed regular visits by Australian embassy officials and his court appointed lawyer. However, Chan Han Choi, following an initial visit from a lawyer soon after his arrest, underwent an approximately 50 day period when he was prevented from having visits from anyone at all – whether they be lawyers, family or friends. And until just three months ago, Choi’s access to his lawyers was largely obstructed and his access to competent language interpreters remains effectively blocked to this very day. Of course, we should note that there is no equivalence in the political essence of the cases of Yang and Choi. Yang is accused of espionage against the Peoples Republic of China, which if true is a crime against a workers state that deserves stiff punishment. Even if he turns out to be innocent of the accusations he is no hero whatsoever. In contrast, even if the accusations against Choi turn out to be true, this would only make Choi an even greater hero. For it would mean that he has taken great risks to both help a people battered by cruel sanctions and to stand by a workers state based on public ownership – thus standing by the interests of the more than 90% of Australia’s and the world’s population whose interests lie in the success of socialistic states.
Choi’s continued opposition to the UN sanctions on North Korea in his brave statements from prison and the solidarity movement defending him have combined to invigorate opposition to these sanctions within Australia. Thus, although the Australian regime hoped to use the arrest and demonisation of Choi to justify these imperialist sanctions, the movement against this persecution has actually resulted in there now being more understanding of the cruelty and injustice of these sanctions amongst politically aware working class activists than there was previously. Indeed, as a result of discussions with Choi, who is known affectionately as “Uncle Choi” amongst fellow prisoners, even some inmates at Long Bay jail now see the unfairness of these sanctions.
Moreover, Choi’s persecution, his statements from prison and the impact of the movement defending him have all combined to give some leftist and union activists a better understanding of the DPRK. This, actually, began to take place when Choi was first arrested. Politically astute people who had previously been swayed by the intense media propaganda against North Korea asked themselves, why would a person who grew up in capitalist South Korea and who has then lived for three decades in relatively wealthy Australia want to volunteer his time and risk his freedom to help North Korea? Later people pondering this question heard Choi’s own statements from prison about why he likes North Korea: in other countries that he has lived in – like South Korea, Australia and Singapore – it is “money first and if you have money you can do everything”, whereas in North Korea it is “not about money”, “money is not important” it is “humans and humanism that is first” (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro3RkGojbgY). He also speaks of how the genuineness of North Korea’s people gives him a “heart-warming feeling.” Conditioned by the natural empathy that warm-hearted humans have for those doing it hard – and especially for those stripped of their rights – some people who heard these statements from prison were profoundly affected by them. Then these people heard the points raised by activists in the campaign to free Choi. We in Trotskyist Platform, for instance, stressed that while the DPRK is not the “ideal” form of a workers state (nor could a workers state strangled by extreme sanctions and intense military pressure exist for long in any kind of “ideal” form) – in that the basic socialist system there is deformed by a level of material privileges for state officials, a personality cult around the Kim family and a lack of genuine workers councils-based democracy – the entire basis of Western regimes’ hostility to the DPRK is that her system is based on the toiling classes having seized state power from the capitalists and landlords. We emphasised that the fact that the North Korean masses have built a society based on public ownership – an ownership form that favours working class people – is a victory for working class people all around the world. So today, several astute leftists who had been agnostic in their attitude to the DPRK prior to Choi’s arrest have now become sympathetic to this socialistic state.
Meanwhile, a significant chunk of the Korean community in Australia has become sympathetic to Choi. This, of course, includes the section of the Korean community already supportive of the DPRK. But it also includes others. Those working-class Korean migrants who have copped the racism of capitalist Australia, discrimination in employment and the general hardships of the migrant experience feel a natural sympathy for a working class Korean-Australian compatriot who has been languishing in prison for two years and who has been denied basic rights. Many Koreans too remember or have heard about the horrors of the military dictatorships that ran capitalist South Korea in the not too distant past and understand all too well how hostility to North Korea was a key rationale for these murderous dictatorships. So, when they see a person thrown in jail for supporting North Korea it sets alarm bells ringing. For politically aware Koreans it is obvious too that enmity to North Korea is the justification used for the presence of tens of thousands of U.S. troops in South Korea. For the many migrants from South Korea hostile to the presence of the U.S. troops and who don’t want Washington, Seoul and Canberra to unleash a new war with their compatriots in the North, any demonisation of North Korea and its supporters is met with hostility. As a result we have been contacted by Korean migrants sympathetic to Choi. Many are scared to too openly take a stand out of fear of deportation from Australia or persecution by authorities in South Korea when they return there to see family and friends. Nevertheless, the significant support that exists for Choi in the Korean community is confirmed by the reality that while the English language mainstream media have been hostile to Choi – to more or lesser degrees – the main Korean-language community paper in Australia, Hanho Daily, has reported on the case fairly and with compassion for Choi (see: http://www.hanhodaily.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=61930). Meanwhile, sections of the Chinese language media are also moving to cover Choi’s case in an accurate way (see for example: https://www.sydneytoday.com/content-101948458527050). This reflects the understanding of some in the pro-PRC section of the Chinese community that the persecution of Choi is an extreme form of the Cold War-style hostility that they are enduring in greater and greater amounts every day.
Facing suspicion about their prosecution of Chan Han Choi from the Australian Korean and Chinese communities, exposure of the hypocrisy of their claims to stand for “human rights” and growing opposition to their hostile policy against the DPRK – and, in particular, their enforcement of cruel sanctions on North Korea’s people – the Australian ruling class could also be hit by an X-factor that could take the political damage that they suffer from their persecution of Choi to a new level. This X-factor has appeared in the case in a partly accidental manner. For amongst the documents that have been provided as evidence by the Prosecution – obtained through spying on Choi’s communications – are E-mails that show that a company acting for the South Korean government once agreed to buy coal at inflated prices from North Korea. This was as compensation for falsely blaming North Korea for the sinking of a South Korean warship in 2010. To understand the gigantic significance of this we need to go back to 26 March 2010 when the ROKS Cheonan sunk in contested waters near North Korea during the course of joint military exercises between the U.S., South Korea and other allied countries. Forty-six South Korean naval personnel were killed as a result. The South Korean Ministry of Defense stated in the first press briefings after the sinking that there was “no indication of North Korean involvement.” Yet, before long a joint investigation carried out by a hand-picked team from South Korea, the U.S., Australia, the U.K. and Canada “concluded” that the warship was sunk by a North Korean torpedo. However, those findings were highly controversial and most South Koreans at the time saw the findings as a crazy conspiracy theory. One of the South Korean investigators on the panel, Shin Sang-cheol even asserted that “evidence linking the North to the torpedo was tampered with.” Chemical and seismic data studies conducted by separate teams of international scientists also concluded that a torpedo could not have been responsible for the sinking of the Cheonan. North Korea itself vehemently denied the accusation. It offered to aid an open investigation but was knocked back. China also rejected the Western-South Korean account as lacking factual basis. Nevertheless, the accusation that North Korea sunk the Cheonan brought the Korean Peninsula to the very brink of a full-scale war. It also led to the increased isolation of North Korea and the heightening of economic sanctions against her by many countries.
Fast forward five years and the then South Korean government of Park Geun-hye finally makes an overture to ease tense relations between the two Koreas. However, North Korea demands compensation from the South for falsely blaming her for the Cheonan sinking and for all the resulting harm and intensification of sanctions that this brought her. In a deal that was actually brokered by Chan Han Choi, himself, South Korea was to buy coal from North Korea at substantially higher than market price as their means of providing compensation. Initially, a private company acting for the South Korean government, G Hanshin Pty Ltd, actually did agree to buy North Korean coal at inflated prices. Although the deal was later cancelled after South Korea suddenly insisted on the market price, the fact that South Korea once agreed to buy North Korean coal at inflated prices is strong evidence backing claims that Seoul knew that the North did not sink the Cheonan and, therefore, that North Korea was entitled to compensation for the false accusation.
Things get still more interesting. Although Choi was not charged by the AFP for that April 2015 attempted coal deal with the South Korean government, the AFP decided to use this attempted deal as part of their evidence. They submit it as part of showing how Choi is a “Loyal Agent of the DPRK” and asserting his role as a “DPRK Broker.” This evidence that they submit includes draft contracts sent to Choi by the South Korean company that was assigned to conduct the deal with North Korea. Yet there is a strange thing about this evidence submitted by the AFP. In the section of the contracts (written in Korean) where the price is to be listed, there is a “US$” written but then a blank space. The price is not there! We are pouring through documents to be absolutely sure of this but at this stage it appears almost certain that either the AFP or their source (which could be any number of Australian or U.S. or South Korean intelligence agencies) deleted this price from the contracts that they submitted as evidence in the case against Choi. Choi’s supporters maintain that if the initial agreement by South Korea to buy coal at an inflated price from North Korea amounts to smoking gun proof that South Korea knew that North Korea did not sink the Cheonan and was entitled to compensation for the false accusation against her, any secret deletion of the [inflated] price from the evidence presented by the Prosecution represents North Korea’s enemies being caught trying to wipe their dirty fingers off the smoking gun!
Just as the revelation that the claim that “Iraq has weapons of massive destruction” – that was used to justify the 2003 U.S./British/Australia invasion of Iraq – was false hurt the political credibility of the U.S., British and Australian regimes, irrefutable evidence that North Korea was blamed falsely for the sinking of the Cheonan will also hurt the U.S. and Australian ruling classes. This is particularly the case since not only the U.S. imperialists but their Australian junior partner were involved in the bogus “investigation” into the Cheonan sinking. However, should it be irrefutably proven that not only did North Korea not sink the warship but South Korea knew that it did not, the impact on South Korean political life would be on an entirely other level. Here the X in the X-factor would stand for X-plosive! For the false assertion that North Korea sunk the Cheonan has shaped South Korean political life almost to the same degree that the September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre shaped American politics. It helped condition the greatly increased hostility to the DPRK within South Korea over the ensuing years, the heightening of sanctions and the growth of hard right political forces within South Korea. If it comes out irrefutably that this is based entirely on lies and that the masses of South Korea have been blatantly lied to this could cause a huge political earthquake there that could shake the very foundations of the South Korean capitalist regime. And ironically, the Australian regime’s persecution of Choi would be blamed for triggering this crisis by their allies in Seoul!
Whatever transpires regarding revelations about the truth about the Cheonan sinking, one thing is clear: the more that the campaign to free Chan Han Choi grows in strength the greater the political price that the Australian capitalist regime that is persecuting him will pay. And we in Trotskyist Platform – and we dare say many of the others involved in the campaign to free Choi – are determined to maximise that political cost. For we understand that we cannot expect Choi to get a fair trial from the racist, rich people’s legal system – even under the unfair laws that Choi has been charged with. Only by mobilising mass actions in defence of Choi and against the sanctions on North Korea can we create an environment where it will be against the political interests of the capitalist regime and its various agencies to continue their persecution of Choi. Moreover, a key part of the struggle to advance the interests of the working class and downtrodden is to expose to the masses the truth that the repressive agencies in this country are not “democratic” institutions that treat everyone equally but exist for the very purpose of maintaining a capitalist “order” that subjugates the working class masses. All supporters of the working class and downtrodden: Let us work harder to free Chan Han Choi! Oppose the Cold War witch-hunt against supporters of socialistic North Korea and socialistic China! Say NO to the new McCarthyism! Struggle against the starvation UN sanctions on the people of North Korea! Expose the truth about the Cheonan sinking! Stand by the DPRK and PRC workers states!
释放Chan Han Choi – 一位在澳大利亚的社会主义者政治犯！
释放Chan Han Choi –
一位在澳大利亚的社会主义者政治犯！
释放Chan Han Choi – 一位在澳大利亚的社会主义者政治犯！
反抗对亲中华人社区的种族主义、扣“赤色分子”帽子式的政治迫害!
为营救澳州政治犯社会主义者Chan Han Choi而斗争！
抵制对左派进行新的冷战政治迫害的黑流!
2019年11月28日: 今天, 华人社区中的亲华群体不仅面临着重新兴起的针对这个国家所有有色人的白澳种族主义, 而且还面临着在正在出现的新冷战时期对社会主义中国支持者的政治迫害环境下的特意污蔑。
澳大利亚正在出现的冷战政治迫害开始扩大, 已经不仅仅针对中国的支持者。这一点在澳大利亚亲朝鲜的社会主义政治犯Chan Han Choi的案件中很为明显。在过去23个月中, 他被无耻地拒绝保释, 部分原因是他是朝鲜支持者, 对此，检方声称这意味着他对澳大利亚没有忠诚。因此, 就像诽谤亲华学生一样, 又发生了人们因赞同或同情社会主义国家而被剥夺权利的案件。
Choi是一名澳大利亚公民，从韩国移民过来差不多已经有31年了。Choi被指控违反联合国经济制裁，帮助朝鲜出口物资。尽管当局在严酷的条件下拘禁他，但他仍然蔑视并要做“无罪”辩护。即使这些针对Choi的指控证实属实，但从工人阶级的角度来看，他当然不是罪犯。恰恰相反！如果Choi确实试图通过交易来帮助朝鲜，这只会证明他冒着巨大的个人风险来帮助朝鲜人民，他们正经受着没有任何其他国家经受过的最严厉的摧残式制裁。 Choi反对制裁不仅基于他的人道主义，而且基于他对朝鲜社会的平等主义和社区精神的热爱。无论人们如何看待朝鲜的某个特别领导人，朝鲜都是一个以所有主要银行，工业，农业用地和矿山的集体所有制为基础的工人国家。在支持这种基于公有制的社会主义国家的过程中，Choi和所有遭受以资本主义私有制为主的经济而带来的痛苦的澳大利亚人的利益是一致的。他和遭受资本主义社会造成的种族主义暴力和虐待的澳大利亚原住民以及亚洲，穆斯林和非洲少数民族社区是站在一起的。所以澳大利亚和世界的工人阶级有必要支持Chan Han Choi。我们现在必须要求清除对他所有指控。
除了拒绝Choi保释外，澳大利亚政府还限制支持者访问他，切断他的电话，阻止他的儿子去监狱里探望他，并阻止他的律师去访问。剥夺他的权利以及基于他对朝鲜的支持而否决他的保释是澳大利亚新兴的冷战式政治迫害社会主义国家支持者的一部分。这种逐渐侵入的麦卡锡主义也出现在澳大利亚华人社区的成员和中国国际学生中，他们被澳大利亚国家和媒体妖魔化，只是为了他们对红色中国的同情， 现在也受到了迫害 。
世界各地的所有人都反对帝国主义的欺凌行为，那些代表基于社会主义公有制的制度的人和反对冷战式政治迫害左翼的人有必要参加竞选活动，以要求释放Chan Han Choi。我们还有必要与Choi一起反对资本主义大国，利用制裁来对朝鲜人民进行经济恐吓，使他们默许资本主义征服，以及亿万富翁，西方银行家，房地产投机商和血汗工厂老板的收购。帝国主义对朝鲜的压力最终也是为了破坏其邻国和盟国中国的社会主义政权。