MCLC: Museum gives fallen leaders a 'new trial'

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Museum gives fallen leaders a ‘new trial’
Source: China Real Time, WSJ (1/13/16)
Museum Gives Fallen Chinese Leaders a New Trial in the Court of Public Opinion
By Olivia Geng
A museum dedicated to China’s court system is marking its opening by displaying items from the politically sensitive trials of two disgraced former leaders. Some in China’s boisterous online world, however, don’t see it as a matter of justice being served.
Visitors to the new China Court Museum in central Beijing can see a handcuff, two gavels and the verdicts against former security czar Zhou Yongkang and former Chongqing Communist Party boss Bo Xilai from their separate, unrelated trials. The verdicts, displayed in a glass case, show the defendants’ home addresses at the time and state they were being detained at Qincheng Prison outside Beijing.
Messrs. Bo and Zhou were both political powers before their downfalls. Mr. Bo carved out a national reputation for being tough on crime while promoting Communist values in Chongqing, a sprawling inland municipality. The murder of a British businessman by his wife and an attempted cover-up led to his undoing in 2012.
Mr. Zhou oversaw law enforcement across China and was among the party’s nine most powerful leaders before retiring in 2012. His is the biggest scalp taken to date in a three-year-old anti-corruption drive launched by President Xi Jinping shortly after coming to power.
In bringing up these cases, the museum, which was set up by the Supreme People’s Court, is emphasizing that the law was followed and justice was done. The court’s newspaper, People’s Court Daily, quoted Chief Justice Zhou Qiang as saying that the museum will help in bringing Chinese justice “closer to the people as well as to the world.”
On social media, however, the exhibit seemed to trigger skepticism about the government’s commitment to the rule of law, especially when it came to Mr. Bo. Many comments expressed support for Mr. Bo, who had a loyal, if small, national following at the time of his arrest, and was seen by some as a potential rival to Mr. Xi, the current president. Some criticized the museum as a propaganda exercise.
“Is this museum a fictitious one? I remember China is a country that ruled by men not by law,” ran one comment on Weibo Corp.’s popular Twitter-like social media platform. A former investment company manager posting under the name Youxiangruoxiang in Chongqing, the city Mr. Bo governed, said, “People’s eyes are sharp and definitely can tell who is cat and who is mouse. I wish the Communist Party wouldn’t use this fool-the-people policy, which is shameful and laughable.”
Mr. Zhou, by contrast, elicited little sympathy online — a sign in part that Mr. Xi’s anti-corruption drive remains popular. A handful of senior officials and former executives in the oil industry, all with ties to Mr. Zhou, have been convicted on corruption charges in recent months. On Tuesday, a court in the northern port city of Tianjin convicted former Vice Public Security Minister Li Dongsheng, another senior official with ties to Mr. Zhou, of bribery and sentenced him to 15 years in prison.
In bringing Messrs. Zhou and Bo together in one exhibition, the China Court Museum seems to be doing in art what official accounts of their trials refused to do in life. Journalists, academics and other members of the politically minded elite in Beijing have said that the two men were political allies and were suspected of opposing Mr. Xi’s ascent to the top of the Communist Party.
During Mr. Bo’s trial in 2013, an official transcript posted online quoted a prosecutor as saying that Mr. Bo had claimed in testimony to have been acting with the permission of higher authorities. Those authorities were not named in the transcript, though as a Politburo member, Mr. Bo was outranked by few other leaders, Mr. Zhou among them. The transcript was soon deleted and replaced with one that excised any mention of higher authorities.
Mr. Bo was found guilty of corruption and abuse of power and sentenced to life in prison. Mr. Zhou received the same sentence after being convicted last year of corruption, abuse of power and the disclosure of state secrets. Neither man could be reached for comment.
by denton.2 at osu.edu on January 15, 2016
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