First read what the official line says, then read what the unofficial
line is. I am loath to comment at all except the organ game in China
has been common knowledge and not likely invented at all. Otherwise,
I find the body factory a little over the top and implausible.
Whatever is happening, the upcoming transition of power is extremely
important to not just China but also the rest of us. The potential
for something going very wrong is there and should not be repeated in
another ten years.
However, I think that China is about to enter a consolidation stage
after this transition with a vengeance just as I am expecting the USA
economy to lift of after the upcoming election. These are scary
thoughts but in both cases, the economic cycle has run its course and
a reversal is due and also welcome.
By John Ruwitch
(Reuters) - The woman
at the center of China's most politically explosive trial in three
decades did not contest charges of murder on Thursday in a hearing
that lasted just seven hours and could determine the fate of her
husband, former Politburo member Bo Xilai.
A formal verdict will be delivered at a later date, a court
official said, recounting details of the closed-door hearing.
Bo's wife, Gu Kailai, chose not to contest the charge of murdering
British businessman Neil Heywood whose alleged secretive dealings
with the couple fuelled a scandal exposing the intimate nexus between
money and power in China's elite.
The dramatic account of Heywood's death by poisoning is also
likely to sound the final death knell to Bo's political career, even
as sympathizers cast him as the victim of a push to oust him and
discredit his left-leaning agenda.
"The accused Bogu (Gu) Kailai and Zhang Xiaojun did not raise
objections to the accusations of intentional homicide," the
official, Tang Yigan, said after the hearing, referring also to Gu's
co-accused, an aide to the family.
State television showed Gu, wearing a dark pant suit and a white
shirt, being led into the courtroom and being seated in the dock. She
appeared to have put on weight since she was detained earlier this
year.
The court official quoted prosecutors as saying Gu and Zhang had
killed Heywood with a poisoned drink in far southwestern Chongqing
last November, after a business dispute between Gu and Heywood. Bo
ruled the vast municipality until he was sacked in March just before
the murder scandal burst into the open.
As a result of the dispute with Heywood, Gu had become convinced
Heywood was a threat to her son, Bo Guagua, the official said without
elaborating.
Courtroom observers quoted by the Washington Post said prosecutors
alleged Heywood had threatened in an email to "destroy"
Guagua, and demanded money from him after a botched commercial
property deal - a threat duly conveyed to Gu.
Bo Guagua told Reuters in an email that he could not "comment
on any of the details" of alleged transactions with Heywood.
"I can disclose there is no such thing as either possessing
or transferring 130 million pounds," Guagua said, referring to
the value of the soured deal that prosecutors said Heywood and Guagua
were involved in.
"Gu Kailai believed that Neil Heywood had threatened the
personal safety of her son Bo and decided to kill him," the
official added, reading from a statement to a packed news conference
of dozens of reporters who had been barred entry to the courtroom in
the eastern city of Hefei.
The aide, Zhang, had driven Heywood to Chongqing last November
from Beijing and prepared a poison which was to be put later into a
drink of water. Later that day, Heywood met Gu at a hotel, he became
drunk and then asked for water.
Gu and Zhang face the death penalty if convicted. But many legal
experts expect Gu will be convicted but only sentenced to a lengthy
jail term, citing her desire to protect her son, who graduated from
Harvard this year, as a mitigating factor.
Gu's state-appointed lawyer told the court on Thursday that
Heywood himself had some "responsibility in the matter",
the court official said, adding that a Heywood family representative
had voiced respect for the court during the hearing.
Britain's Foreign Office also declined to comment until the
outcome of the case. It said two British diplomats had attended the
trial "to observe the proceedings and fulfill consular
responsibilities to the Heywood family", a spokesman said.
As the trial took place, police dragged two Bo supporters into an
unmarked car after they appeared outside the courthouse, singing
patriotic songs that were the trademark of Bo's populist leadership
style and condemning the trial as a sham.
"I don't believe it. This case was decided well in advance,"
Hu Jiye, a middle-aged man wearing a T-shirt and baseball cap, told
foreign reporters at the rear of the court building, which was
cordoned off by dozens of police standing in heavy rain.
Hu and his friend were then shoved by plainclothes police into a
car. His companion, also a middle-aged man, struggled, yelling "Why
are you taking me? Why are you taking me?"
State censorship of Internet chatter on the trial was swifter than
normal on Thursday, with users of China's popular Twitter-like
service Sina Weibo playing cat and mouse with censors to discuss the
case, using word play to try and get around the controls.
In sketching out the case against Gu for the first time, the court
official also revealed that four Chinese policemen had now been
charged with trying to protect her from investigation - a development
that could prove dangerous for Bo, who has so far not been charged
with any criminal offence.
Police sources in Chongqing have said that the former Politburo
member tried to shut down the investigation into his wife after being
told she was a suspect.
Bo and Gu have been in detention and have not made any comment
since Gu was officially accused of murder in April. Bo's supporters
see it as part of an attack on his populist brand of politics in
Chongqing, which appealed to many of the party's leftists but was
seen as dangerous by his enemies in Beijing.
Gu, herself a career lawyer, was defended by a state-appointed
lawyer with meager experience in criminal cases.
The state decided who was to represent Gu, denying her the use of
a family lawyer - a move that prompted Gu's 90-year-old mother, Fan
Chengxiu, to recently complain to the Justice Ministry, according to
a source close to the family.
"The answer (from the ministry) was that the legal process
did not have to be fully carried out in this case and that Fan should
stop pestering them," the source said.
The trial of Gu, glamorous daughter of the ruling Communist Party
aristocracy, is the most sensational since the conviction of the Gang
of Four more than 30 years ago for crimes during the 1966-76 Cultural
Revolution.
But despite British calls for the case to be handled fairly and to
unearth the truth around Heywood's death, her defense was entrusted
to two provincial lawyers.
The two lawyers, Jiang Min and Zhou Yuhao, could not be reached
for comment but a search of public information showed the more senior
attorney, Jiang, is a specialist in financial cases and that neither
has any obvious connection to the Bo family.
Bo and Gu's son, who is believed to be still in the United States
after graduating from Harvard this summer, told CNN in an e-mail that
he had submitted a witness statement to the court.
"I hope that my mother will have the opportunity to review
them," added Bo Guagua. "I have faith that facts will speak
for themselves."
The trial and sentencing of both Gu and Zhang are widely seen as a
prelude to a possible criminal prosecution of Bo, who is being
detained for violating party discipline - an accusation that covers
corruption, abuse of power and other misdeeds.
Bo, who was a favorite of party leftists by promoting himself as a
friend of the poor and an enemy of corruption, was sacked as
Chongqing party chief in March after his police chief, Wang Lijun,
identified Gu as a suspect in Heywood's death.
On Thursday morning, there was no sign of Gu's elderly mother, nor
of any members of Heywood's family in or around the courtroom.
(Additional reporting by Chris Buckley, Benjamin Kang
Lim and Ben Blanchard in BEIJING, Alessandra Prentice
and Karolin Schaps in LONDON; Writing by Mark
Bendeich; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
The Real Reason Gu
Kailai Murdered UK Businessman Neil Heywood
Revealing Her and Bo
Xilai's organ harvesting crimes led to Heywood's murder
By Wang Yiru August
9, 2012
The murdered British
businessman Neil Heywood knew too much—and apparently talked about
what he knew. That, according to a source familiar with the matter,
was the motive for his being killed.
Heywood’s
involvement with former Chinese Communist Party heavyweight Bo Xilai
and Bo’s wife Gu Kailai was far more extensive than has previously
been reported. It apparently included profiting with them from the
atrocity of forced live organ harvesting and from allegedly trading
in dead bodies. It also involved his assisting them in plans for a
coup.
Heywood was found
poisoned to death in the Lucky Holiday Hotel in the central-western
megalopolis of Chongqing on Nov. 14, 2011. On April 10, Gu Kailai and
her employee Zhang Xiaojun were reportedly in custody as suspects in
the murder.
Gu was originally
described by state-run media as having murdered Heywood due to
disagreements about financial matters. On July 25, in its first
comment on the matter since April, the regime mouthpiece Xinhua
elaborated on this motive: as a result of the disagreements over
business matters, it was said Gu feared Heywood would harm her son,
Bo Guagua, and so decided to murder the British businessman.
Heywood was certainly
involved in the Bo family’s business dealings—he helped them move
the billions Bo and Gu had acquired through various deals inside
China to accounts outside China.
But Heywood’s
involvement went far beyond moving money offshore.
Trading in Organs
Heywood’s
involvement with Bo and Gu goes back to their time in Dalian City in
northeastern Liaoning Province. Bo was mayor of Dalian City when the
persecution of the spiritual practice Falun Gong began in July 1999,
and he advanced his career by becoming an early and fervent supporter
of this campaign.
First Dalian City, and
then Liaoning Province, became hellish places for Falun Gong
practitioners after Bo became governor in 2000. According to reports
compiled by the Falun Gong website Minghui, Liaoning Province during
Bo’s time as governor had the fourth highest number of deaths of
Falun Gong practitioners due to torture and abuse among China’s 33
provinces and province-level cities.
In April 2006, The
Epoch Times first reported on the crime of forced, live organ
harvesting in China with detailed stories about a hospital in
Sujiatun, a suburb of Liaoning’s capital, Shenyang City.
At the time the
forced, live organ harvesting was first discovered, there were five
different websites in Liaoning Province advertising organs for
transplantation, with prices listed—a new heart cost US$180,000, a
new cornea US$3,000. The largest such enterprise was in Shenyang
City.
The organ harvesting
from Falun Gong practitioners had started soon after the persecution
began.
Canadians David
Kilgour, former Canadian secretary of state (Asia-Pacific) and crown
prosecutor; and David Matas, an international human rights lawyer,
investigated the allegations of organ harvesting and published the
report “Bloody Harvest” (later to be a book) in July 2006. They
claimed that in the years 2000–2005 41,500 transplants took place
in China for which the most likely source of the organs was Falun
Gong practitioners.
Allegedly Heywood was
involved with Bo and Gu in the business of organ harvesting in
Liaoning, according to The Epoch Times’ source, and this is what
sealed his death warrant. Heywood had begun leaking information about
their involvement in this atrocity.
Trading in Bodies
Heywood was also
allegedly involved in the trade of dead human bodies.
Beginning in 2000, two
factories opened in Dalian that preserved human bodies for exhibition
purposes.
In 2003, “The
Oriental Outlook Magazine,” an affiliate of state mouthpiece
Xinhua, reported that in 2003 China had already become the country
exporting the largest number of human corpses, and that one of the
companies in Dalian City was the largest human body mummification
factory in the world.
Earlier this year, The
Epoch Times obtained reliable information from Dalian City that the
vast majority of bodies made available to the mummification factories
were murdered Falun Gong practitioners.
Chinese law prohibits
the trading of human bodies except in certain circumstances, and Bo
and Gu were in a position to ensure the companies could receive any
paperwork necessary to profit from these bodies.
Colluding with
high-ranking officials in the Political and Legislative Affairs
Committee (PLAC), such as former Party secretary of the PLAC Luo Gan,
Gu and Bo took advantage of loopholes in Chinese law and prevented
family members of Falun Gong practitioners who had been tortured to
death from claiming the bodies (and the information obtained by The
Epoch Times did not indicate that the companies were aware of the
origin of the bodies).
Instead, public
security bureaus and courts collected the bodies and sold them at a
high price to the mummification factories. From there the bodies were
shipped to museums around the world for exhibition, generating
billions of dollars each year.
Gu Kailai was a
mastermind in financial management, international and domestic online
advertisement, and the opening up of export channels for organ and
human body trafficking.
According to The Epoch
Times’ source, Heywood assisted Gu.
Plotting a Coup
The Epoch Times has
written exclusive reports regarding how Bo Xilai, domestic security
czar Zhou Yongkang, and other members of Jiang Zemin’s faction had
set up a second power center in the CCP based on the PLAC, which they
intended Bo to assume control of at the 18th Party Congress this
October.
When the time was
ripe, Bo would displace Xi Jinping, expected to be named Party head
of the CCP at the upcoming congress, and assume the rule of China.
However, the plotters
didn’t expect the flight of Bo’s former henchman Wang Lijun to
the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu on Feb. 6, which exposed and destroyed
their entire plan.
According to The Epoch
Times’ source, Gu played an important role in this plan. After Gu
was arrested, to escape the death penalty she revealed Bo Xilai and
Zhou Yongkang’s plans to overthrow Xi Jinping. She also admitted
that she was the contact person between Bo Xilai and Zhou Yongkang.
Gu claimed that under
orders from Zhou and Bo, she conducted operations overseas to bribe
foreign media and use them to release announcements in order to boost
the political status of Bo and Zhou, while attacking and slandering
Xi Jinping.
She viewed Heywood as
a trusted aide, and he helped with activities outside China and knew
about Zhou Yongkang and Bo Xilai’s coup plans.
Gu goes on trial for
Heywood’s death Aug. 9 in Hefei City, Anhui Province. Analysts do
not expect any new information about Heywood’s murder to come out
of that event.
chinareports@epochtimes.com
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