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
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