Facts
Hu Jintao was born on 21 December 1942, in Jiangyan, in the Chinese Province of Jiangsu. He studied hydraulic engineering at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1964.
Whilst working as an engineer, Hu Jintao led a political career at the head of the CCP. In 1980, the secretary of the Gansu committee named Hu Jintao deputy head of the Regional Commission. In 1982, he was promoted to the role of Secretary of Gansu’s Youth League, and was appointed as the leader of the Young Persons’ Federation of China. He then moved to Beijing to study at the CCP’s main school, before becoming head of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League. In 1985, Hu Jintao was sent to Guizhou, China, where he became Secretary of the CCP’s provincial committee.
In 1988, Hu Jintao was named Secretary of the Communist Party of China Tibet Autonomous Regional Committee, in a context drenched in conflict, given that the region was then in the midst of a full struggle for independence, against the Chinese Central Government. Although the protests began in 1987, the intensification of the violence took place in March 1988 – harshly suppressed by Hu Jintao whilst he was the spokesperson of the CCP for Tibet. The repression peaked in February 1989, when Hu Jintao ordered the deployment of 1700 People’s Armed Police officers in Lhassa, the capital of Tibet. These same police officers were accused of an excessive use of force against the population. On 8 March 1989, Hu Jintao asked Beijing to declare martial law in Tibet, which the Tibetan people were subjected to until 1990.
In June 1990, Hu Jintao returned to Beijing, aiming to integrate the central power of the CCP, gradually acquiring the responsibilities of First Secretary of the CCP between 1992 and 2003, then Secretary General of the CCP between 2002 and 2013, and finally the role of the Chinese Head of State between 14 March 2003 and 15 March 2013.
Hu Jintao along with seven former high-ranked Chinese politicians are suspected of having committed or ordered the following crimes, committed in Tibet between 1971 and 1998:
- Genocide (including torture, forced abortions, sterilizations and displacement of Tibetan people, along with the murder of more than a million people from Tibet)
- Crimes against humanity (in particular religious persecutions, forced disappearances along with the murder of people from Tibet)
- Torture (14 charges, as well as the ill-treatment of political prisoners in Drachi and Gutsa, penal institutions in Lhasa, Tibet)
- Terrorism
Procedure
On 28 June 2005, the Tibetan Support Committee (Comité de Apoyo al Tibet), the Foundation House of Tibet (Casa del Tibet) and M. Thubten Wangchen, a Tibetan in exile, filed a criminal complaint against eight defendants (including Hu Jintao, Deng Delyun, Chen Kuiyuan, Jiang Zemin, Li Peng, Ren Rong, Yin Fatang and Qiao Shi) before the Spanish National Court (Audiencia Nacional) on the basis of the principle of universal jurisdiction for crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, torture and terrorism, committed against Tibetans in the late 1980s and 1990s.
On 30 July 2008, the charges were broadened to include new cases of torture and charges of genocide. On 30 March 2011, war crimes charges were also added to the case.
On 10 February 2014, Judge Ismael Moreno issued five international arrest warrants against former Chinese officials (Jiang Zemin, Li Peng, Qiao Shi, Chen Kuiyuan and Deng Delyun).
However, on 23 June 2014, the criminal chamber of the Spanish national Court dismissed the case. It considered that under the new law of universal jurisdiction, Spanish courts did not have jurisdiction to investigate and judge the crimes committed, as the defendants were not Spanish, nor ordinarily resident in Spain, nor foreigners whose extradition had been denied by the Spanish authorities.
On 18 September 2014 the Comité de Apoyo al Tíbet (CAT) and the co-plaintiffs – the Fundación Casa del Tíbet and Thubten Wangchen – lodged an appeal before the Spanish Supreme Court, based on the existence of terrorism charges (not concerned by the universal jurisdiction reform) and on the Spanish nationality of one of the victims of the alleged crimes.
Following the appeal lodged by the victims, the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court issued its judgment on 6 May 2015, upholding the resolution to close the Tibet Case due to the new procedural requirements introduced by the modification of the Judicial Power Act in 2014. In June 2015, the plaintiffs filed an appeal before the Constitutional Court. In February 2019, the Constitutional Court rejected the appeal.
Highlight
This case is part of the eight first complaints filed against former Chinese politicians regarding the crimes committed in Tibet.