Chinese legal authorities yesterday formally disbarred a prominent rights lawyer who was handed a suspended sentence last year for writing Internet posts the government said incited ethnic hatred, ending his career.
Activists have said the three-year suspended sentence for Pu Zhiqiang (浦志強) would serve as a strong reminder to other rights lawyers that the Chinese Communist Party, currently engaged in a severe clampdown on dissent, would brook no challenge to its rule.
Pu has represented many well-known dissidents, including artist Ai Weiwei (艾未未) and activists of the “New Citizens’ Movement,” a group that has called on Chinese leaders to make their wealth public, and his case has attracted wide concern in Western capitals.
Pu told reporters he had received the formal notification from the Beijing City Judicial Bureau that his lawyer’s license had been revoked. He declined further comment, saying he was not supposed to accept interviews.
Calls to the judicial bureau seeking comment went unanswered.
Fellow rights lawyer and friend Shang Baojun (尚寶軍) said the disbarment had been expected since Pu’s conviction in December last year, because a person found guilty of a criminal offense is not allowed to practice law.
“Unless one day his conviction is overturned, then he’ll never be allowed to practice law again. It’s really the end of his career,” Shang said.
The charges against Pu were based on seven microblog posts that he had published online, criticizing the government’s ethnic policy in the troubled western region of Xinjiang and several officials, according to his lawyers.
The news of the disbarment comes as the US Department of State criticized Beijing’s “severe” crackdown against lawyers and law firms handling cases that authorities consider politically sensitive.
The department highlighted repression against civil society in its annual report on human rights practices around the world, including in a number of authoritarian Asian nations.
The report, released by US Secretary of State John Kerry, covers last year. It says repression and coercion markedly increased in China, and hundreds of lawyers and law associates were interrogated, investigated and in many cases detained in secret locations for months without charges or access to attorneys or family members.
US Assistant Secretary of State Tom Malinowski, a top envoy on human rights issues, said that the repression was a government attempt to project strength, but in fact communicated weakness, as expectations rise among Chinese people who have become wealthier and connected to the Internet.
“Like people everywhere else they want to live in a country where the rule of law is respected and corruption is punished and exposed, and environmental problems are not swept under the rug. They want the same thing as people anywhere else, and the government senses that and it feels insecure and it cracks down,” Malinowski told reporters.
“I think that when we speak out on these issues we are 100 percent aligned with the aspirations of most ordinary people in China,” he said.
The report also criticizes the enforced disappearances of five men working in Hong Kong’s publishing industry, saying Chinese security officials were believed to be responsible.
The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In recent years, China has responded to the annual US report by issuing its own on human rights problems in the US. Last year, it concluded that racial discrimination and police abuses are rife in the US.
An American scientist convicted of lying to US authorities about payments from China while he was at Harvard University has rebuilt his research lab in Shenzhen, China, to pursue technology the Chinese government has identified as a national priority: embedding electronics into the human brain. Charles Lieber, 67, is among the world’s leading researchers in brain-computer interfaces. The technology has shown promise in treating conditions such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and restoring movement in paralyzed people. It also has potential military applications: Scientists at the Chinese People’s Liberation Army have investigated brain interfaces as a way to engineer super soldiers by boosting
Indonesian police have arrested 13 people after shocking images of alleged abuse against small children at a daycare center went viral, sparking outrage across the nation, officials said on Monday. Police on Friday last week raided Little Aresha, a daycare center in Yogyakarta on Java island, following a report from a former employee. CCTV footage circulating on social media showed children, most younger than two, lying on the floor wearing only diapers, their hands and feet bound with rags. The police have confirmed that the footage is authentic. Police said they also found 20 children crammed into a room just 3m by 3m. “So
Jailed media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai (黎智英) has been awarded Deutsche Welle’s (DW) freedom of speech award for his contribution to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. The German public broadcaster on Thursday said Lai would be presented in absentia with the 12th iteration of the award on June 23 at the DW Global Media Forum in Bonn. Deutsche Welle director-general Barbara Massing praised the 78-year-old founder of the now-shuttered news outlet Apple Daily for standing “unwaveringly for press freedom in Hong Kong at great personal risk.” “With Apple Daily, he gave journalists a platform for free reporting and a voice to the democracy movement in
PHILIPPINE COMMITTEE: The head of the committee that made the decision said: ‘If there is nothing to hide, there is no reason to hide, there is no reason to obstruct’ A Philippine congressional committee on Wednesday ruled that there was “probable cause” to impeach Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte after hearing allegations of unexplained wealth, misuse of state funds and threats to have the president assassinated. The unanimous decision of the 53-member committee in the Philippine House of Representatives sends the two impeachment complaints to deliberations and voting by the entire lower chamber, which has more than 300 lawmakers. The complaints centered on Duterte’s alleged illegal use and mishandling of intelligence funds from the vice president’s office, and from her time as education secretary under Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Duterte and the
RSS