Xinhua News Network, Zhejiang Channel, July 19 (Tan Jin Peng You) Xizi Lake, Wu Mountain, the northern foothills, Lou Xian in his law firm buried in the "invasion of the Japanese army bacteriological warfare in China victimization of civil litigation claims case". Originally, this first-class lawyer could sit leisurely in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows of his office while sipping tea and watching the scenery and directing his colleagues to work to earn money.
However, he said: "I am a Chinese, have a sense of social responsibility. As a lawyer, I can't watch my folks go silent in historical disgrace, and I hope I do something for history."
In this way, Lou Xian became the legal adviser to the plaintiffs' group of Chinese victims of bacteriological warfare against the Japanese army.
Loud voice" is the strongest voice of Chinese lawyers
Lou Xian looks very "Chinese", both in terms of stature and appearance; but his voice is very loud, which is a bit different from the "middle way".
On August 27, 2002, a group of Zhejiang lawyers, including Lou Xian, went to Japan to participate in the Tokyo District Court's first-instance verdict on the lawsuit against the victims of bacteriological warfare.
When he entered the courtroom, Mr. Lou Xian made a detour from the gallery to the plaintiff's seat - he could not quite figure out how he got there.
Lou Xian realized that he could easily approach the judge from the plaintiff's bench. He thought that if the court ruled against the plaintiff this time, he would submit a written protest to the judge in court. Sure enough, the judge declared that the plaintiff had lost the case. Lou Xian immediately asked the head of the lawyers' solidarity group, who was barred from the plaintiff's bench, to hand him the protest letter, but the head of the group took the wrong bag when he left the house in the morning - the protest letter was forgotten at his residence.
"What a great opportunity to protest in court! It's a pity it was missed." Nearly three years later, Lou Hsien still laments the incident when he mentions it now. But he was still reluctant, and immediately called for the protest to be picked up.
In the afternoon, the plaintiffs' group held a press conference for Chinese and foreign journalists at the Tokyo Lawyers' Hall, chaired by Ichise, a Japanese lawyer for the plaintiffs' group. There was no Lou Xian to speak in the arrangement. Instead, he was determined to speak. As he did not understand Japanese, he signaled to Ichise - pointing to the protest document and to himself, meaning: I want to speak! And so, he read out the protest at the press conference.
"I was so loud that I shook the microphone and 'buzzed' it." Lou Xian said he was too excited.
After the reading, the protest, which represented more than 4,500 Zhejiang lawyers, was formally submitted to the Tokyo District Court through Ichise.
The following day, Lou Xian delivered a loud speech in the Japanese Diet: "This lawsuit is to solve three problems: whether the Japanese army has carried out bacteriological warfare in China or not; whether there is a causal relationship between bacteriological warfare and the dead and wounded in China; and, if there is a relationship, whether the Japanese government wants to pay compensation. Now, although we lost in the first trial, our demands were partially met; the Tribunal recognized that bacteriological warfare had been carried out in Zhejiang and Hunan, China, and that there was a relationship between it and the local dead and wounded. The tribunal also found that the Japanese government should take responsibility for the war, but not pay compensation."
This dissection of the first-instance verdict by Lou Xian greatly boosted the fighting spirit of the plaintiffs and Japanese lawyers.
Lou Xian's loud voice also became famous.
"Blood map" iron evidence to dazzle Japanese judges
In the conspicuous position of Lou Xian's office, there hangs a large photo - at dusk on October 28, 2004, the head of the plaintiffs' group of Chinese victims of bacteriological warfare of the invading Japanese army, Wang Xuan, and Lou Xian, together with some of the plaintiffs and
November 4, 2002, the "Bacteriological Warfare Victims' Claims Against Japan", which was convened in Yiwu's Chongshan Village, was held to show solidarity with Japanese lawyers. At the "Second Instance Litigation Solidarity Conference" held in Chongshan Village of Yiwu on November 4, 2002, Lou Xian, legal advisor of the Plaintiffs' Group of Chinese Victims of Bacteriological Warfare Against the Japanese Army, pointed out, "In order to force the Japanese court and the Japanese government to settle the compensation issue of the Chinese civilian victims in one package, what we need now is more lawsuits - hundreds or thousands!" (By Tan Jin)
Japanese lawyers marched through Tokyo's Ginza holding up banners, and Lou Xian carried a roll of something on his shoulder, which, on closer inspection, was a "map of the main distribution of households that died of the bubonic plague in the urban area of Qu County in 40-41".
Lou Xian explained that after losing the "8-27" trial, the plaintiffs' group and the Japanese lawyers discussed letting him testify as an expert witness in the second trial - proving that the invading Japanese army dropped plague bacteria in Qu County, Zhejiang Province, on October 4, 1940, which caused the deaths of many civilians.
To this end, he made several field trips to Quzhou and other places since February 2003, and during the Spring Festival of 2004, Lou Xian wrote a 15,000-word report on the "Identification of Civilian Deaths Caused by Plague Bacteria Dropped by the Invading Japanese Army in Qu County on October 4, 1940" on the victims of the bacteriological warfare that he and Dr. Qiu Mingxuan had investigated.
Lou Xian learned that Japanese judges like to keep things simple and clear, preferably with visualized maps and tables. So he made 8 maps, 6 tables and 28 pictures of the victimization of Japanese germ warfare in Qu County. In order to make one of the victim distribution maps, which was as big as 2 desktops, Lou Xian spent a lot of energy: he first found the Director of the Political Division of the Zhejiang Provincial Bureau of Surveying and Mapping and asked for his help, who assigned it as a task to the sub-director of surveying and mapping and to an engineer. Lou Xian worked with them to draw the old streets of Qu County against the map of Quzhou, bit by bit, and made eight maps in one ****. When the Bureau of Surveying and Mapping could not make a large map, Lou Xian picked one of them and spent 500 yuan himself to let an advertising company enlarge it.
Lou Xian put the people who died of bubonic plague in various parts of Qu County in those years on the map - marking them out, and when a few people died in a certain place, he marked a few small red dots in a certain place. The results surprised him - Qu County was almost densely dotted with small red dots colored in a large swath of blood.
On October 22, 2004, Lou Xian carried this big "blood map" to testify in a Japanese court. Unexpectedly, when he arrived at the Pudong Airport, the security guards asked him to open the map over and over again, fearing that there were prohibited materials inside; on the plane, the air marshals took the map for "safekeeping"; and when he carried the "blood map" on his shoulder and walked on the streets of Japan, the Japanese people passing by stared at the traditional Chinese characters on the "blood map" and looked sideways.
On the afternoon of October 18, Lou Xian appeared in the 101st courtroom of the Tokyo High Court with his head held high. Mr. Lou spoke at the top of his voice in the courtroom.
Previously, Chinese witnesses tended to remain silent, and the Japanese government's defense attorney felt that Lou Xian was very "wild" and was trying to find fault with him - pointing to the materials in front of Lou Xian's desk and telling the judge that he was reading the materials and talking. As a rule in Japanese courts, witnesses are not allowed to look at the materials when they speak. In fact, Lou Xian with the material was just for show, he "snapped" the folder closed and handed it over, but still pulled a loud voice to speak, "the Japanese government's defense lawyers can only dry eyes.
A colleague reminded him to keep his voice down. Lou Xian, however, finished with a flourish." It was hard for me to find an opportunity, so why can't I speak with a straight face? My voice was so loud that even the Japanese support group in the gallery could hear me, and they happily applauded me desperately."
To the point, Lou Xian unfolded the "blood map" in court, pointing at the map to the judge, saying that this place is the worst-hit area of the bubonic plague spread by Japanese planes, and that this red area indicates how many people died on so-and-so street in Qu County, and that this area is a quarantine area ...... Japanese judges were dumbfounded.
Scientific investigation to make bacteriological warfare litigation more professional
Lou Xian learned that before the Chinese plaintiffs went to the Japanese court to state the facts of the victimization, the lack of written materials, the emotional victims in the courtroom crying a pass, but the Japanese judge to listen to how you were victimized. However, the Japanese judges wanted to hear how you had been victimized. Otherwise, it would be difficult for your cries to become powerful evidence, and they could not be preserved as court records. So, Lou Xian proposed that all the plaintiffs' second trial statements should be straightened out by him, such as what is meant by bacteriological warfare, what is meant by victimization, and what is the investigation of bacteriological warfare victimization, the definitions of which have taken him a lot of time. He proudly said: "Zhejiang victims of the second trial of the statement materials are basically all I organized, one person a, a **** more than 10."
Lou Xian found in the finishing of the statement, due to the age, some details even the victims themselves can not remember, they even said the time and place of the victimization is not consistent, such as on the source of the plague in Yiwu Chongshan Village there are three kinds of statements: the railroad employees brought over; the traitors to the village to spread; the Japanese aircraft sown at high altitude. Many local investigators are also y confused by this - we have been investigating for more than 10 years, why can't we form a fixed statement by now?
The lawyer's intuition told Lou Xian that he must first seek proof of the source of the bacteriological warfare in Yiwu of the invading Japanese army. He collected all the relevant information and read and digested; made a special trip to visit a provincial people's hospital infectious disease doctor's high school classmates for their own doubts; and pulled this classmate *** to Chongshan village field investigation, so that the old people in the village to recall, to them to review the existing materials, so back and forth, based on facts, and ultimately determined that the Japanese planes aerial sowing of the plague bacteria said.
Lou Xian said: "One witness said that the victim was infected while bathing in a pond, so I investigated how far the pond was from his house; why was it in this pond and not that one? Is it close to this pond or that pond when you come back from the fields to bathe? Another example is, in which place did the first person die? Does the distribution of victims conform to epidemiologic patterns? And so on."
He believes that it is essential to look deeper and more detailed in terms of the victim's name, sex, address, relationship between the plaintiff and the victim, as well as the location of the victimization and the causal relationship of the victimization. Sometimes in order to determine the location of a victimization, he had to look up many previous county records, archives and newspapers, from a large number of historical materials to find clues.
With a master's degree in philosophy of science and technology and the professionalism of a lawyer who handles cases according to the law, Lou Xian finally compiled and wrote "An Overview of the Victims of Bacteriological Warfare in Chongshan Village, Yiwu City". In this regard, he emphasized again and again: "This standard version is very important, the lawsuit must be the first to determine the facts, preferring posterity examined and then corrected."
Lou Xian was not satisfied with this standard version of Chongshan Village, and he and Wang Xuan, among others, conceived a standard methodology for the investigation of bacteriological warfare victimization of the Japanese invasion of China - they believed that "the investigation of bacteriological warfare victimization not only needs to be aware of the facts, but also the reasons for them."
The turn of spring and summer in 2003, Lou Xian took advantage of the "SARS" closed door, first of all, he went to Yiwu, Quzhou, Lishui and other places in the past six months to investigate the practice of bacteriological warfare to sort out the clues, and then to make up for biology, epidemiology, preventive medicine and other disciplines of the basics, then carry forward the 20 years ago to write a master's degree thesis "the spirit of attack", in one breath, completed the more than 5,000-word "Bacteriological Warfare Victimization Survey Outline" preliminary draft. The first draft of the "Outline of Bacteriological Warfare Victimization Survey" was completed in one go. It provides a standardized methodology for investigators of bacteriological warfare victimization, from "how to determine what kind of virulent infectious diseases", "how to determine the victims", "how to determine the relatives of the victims", "how to make the investigation transcripts" to "how to notarize".
Interviewer's note: Passionate lawyers
Xinhua News Agency reporter Tan Jin
"Litigation is like a ship traveling in a glacier, breaking the ice on one side and moving forward on the other." Wang Xuan, head of the plaintiffs' group for the lawsuit against Chinese victims of the Japanese army's bacteriological warfare, has said.
If Wang Xuan is the captain of the ship carrying the souls of countless victims of bacteriological warfare, then Lou Xian is the helmsman who ensures that the ship is always moving along the legal course and breaking the ice.
People have commented on Lou Xian as "a man of the South and a man of the North" - what is most rare is that he can still show his true nature when he wanders in the gap between the stereotypical legal provisions.
With this passion, he acted as a lawyer for an old farmer in Cangnan County, Zhejiang Province, who was "the first case of a farmer suing a county magistrate in the country" as early as 1987;
With this passion, he and Wang Xuan*** encouraged each other immediately after he lost his case at the first trial on "8-27": "The Chinese people's 'blood is not cold', and we will continue to move forward."
With this passion, he from the first day of the bacteriological warfare litigation, he put down a lot of economic benefits of legal affairs, for fairness and justice to fulfill the social responsibility of lawyers.
With this passion, he held on November 4, 2002 in Yiwu Chongshan Village, "the second trial of bacteriological warfare victims of claims against the Japanese solidarity conference," said: "the purpose of the lawsuit is what? Is it just to compensate a few dollars? Is it just to apologize to the Japanese government? No, it is not! What we want is the dignity and equality of the Chinese people. Only on the basis of equality can the two peoples remain friendly for generations."
On September 18, 2004, Lou Xian said excitedly in "The Present Situation and Prospects of Lawsuits Against Japan by Chinese Victims of Bacteriological Warfare" that lawsuits by victims of bacteriological warfare should be filed with the United Nations Commission on Human Rights - "Foreign governments that commit crimes against humanity should waive their sovereign immunity. At any time, the victims can file a claim against this foreign government in any court." At the same time, he also suggested very rationally that "the bacteriological warfare claims should form a synergy with other Chinese civil claims lawsuits against Japan, so as to push the Japanese government to solve the issue of China's post-war civil compensation as a package, politically and economically."
Besides passion, there is also a sense of mission, values and perseverance, this is Lou Xian, a Chinese lawyer who dares to stand up for the cause of justice. (End)