Chinese rights lawyers have said that they are under mounting pressure, with the formal arrest of one of China’s best-known advocates, Pu Zhiqiang (浦志強), and multiple detentions.
One bleak joke circulating is that “even lawyers’ lawyers need lawyers” these days.
Lawyer Liu Weiguo (劉衛國) posted a poem online which begins: “If I am arrested one day/Friends, fellow lawyers/You must/Must/Go public, take a stand and make a fuss.”
Lawyers complain that some have been seized while trying to meet clients and that others are being repeatedly refused access to detainees.
Teng Biao (滕彪), a close friend and colleague of Pu now living in Hong Kong, said: “The current suppression of rights lawyers is worse than in the 2011 ‘Jasmine’ period [when scores of activists were detained after online calls for protest]. It is the most serious since 1989.”
Teng and many others were detained in 2011, with several subsequently reporting beatings, sleep deprivation and other abuses.
Pu, 50, has acted in a series of sensitive cases. He represented Ai Weiwei (艾未未) during the artist’s detention and helped to raise awareness of civic rights more generally. His niece and fellow lawyer, Qu Zhenhong, is also being held.
Beijing’s public security bureau said on Friday last week that Pu had been arrested on suspicion of “creating a disturbance” and “illegally obtaining personal information.”
However, Pu’s supporters say the charges are an attempt to silence the outspoken lawyer. Many activists have been prosecuted on charges of “creating a disturbance” in recent months.
Pu was detained last month after attending a small private event to mark the 25th anniversary of the bloody suppression of Tiananmen Square’s pro-democracy protests in 1989.
His lawyer Zhang Sizhi (張思之), who was not able to see him until after his first month in custody, has said online that Pu faces “many and broad” allegations.
Meanwhile, 121 legal professionals signed a letter in the past week protesting the lack of access to two more lawyers held in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, since last month.
Mo Shaoping (莫少平), another leading lawyer, said that detention houses were only permitted to deny access to lawyers if the case involved national security, corruption or organized crime.
However, police insisted that lawyers Chang Boyang (常伯陽) and Ji Laisong (姬來松) could not be seen because even though they were accused of the ordinary criminal offense of creating a disturbance — not a state-security offense — their case nonetheless involved matters of endangering state security.
Dozens of lawyers have traveled to Zhengzhou in recent weeks to highlight the case.
One of them, Li Fangping (李方平), said: “Access to clients for lawyers is getting harder and harder... We are very worried that if the Zhengzhou case cannot be corrected, other places will copy it and this trend will spread.”
Chang’s wife, who gave her name only as Ms Deng, said authorities had been “shameless,” adding: “We believe he got detained because he has been helping people to maintain their legal rights.”
Zhengzhou police said they had never heard of either lawyer and did not deal with foreign media.
Chang had reportedly been seeking lawyers to help people detained in connection with the Tiananmen anniversary and another detained advocate — Tang Jingling (唐荊陵), held in Guangzhou — is thought to have been told by police not to get involved in any commemorations.
However, Li suggested that recent cases also reflected broader pressure on lawyers, particularly those known as the “unyielding” group. Authorities appear to be particularly anxious about attempts to harness public opinion or encourage debate about cases.
Two more lawyers, Chen Jiangang (陳建剛) and Zhao Yonglin (趙永林), were reportedly detained in Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province, on Monday last week after requesting to see a young activist who has been criminally detained.
Calls to the police station where they are thought to be held rang unanswered.
Earlier this year, four rights lawyers — Jiang Tianyong (江天勇), Tang Jitian (唐吉田), Wang Cheng (王成) and Zhang Jie (張俊傑) — were given 15 days of administrative detention after going to Jiamusi, Heilongjiang Province, to investigate an alleged illegal detention.
The justice ministry did not answer repeated calls or respond to faxed queries about working conditions for lawyers in China.
A piece published by the populist state tabloid Global Times last month said activist lawyers such as Pu had contributed to the improvement of China’s rule of law and social equity, but had been “politically destructive.”
“Judicial means are not the only method they would like to use to protect civil rights, and mobilizing online public opinion and even supporting and joining illegal activities have become their new favorites,” it added.
Joshua Rosenzweig, an independent law expert in Hong Kong, said the crackdown reflected the leadership’s concerns about the growth in rights activism during the past decade.
“What [Chinese premier] Xi Jinping (習近平) has done … is basically say: ‘Look, we in the party-state share your desire for justice — we are in the best position to help you reach what you want, but you have to fall in line,’” he said.
That message was accompanied by the repression of debates by rights advocates and a reform agenda that has already seen the abolition of re-education through labor camps. On Monday, state media reported that China would launch six pilot schemes across the country to overhaul its judicial system and curb abuses of power and wrongful convictions, while stressing that the Chinese Communist Party’s control of the system must endure.
“I think ultimately questions will continue to rear their heads [among the public]. [Party leaders] are just postponing the inevitable crisis of credibility,” Rosenzweig said.
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Ursula K. le Guin in The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas proposed a thought experiment of a utopian city whose existence depended on one child held captive in a dungeon. When taken to extremes, Le Guin suggests, utilitarian logic violates some of our deepest moral intuitions. Even the greatest social goods — peace, harmony and prosperity — are not worth the sacrifice of an innocent person. Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), since leaving office, has lived an odyssey that has brought him to lows like Le Guin’s dungeon. From late 2008 to 2015 he was imprisoned, much of this