Rules requiring Chinese lawyers to submit to government supervision when representing clients in politically delicate cases have dealt a serious blow to the country's legal system and should be rescinded, Human Rights Watch said in a report issued yesterday.
The rights group said the rules, known as "guiding opinions," effectively shut down the legal system to people fighting official land confiscations, forced relocation, corruption, pollution and other politically delicate matters in China's one-party system.
"These restrictions effectively deprive people with lawful collective complaints of meaningful legal representations and risk instilling a sense of futility about legal avenues of redress," the report said. "That may exacerbate social unrest in the future."
The Chinese police have reported a surge in "mass incidents," including large demonstrations, in the past several years, with 87,000 such events last year.
Statistics for the first nine months of this year showed a decline in the number of protests from the year before, but Human Rights Watch said that the numbers were subject to political manipulation and that anecdotal evidence suggested rising discontent.
The "guiding principles," which were put into effect in the spring, require lawyers who accept cases that involve 10 or more plaintiffs suing organs of the government or the ruling party to submit to "guidance and supervision" by their local judicial bureau and the All-China Lawyers Association, which are under government control.
They also must obtain consent from at least three partners in their law firm before accepting such cases, and they must refrain from "stirring up" news media coverage.
The rules are part of an effort to suppress expression rather than to address the causes of social unrest, lawyers and rights advocates say.
Weak property rights and poorly enforced labor and environmental laws have made China's transition to a market economy painful for many millions of people without power to protect their interests.
Lawyers, self-styled legal rights advocates and journalists have been the most conspicuous victims of a campaign by President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) to create a more "harmonious society." They have been accused of leading people to take to the streets over lost jobs, unpaid wages, environmental degradation, land seizures and other sources of discontent.
Luo Gan (羅幹), a member of the Politburo Standing Committee who oversees police and judicial matters for the ruling party, said in an speech published in a state-run magazine that officials should take "forceful measures" against lawyers or rights advocates who use the law as a pretext to "undermine social stability."
State security officers and the police have arrested or intimidated people associated with China's weiquan, or rights protection movement. At least four prominent lawyers and leading rights advocates, Gao Zhisheng (
Human Rights Watch said in its 70-page study of the conditions for defense lawyers that many faced less obvious but nonetheless serious threats to their independence. Their licenses are subject to renewal annually. They depend on the good will of the police, prosecutors and court officials if they wish to take even rudimentary steps to defend their clients.
The government has defended the rules in the state-run media, saying that they are intended mainly to protect lawyers and plaintiffs in delicate cases.
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