Professor José Elías Esteve, during one of
his talks in the company of members of the
Tibet Support Committee. :: CARLOS SANCHEZ
José Elías Esteve gets the National Court to search for and capture two former leaders of the Asian country for the massacres in Tibet
23.11.13
Convinced that justice should have no borders, a professor and doctor from the University of Valencia, José Elías Esteve, is at the epicenter of a diplomatic crisis between Spain and China. It's all due to the complaint he filed in 2006 before the National Court. In it he accuses, inter alia, former Chinese President Jiang Zemin and former Prime Minister Li Peng of orchestrating the genocide in Tibet since the years 80. After extensive training, The decision of the central court to place both former leaders under international search and arrest has been a bomb for relations between Spain and China.
How could it be otherwise?, authorities of the Asian country have already complained. «China expresses its strong discomfort and its opposition to the Spanish institutions that, ignoring the position of our country, they manipulate this matter», the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said at a press conference. «We hope that the relevant parties in Spain will take the Chinese concern seriously and will not do anything to harm this country or the relationship between China and Spain.». Beijing has already complained to the Spanish ambassador and, in parallel, A representative of the Government conveyed to the Chinese that in our country the Executive branch cannot interfere in judicial decisions.
And in the midst of the diplomatic earthquake, the Valencian professor and secretary of the UV Human Rights Institute, thus analyzes the consequences of the search and capture of Zemin and Li Peng: «For them it is a serious problem, Well now they can only travel to countries very close to the Chinese regime if they do not want to be detained. They can't even set foot in Europe, neither America nor Australia, countries with which there are collaboration agreements with the Spanish justice system through Interpol».
Professor Esteve goes further: «China and Spain themselves have signed a criminal cooperation treaty and International Law obliges them to hand over the criminals that the National Court has been demanding since Tuesday.». But these documents, laments the academic and lawyer, «They are a dead letter and end up trampled when there are commercial and economic interests.».
The decision of the central investigative body is based on Esteve's role as lawyer for the Tibet Support Committee (CAT). This entity filed the complaint together with the Casa del Tíbet Foundation and the Spanish Sherpa Thubten Wangchen. The court document, in which he also accuses former Chinese president Hu Jintao, It is based on Esteve's doctoral thesis. «It consists of 100 pages with two boxes of documentary annexes in which I contribute, among other tests, medical reports of the torture suffered by these people».
The professor puts the volume of massacre since the years at more than a million victims. 50 and blames the Chinese leaders in search and capture of the deaths that occurred between 1980 and 2004.
