Chinese human rights lawyers arrested during a recent crackdown have pleaded guilty to a range of offenses, including inciting disorder, the nation’s ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) newspaper reported yesterday.
Nine lawyers and four other staff members at the Fengrui legal firm have been charged with disrupting trial proceedings and violating court rules. Fengrui director Zhou Shifeng (周世鋒) has pleaded guilty, the People’s Daily reported.
Zhou provided legal aid to families of children poisoned by milk powder from a powerful dairy firm, and this year defended 81-year-old writer Huang Zerong (黃澤榮), better known as Tieliu (鐵流), who was detained for criticizing the CCP.
Zhou’s family has appointed lawyer Yang Jinzhu (楊金柱) to act as a defense attorney, but police have not allowed him to meet with his client, the Hong Kong-based advocacy group Rights Defense Network reported.
The Xinhua news agency late on Saturday said that Zhou “admitted guilt,” and pleaded for a “second chance.”
“Some things about my actions at the law firm were illegal... My mistakes were serious,” the report cited Zhou as saying, apparently while in police custody.
China’s state media frequently reports “confessions,” from criminal suspects who are still detained without access to lawyers, a practice decried as a violation of legal procedure.
ZERO-TOLERANCE
Nearly 200 lawyers and activists have been detained or questioned during a campaign launched by public security bureaus this month, with the CPP maintaining a zero-tolerance approach to dissent.
The detained lawyers “gave interviews to foreign media, spreading opinions attacking the party and the government, slandering the legal system and other such negative views,” the Xinhua report added.
Human rights group Amnesty International called the crackdown “unprecedented” and on Thursday last week said that 31 of those detained remained in custody.
‘BLACKMAILING’
The People’s Daily accused the group from Fengrui of orchestrating protests outside courts to help secure favorable verdicts for clients. The Xinhua state news agency, in a separate report yesterday, described such behavior as “very close to blackmailing.”
The People’s Daily said many of the suspects had admitted to hyping up and politicizing ordinary legal cases in order to attract international attention.
“Many of the criminal suspects have confirmed that the Fengrui legal firm pursued sensitive cases, and if they were not sensitive or prominent enough, they would think of ways to stir them up,” the People’s Daily said.
The Fengrui law firm has represented several high profile clients, such as the ethnic Uighur dissident Ilham Tohti and Zhang Miao (張淼), a news assistant at German newspaper Die Zeit, who was recently detained for more than six months.
The People’s Daily, the official organ of the CCP, said police were recently ordered to smash a “criminal gang” of lawyers accused of using the Beijing-based Fengrui as a platform to “stir up public disorder.”
Among those arrested were the prominent human rights lawyer Wang Yu (王宇), known for defending poverty-stricken victims of forced demolition, sexual assault, illegal detention and other abuses.
Wang has previously defended Li Tingting (李婷婷), a prominent rights activist, as well as Cao Shunli (曹順利), an activist who died in detention after being denied medical treatment.
In an apparent effort to put pressure on Wang’s family, her 16-year-old son has been questioned several times this week by police in the city of Tianjin, a family friend said.
Police are stationed outside Wang’s parent’s apartment in the city, and “follow the family whenever they go out,” said the friend, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal.
State media said preliminary police investigations had shown that, since July 2012, the lawyers “plotted to hype up more than 40 legal cases, seriously interfering with normal judicial activities and disrupting social order.”
It also accused the lawyers of disseminating attacks on the CCP and the Chinese government, and bringing discredit to the judicial system.
TORTURE
China’s courts have a near-100 percent conviction rate. State media last year said that police using torture to extract confessions was “not rare” in the nation.
The CCP said it hopes to promote “rule of law,” and that a growing number of lawyers over the past decade had attempted to expose official abuses using the courts.
However, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has stressed the party’s ultimate authority over the legal system, and limits on activism have tightened.
Chinese rights lawyers previously faced physical attacks, house arrest and prison sentences, but analysts see the latest crackdown as the heaviest yet.
Three of the activists currently being held face 15-year jail sentences on charges of “inciting subversion of state power,” according to police notices seen by friends of the detainees last week.
The activists being held include attorney Xie Yang (謝陽), who sought compensation for the family of a man shot dead in May by police officers at a train station in northeast China, sparking an online outcry about violence by law enforcers.
Additional reporting by AFP
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to