Lawyers and academics attending a conference in Dublin today will discuss the possibility of suing the perpetrators of human rights abuses in China on Irish soil.
The seminar at Trinity College is being held in advance of the annual EU-China Human Rights Dialogue due to take place in the capital on February 26th and 27th.
Concerns will be raised today about breaches of human rights in China, including the unlawful imprisonment, torture, forced labour and deaths of people involved in the practice of Falun Gong, or Falun Dafa.
The practice involves meditation and exercises as well as teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion and tolerance. Some 100 million practice Falun Dafa.
The Irish Falun Dafa Information Centre says it has verified 865 deaths since the persecution of practitioners began in 1999. However, it says government officials inside China report the actual death toll to be well over 1,600.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been detained and more than 100,000 have been sent to forced labour camps, usually without trial, according to the group. The EU Rights Committee has condemned and demanded an end to the persecution of Falun Dafa practitioners.
The EU-China Human Rights Dialogue has been held every year since 1996. It was started as a "compassionate gesture" to help China in a non-confrontational way to improve its human rights situation following the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, according to the conference organisers.
Speakers at today's human rights law conference will include Ms Zideman Karin, a lawyer involved in preparing the case against former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet. She is also preparing to sue the Chinese president Mr Jiang Zhemin under an unusual law of universal jurisdiction which is in force in Belgium.
Amnesty International representative Ms Anne Marlborough and Mr Zhao Ming, a Trinity College student and Falun Dafa practitioner who was detained for 22 months and tortured at a labour camp in Beijing will also speak.
Mr Zhao told ireland.comthat senior lawyers representing the Falun Dafa movement here have for some months been investigating the possibility of prosecuting those specifically involved in the Chinese "gestapo-style" body set up to persecute practitioners under Irish law.
The law in question is the Criminal Justice (United Nations Convention Against Torture) Act 2000, which gives effect to the UN convention here.
Sections of the act allow for the trial of any person, including a public official, who carries out an act of torture, whether inside or outside the State, before the Central Criminal Court. Conviction carries a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment. However, the technicalities of launching such a prosecution against Chinese officials will be difficult and are still being explored by lawyers.
China disputes the claims of the Falun Dafa movement, which was banned in July 1999 as a 'heretical organisation'.
A report published by Amnesty International UK in November last year entitled China: Continuing abuses under a new leadership, said hundreds of thousands of people continue to be detained across China, that torture and ill-treatment remain widespread and that freedom of expression and information continue to be severely curtailed.
It said death sentences and executions continue to be imposed after unfair trials, with China remaining responsible for 80 per cent of the world's known executions.
Amnesty also cited among its concerns about China the "ongoing crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual movement and other so-called 'heretical organisations' leading to widespread reports of arbitrary detention, torture and deaths in custody".