CPA - The Guardian - #1843
Issue #1843
October 10, 2018Chan Han Choi must be freed
Zachary Southall
On September 29 outside Auburn train station a rally was held to free Chan Han Choi. Chan Han Choi is an Australian citizen born in South Korea who was arrested last December because of his support for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The unjust law he is accused of breaking is that he was supporting the DPRK by facilitating the sales of North Korean products in Australia in violation of the UN sanctions.
Chan Han Choi has been imprisoned in in Long Bay jail in Sydney for the last eight months without being convicted of any offenses. Not only has he been denied bail but he earlier went through a 50-day waiting period where his own lawyer was denied access to him.
The government has made it almost impossible to visit him, he had five whole months without a single visitor and it took his friends who visited him in July four months to get their visit approved. Meanwhile when Chan Han Choi’s wife speaks to him by telephone they are forced to speak in English even though they are much more fluent in Korean. When they do break into Korean the authorities immediately cut off the call.
Recently Chan Han Choi has been put in the Hospital section of Long Bay jail because his support for the DPRK is supposedly a symptom of a “mental illness”. The most recent allegations against Chan Han Choi is that he has been trading coal and weapon components with the DPRK.
The idea that a 59-year-old hospital cleaner would be able to do all this is laughable. The groups at the rally supporting Chan Han Choi were the Communist Party of Australia Western Sydney Branch, Trotskyist Platform, Stalin Society of Australia, the James Connolly Association, Australian-DPRK Solidarity and the Lebanese Communist Party. Future events to free Chan Han Choi are being planned.
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