1 August 2018 – Socialist political prisoner Chan Han Choi continues to languish in an Australian prison camp. He has been locked up in harsh conditions now for well over seven months and has been denied the most basic rights.

Chan Han Choi was arrested late last year due to his sympathy for socialistic North Korea. He was accused of trying to help the people of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK – “North Korea”) by facilitating the sale of their produce abroad in violation of United Nations sanctions. However Chan Han Choi maintains his innocence despite pressure from both the authorities and his previous legal teams to “plead guilty” or accept a plea bargain. Indeed, given the racist and pro-capitalist bias of Australia’s legal system we wouldn’t be surprised if Chan Han Choi is simply being persecuted because he is an outspoken supporter of North Korea who has friendly relations with DPRK officials.

Yet, even if the claims against him turn out to be partially or fully true, he is no criminal from the standpoint of the working class. Quite the opposite! In that case, Chan Han Choi was simply trying to help people being ground down and potentially starved by some of the most severe sanctions ever imposed on any country. Similar sanctions imposed on Iraq caused the deaths of over 500,000 babies in just the first eight years of their implementation. Although the DPRK’s socialistic system has enabled her to cushion her people from such catastrophic consequences, the cruel sanctions still cause much hardship to the people of North Korea.

Moreover, if the allegations against Chan Han Choi are in any way true then he has even more boldly than thought stood by a socialistic state. Although the North Korean government does have certain flawed policies, the fact remains that the North Korean masses have built a workers state founded on the overthrow of greedy landlords, bankers and factory bosses. In standing by a workers state that the imperialist powers are trying to grind down into submission, Chan Han Choi is like a proud trade unionist defending a strike on a picket line. He is standing not only by the workers involved in the immediate struggle but by workers everywhere. In supporting the DPRK workers state, Chan Han Choi is also standing by the interests of the working class in Australia and the entire world. The workers movement and all genuine socialists in Australia must now stand by him and demand his immediate freedom.

Chan Han Choi is an avowed socialist, who is conscious about the cruel racist oppression of Aboriginal people in Australia. He rightly believes that there are no real, human rights in this country. Indeed his own persecution is living proof of his views. The authorities are trying to avoid having his trial in open court but are rather pushing for a closed court trial with no public and media present. Why does the truth exposed to open light scare them so much? Indeed Australia’s ruling class is so determined to isolate and dehumanise this socialist political prisoner that media shots of him have blurred his face and for the first several months he did not even appear on video link at his own court mentions. Not only has he been denied bail but he earlier went through a roughly 50 day-period where his lawyer was denied access to him. Moreover, Australia’s racist, rich people’s regime has made it almost impossible for family and friends to visit Chan Han Choi. Indeed, prior to two friends visiting him this month, he received no visits whatsoever for the previous five months. The two that did visit him incredibly had to wait over four months to get their visit approved! Indeed, even his son has been barred from visiting him. Meanwhile, when Chan Han Choi’s wife speaks to him by telephone they are forced to speak in English despite both of them being far from fluent in English. The authorities openly admit that this is to enable them to listen in on his calls. However it is clearly also yet another attempt to break his spirit. When he or his wife inadvertently break into Korean during a phone conversation, the authorities immediate cut the call. If all that is not enough, the authorities have moved this socialist political prisoner into the hospital section of a jail. Why? Because they have deemed his defiance and his sympathy for socialistic North Korea as a symptom of “mental illness”!

The denial of basic rights to Chan Han Choi comes in the context of a growing crackdown on the right to dissent in Australia. New laws purportedly targeting “foreign interference” provide pretexts for regime crackdowns on protest movements and even media reporting. Furthermore, at the start of this month, the NSW provincial government’s Crown Land Management Act came into effect which gives low-ranking bureaucrats broad powers to disperse or ban protests and meetings on any state-owned land. Most importantly, nationwide anti-strike laws and draconian laws targeting construction workers have curtailed the right to strike and led to legal proceedings against over a hundred trade unionists in the construction industry. Now the federal government has introduced the Defence Amendment Bill 2018, which if passed into law will make it easier for the authorities to call out the army against protests and strikes.

The persecution of Chan Han Choi is part of the drive of the Australian and U.S. regimes to strangle the socialistic DPRK. Although North Korea’s successful development of a nuclear deterrence finally forced the U.S. government to accept peace talks, the capitalist rulers of the U.S. and Australia remain determined to overturn socialistic rule in North Korea just as they remain hell bent on destroying every other state where the working class rules – however tenuously and imperfectly – whether that be in the Peoples Republic of China or in Cuba.
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Chan Han Choi’s imprisonment for allegedly trying to help North Korea avoid the UN sanctions focuses attention on these cruel sanctions – which are aimed at starving the North Korean masses into submission. They want the North Korean masses to meekly stand by and accept a pro-Western takeover and capitalist conquest. Alongside calling for the immediate dropping of all charges against Chan Han Choi, the workers movement and all genuine socialists in Australia must demand the immediate lifting of all sanctions against North Korea. Let’s stand by working class interests by standing by the DPRK workers state and its brave supporter Chan Han Choi! No to the criminalisation of leftist dissent in Australia!

Fortunately as the persecution of Chan Han Choi continues, the campaign to support him is also gathering steam. We will shortly announce details of a protest rally in Sydney. In the meantime, we are asking all supporters of the socialistic DPRK and of the interests of the working class and oppressed – both in Australia and internationally – to print out t-shirts with the image in the attached PDF image (click this link to get to access this PDF file:  Choi reverse for light or white t-shirts). You need to get the image, which is a reverse, printed onto a t-shirt transfer (for light-coloured/white t-shirts) from your file at a print store. Then once the transfer is printed you have to iron it on to the t-shirt. The shirt will look similar to the attached image below.

Supporters and friends of ours, please contact us if you want us to send you already made t-shirts. We will only be too happy to help as long as you promise to occasionally wear the shirts at leftist and union rallies and meetings.

Please read our earlier article for more detailed information on this issue and aspects around it: https://www.trotskyistplatform.com/free-a-pro-north-korea-political-prisoner-in-australia-free-chan-han-choi/