The Chinese Communist Party should be held accountable for its crimes

This Sunday will mark the 34th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. In the three-quarters of a century of its misrule over the people of China, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has never been held to account for its myriad human-rights abuses against the Chinese people or for the crimes it has committed against the global population through its support for illegitimate regimes.

It is time for a Chinese People’s Human-Rights Tribunal (CPHRT). Human-rights abuses would be documented through the testimony of witness and others who, while the abuses remain a living memory, would provide evidence of them. The tribunal could serve as a foundation to promote a democratic transition in China, to prepare it to bring bad actors to justice, and to help the people of China come to terms with their history.

This tribunal would be inspired by and modeled on parallel efforts by Holocaust survivors and Yad Vashem and other organizations. Another model would be efforts by the Ukrainian government and the organization Victims of Communism to document and keep alive the memory of the Holodomor. The CPHRT would serve as a single source for documenting the panoply of the CCP’s crimes against the Chinese people, the Chinese diaspora, party members, and the global community. The crimes would fall into three broad tranches.

First, the tribunal would examine the historical record of the CCP’s human-rights abuses, to determine with historical accuracy what occurred, to publicize the CCP’s decision-making regarding the abuses, and to identify individuals responsible for them. Many of them are still living. Human-rights abuses committed during the Chinese Civil War and after the CCP came to power in 1949 would be investigated. The tribunal’s examination of the CCP’s human-rights record would be conducted on a year-by-year basis. While there have been profound violations every year, particular attention would naturally center on the mass killings during the CCP’s immediate seizure of power and during the nightmare of the “Three Red Banners” campaign, which included the People’s Communes and the Great Leap Forward. Those, in turn, resulted in the Great Famine, which killed tens of millions, perhaps as many as 42 million Chinese citizens. Also warranted are investigations into physical and mental torture in the context of the Cultural Revolution, the Gang of Four era, and the Tiananmen Square massacre and subsequent crackdown.