On 18 January 2016 Human Rights Watch published an open Letter from Legal Experts on detained lawyers in China. [https://thoolen.wordpress.com/2015/07/29/the-remarkable-crackdown-on-lawyers-in-china-in-july-2015/]. The letter, reproduced below, tries to link the Chinese leaders to their earlier promises that ‘China is a country ruled by law’ and that ‘every individual Party organisation and Party member must abide by the country’s constitution and laws and must not take the Party’s leadership as a privilege to violate them.’ It concludes that the events described appear entirely contrary to those commitments. The list of signatories is impressive. Read the rest of this entry »
Posts Tagged ‘Pu Zhiqiang’
Letter from legal experts on detained lawyers in China
January 19, 2016Jorge Molano from Colombia laureate of 2015 Lawyers for Lawyers Award
May 15, 2015
Jorge Elecier Molano, a Colombian human rights Lawyer and member of DHColombia, is the winner of the Lawyers for Lawyers Award 2015. He is based in Bogota and works as an independent lawyer and legal advisor to several NGOs, including ‘Sembrar’. Jorge Molano received numerous death threats in the course of his work as a lawyer and human rights defender. After the death threats in 2009 and 2010, he felt obliged to send his daughters to live abroad for security reasons. In January 2013 the Colombian State’s National Protection Unit (NPU) defined Jorge Molano’s risk level as “extraordinary,” due to several security incidents. In 2014 Jorge Molano and other members of DHColombia and Sembrar have been the victim of several aggressions including attacks on family members, raids on his home to steal information, cyber-attacks on email and website accounts, telephone interception, and illegal surveillance, among others.
Currently, Jorge Molano represents victims in some of the most emblematic human rights cases in Colombia, such as the disappearance of 11 people after the dramatic events around the hostage-taking at the Palace of Justice in Bogota on 6 and 7 November 1985, and the killing on 21 February 2005 of several members (including minors) of the Comunidad de Paz of San José de Apartado, a group of villagers who have sworn not to become involved in the conflict in Colombia. Jorge Molano also provides legal support to persons in cases where organizations and human rights defenders are spied upon by national intelligence agencies, and in cases concerning extrajudicial executions.
“The jury noted that among the nominees a shockingly large amount of lawyers are imprisoned for doing their work. In far too many countries human rights lawyers and their relatives live in constant danger. The jury found in Jorge Molano a lawyer who is standing out for his decennia long commitment to those who are not accepting the suppression by the often criminal and violent powers that be. By awarding Molano the jury wants to applaud his immense personal courage and stamina and draw attention to the largely overlooked dire human rights situation in Colombia”.
Human rights lawyers from across the world were nominated for the L4L Award. Khalil Maatouk from Syria and Pu Zhiqiang from China were the other two shortlisted lawyers. Jorge Molano will accept the award on 29 May at L4L’s seminar ‘Lawyers are not their clients’.
For more information on the award see: http://www.brandsaviors.com/thedigest/award/lawyers-lawyers. For L4L visit www.lawyersforlawyers.org or contact the Executive Director (+31.6 262 743 90)
Stop dancing with dictators, says Chinese human rights defender Teng Biao
March 17, 2015
‘ Xi Jinping, even less tolerant than his predecessors.’ Photograph: EPA/WU HONG
Human rights defender Teng Biao, a visiting fellow at Harvard Law School, President of China Against the Death Penalty, and Co-founder of the Open Constitution Initiative, is in Ireland as the guest of Front Line Defenders. In a post of 10 March 2015, he depicts the grim situation of human rights defenders in China since President Xi took office. ‘Chinese human rights defenders are facing the most severe crackdown since the Tiananmen massacre in 1989’ he states. The hard-hitting piece [“Over 1,000 human rights activists were detained since President Xi took office“] is interesting enough to provide in full:
Ilham Tohti is a Uighur professor who set up a website to promote the rights of the muslim Uighur people. He advocated mutual understanding and reconciliation between Han Chinese and the Uighurs.
Pu Zhiqiang and Xu Zhiyong are both well known lawyers who have played a key role in abolishing the laws allowing extrajudicial detentions, in breach of China’s own constitution. Xu also founded an NGO called the Open Constitution Initiative, focusing on religious freedom and free speech. The organisation worked on the issues of forced eviction, forced abortion and ensuring transparency in local elections.
Guo Feixiong, Liu Ping, Ding Jiaxi, Zhao Changqing, all took an important part in the New Citizens Movement which has campaigned for constitutional government and for Communist Party officials to declare their assets.
Cao Shunli was arrested on her way to a human rights training in Geneva and died in custody as a result of torture, on March 14th, 2014. All the others are now in jail.
Chinese leaders are not known for tolerating dissent, but Xi Jinping is less tolerant than his predecessors. Over a thousand human rights activists have been detained since Xi took office, and Chinese human rights defenders are facing the most severe crackdown since the Tiananmen massacre in 1989. Xi’s suppression is widespread, targeting not just those at the forefront of the human rights struggle in China, but also faith groups, internet users, universities, and the media. Many members of China’s budding civil society, who have avoided politically risky issues so far, are now also being jailed.
In the past, those who crossed a red line, who stood out, took to the street, or who engaged in organised actions were the main targets of the crackdown. Now, the dragnet is much wider and is being used against anyone who demonstrates. At least 10 feminist activists were detained last week as they planned to stage a small protest against sexual harassment on public transport, which is a common occurrence in China. The government seems to be targeting all the nodes that connect civil society, picking off emerging civil society leaders, and destroying the capacity for civil resistance.
It seems that the Communist Party of China has never been stronger or more confident: China is the second largest economy in the world. China is exerting more influence on the international stage. There is no viable opposition, and the Chinese model is more effective than western democracies that have been bogged down by financial crises and intractable social problems. But as David Shambaugh pointed out in his recent article in the Wall Street Journal, “A more secure and confident government would not institute such a severe crackdown. It is a symptom of the party leadership’s deep anxiety and insecurity.”
For the Communist Party of China, “governing the country according to law” does not mean the “rule of law” as you and I understand it. It is first and foremost a tool to further control society, as the Party understands perfectly well that the rule of law, freedom of information, religious freedom, property rights, and other basic features of democratic governance would mean the demise of the Party’s rule, as Freedom House pointed out in its recent report.
Chinese civil society, fragile as it is, owes its emergence to the dedication and sacrifice of many human rights defenders. Every day, we receive information from all over the country about human rights defenders being detained, disappeared, tortured, or sentenced. But despite the perilous journey, more and more Chinese people – lawyers and journalists, farmers and bloggers, poor and rich, young and old, males and females – have stepped up to join the human rights movement, driven by their dignity, belief in freedom, and the desire to make a difference in our time of great change.
These Orwellian rulers can only do so much damage to the spirit of the people. A few are silenced but many more are inspired by a combination of international and domestic recognition, the admiration of “fellow travellers”, a sense of mission, and occasional victories in human rights cases. I speak from experience. I have been banned from teaching, fired from my job, disbarred, disappeared, detained and tortured for my human rights work since 2003, but I have never felt that I should stop. I believe it is my responsibility to fight for freedom for the next generation, for the dream that my children can live in a free and democratic country. This dream is shared by more and more Chinese people, even at this unlikely moment when the night seems the darkest.
Most Beijing watchers in the west misunderstand Beijing. Every time Beijing has a new slogan like “rule by law” or “harmonious society,” they embrace it as a sign of change, ignoring all the evil the Communist Party of China has been perpetrating. They fail to see where the real hope lies and remain fixated on the ruling class. Their selective blindness has hindered the West’s understanding of the real state of affairs in today’s China. If we human beings can learn anything from modern history, it is that it is time for the West to stop wishful thinking, to stop dancing with dictators, and to support human rights activists who are challenging the one-party dictatorship in China. History will judge the crimes committed by dictators against universal values, and it will also remember those Western governments who adopted short-sighted policies of appeasement in dealing with autocratic regimes and favouring trade over human rights.”
Over 1,000 human rights activists were detained since President Xi took office.
The Plight of China’s Human Rights Lawyers Worsened
January 19, 2015Under the title “The Plight of China’s Rights Lawyers” Frances Eve, in Chinafile of 16 January 2015, has made an excellent compilation of the travails of the Chinese human rights lawyers in 2014. It was one of the worst years for civil society and human rights defenders in particular.
Pu Zhiqiang, center, pictured in 2011 talking with the media while he was serving as artist Ai Weiwei’s lawyer – Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images
At least 9 lawyers either are currently facing criminal charges or began serving prison sentences in 2014: Ding Jiaxi, Pu Zhiqiang, Qu Zhenhong, Tang Jingling, Xia Lin, Xu Zhiyong, Yu Wensheng, Chang Boyang and Ji Laisong (the last 2 now released). The unprecedented scale of criminal prosecution against rights lawyers sharply contradicts the goal of “governing the country by law,” which was proclaimed at October’s Fourth Plenum meeting. Here the whole piece for those interested:
“As the year came to a close, at least seven prominent Chinese human rights lawyers rang in the New Year from a jail cell. Under President Xi Jinping, 2014 was one of the worst years in recent memory for China’s embattled civil society. Bookending the year were the cases of two prominent legal advocates: in January, Xu Zhiyong was sentenced to four years imprisonment for his moderate criticism of government policy and leading the “New Citizens’ Movement,” a group advocating for political reforms in China. Outspoken free speech lawyer Pu Zhiqiang, who turns 50 tomorrow, has spent the past six months in detention as authorities continue to build a case against him.
The past year has been distinctly bad for a band of crusading lawyers, who for the past decade or so, since their movement first emerged, have described their mission asweiquan, “safeguarding rights.” According to several Chinese rights lawyers, more members of their ranks—which have grown from just a handful to over 200—are currently in detention than at any time since 2003, when lawyers involved in this kind of work first began to face criminal detention.
Among the first to be arrested was Gao Zhisheng, a feisty and outspoken defender of everyone, from factory workers and peasants to journalists and underground Christian and Falun Gong practitioners, who was sentenced to three years in 2006 on the politically motived charge of “inciting subversion of state power.” Suspending his sentence, authorities instead held Gao several times in detention incommunicado—where he was brutally tortured—until 2011, when judges ordered Gao to be sent to prison for “violating” his parole. Gao, who was released into a form of house arrest in August 2014, was a prominent case, yet imprisoning lawyers was still unusual at the time. Since then, rights lawyers who have taken on cases involving politically “sensitive” issues have increasingly faced threats, harassment, administrative punishments, the revocation of their law licenses, and, as in a few widely publicized cases, disappearance and eventorture.
But since President Xi Jinping came to power, the government’s war on rights lawyers has escalated. At least nine prominent lawyers either are currently facing criminal charges or began serving prison sentences in 2014: lawyers Ding Jiaxi, Pu Zhiqiang, Qu Zhenhong, Tang Jingling, Xia Lin, Xu Zhiyong, and Yu Wensheng, as well as Chang Boyang and Ji Laisong who were both released on bail awaiting trial after months in detention. The unprecedented scale of criminal prosecution against rights lawyers sharply contradicts the goal of “governing the country by law,” which was proclaimed at October’s Fourth Plenum meeting, a gathering of senior Chinese Communist Party leaders.
A student leader in the 1989 pro-democracy movement, Pu Zhiqing had gone on to represent several high profile free-speech cases, including an anti-defamation ruling in favor of the magazine China Reform in 2004 and a much heralded defence of the authors of a widely read exposé of rural corruption. More recently, he defended activist artist Ai Weiwei and petitioner Tang Hui—who was sent to a re-education through labor (RTL) camp for petitioning for stronger punishment for her daughter’s rapists—in a case which garnered widespread public sympathy. State media evenfeatured Pu in reports on RTL, an unusual platform for a government critic. But now Pu has been detained on charges of “creating a disturbance” and “illegally obtaining personal information” after attending a seminar in May discussing the June Fourth Massacre. Police later tacked on additional charges of “inciting ethnic hatred” and “inciting separatism,” reportedly over a blog post Pu had written criticising the government’s version of the Kunming knife attack in March 2014. Lawyer Qu Zhenhong, who initially served as Pu’s lawyer, was arrested in June in connection with his case.
Tang Jingling, arrested after taking part in a commemorative “June Fourth Meditation” last summer, was a lawyer who defended victims of government land grabs, counterfeit medicine, and village corruption until authorities refused to renew his law license in 2006. He then became a “citizen representative,” continuing to give legal assistance, and later a member of a non-violent civil disobedience movement that works on labor rights, the hukou system, and equal education. At the end of the year, Guangzhou police transferred Tang’s case to the local prosecutor, an indication that he may be indicted and tried soon. If convicted, Tang faces a lengthy prison sentence for “inciting subversion of state power.” Meanwhile, his wife has faced harassment forspeaking out on his case.
In November, authorities arrested two lawyers, Yu Wensheng and Xia Lin, after they were hired by families to represent activists detained for expressing support for the protests in Hong Kong. Yu faces a charge of “creating a disturbance” and Xia, a former member of Pu Zhiqiang’s legal team and partner at Pu’s Huayi Law Firm, is accused of committing fraud. Those imprisoned last year include the lawyer Ding Jiaxi, who is serving a 42-month sentence after demanding government transparency and anti-corruption measures with the New Citizens’ Movement, alongside Xu Zhiyong, whose advocacy and election to his district’s People’s Congress made him another former darling of the Chinese press. Xu missed the birth of his daughter while he awaited his January trial.
While incarcerated, these lawyers have all been granted only limited access to their attorneys. The PRC Law on Lawyers (2007) authorizes lawyers to meet with their clients starting on the very day when they are put under detention, as does China’s Criminal Procedure Law. But, according to lawyers and family members of detainees, such provisions are rarely respected on the ground and often overridden by local administrative or Party orders, especially in political cases.
Family members of the jailed lawyers have reason to fear, since rights lawyers are no strangers to torture in detention and police brutality. Tang Jingling told his lawyer he was assaulted at Guangzhou No. 1 Detention Center, and in an open letter to Xi Jinping Pu Zhiqiang’s wife decried the “inhumane mental and physical torment” her husband has been subjected to at the Beijing No. 1 Detention Center. In Heilongjiang province in March, four lawyers were taken into custody and severely beaten after they requested to meet with their clients; according to their family members, the four suffered 24 broken ribs among them. Gao Zhisheng suffered such ill-treatment in prison that he lost almost all his teeth and remains very frail.
China’s leaders are far from governing the country under a system based on the rule of law. Instead, they are paying lip service to the idea in order to give legitimacy to the Communist Party’s rule while building a legal system that serves their political interests. This includes manipulating the criminal justice system to silence dissent and rein in human rights lawyers who push for judicial independence, fair trials, and protection of their clients’ legal rights. Chinese law bars a convicted lawyer from practising law for good. This is at the heart of what makes the currently growing trend of criminalizing rights lawyers particularly troubling.
Allowing lawyers and the judiciary to carry out their work without political interference is a key indicator of a country’s success in promoting rule of law. In November, China’s nominal legislative body, the National People’s Congress, posted online for “public consultation” several amendments to the country’s Criminal Code. Among these draft amendments is Article 35, which would revise the Criminal Law on the disruption of court proceedings by giving authorities overly broad powers to interpret speech in court as insulting, threatening, or disruptive and includes the vague provision prohibiting “anything else that seriously disrupts court proceedings.” The effect of these changes would be to criminalize lawyers’ speech during trials if they challenge the court, punishable by up to three years in prison. More than 500 rights lawyers across China have signed an open letter to the NPC, demanding they drop this amendment as it runs “counter to the direction of judicial reform.”
China’s embattled rights lawyers, however, have refused to be coerced into submission. On the contrary, they are increasingly challenging authorities for failing to practice the respect for the law that they preach. More young lawyers are joining the movement. Trained professionals, they strongly believe that all suspects should be afforded a fair and public trial, and they see no reason why ruling élites should be above the law. Many are paying a heavy price, but see it as a part of the struggle for a “better future.” Facing the charges against him, Pu Zhiqiang is fully aware of what awaits him. As he said to his lawyer from jail: “If we lose, I probably can’t be a lawyer after I get out, so what can I be?”
25 Years Tiananmen ‘celebrated’ with over 100 detentions
June 13, 2014
(A map of all individuals detained in the wake of the Tiananmen anniversary. Some of these persons have already been released. Photo: CHRD)
Yesterday China Human Rights Defenders has released a list of over 100 activists, journalists, lawyers, dissidents and other assorted individuals who are thought to have been detained by the government in the wake of the 25th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. As of June 11, 116 individuals from various parts of China, including Beijing, Shanghai, Sichuan, Xinjiang and Guangdong are all listed, with an estimated 49 criminal detentions and two confirmed arrests. Many who were not detained were invited by local authorities to “drink tea” – a veiled phrase for questioning – and were warned to avoid participating in any anniversary activities. Chief among the detainees is veteran human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang, who was placed in criminal detention on May 6 under charges of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” after he attended a May 3 Tiananmen commemoration.
(Pu was … a student lawyer in the 1989 protests, [and he] became a prominent human rights lawyer and advocate, taking up some of the most politically sensitive rights-defending cases,” said David Zhao, researcher and representative for CHRD. “He [has made] earlier remarks that he is still ‘deeply emotionally tied to [Tiananmen]’ and has ‘no regrets over his involvements’.”
(Yu Shiwen (left) and Chen Wei (right). Photo: Screenshot via RFA)
Other persons on CHRD’s list include Wang Xiuying, an 83-year-old activist who had her home searched by Beijing police after signing a Tiananmen commemoration petition, Chen Wei and Yu Shiwen, an activist couple who organised Tiananmen memorial services, and Wu Wei, a former South China Morning Post journalist in Beijing who interviewed Pu Zhiqiang in the past. “The clampdown on commemorative events this year is the most severe of all years and this reflects the [government’s] determination to wipe out the memory of Tiananmen,” Zhao said.
View CHRD’s list in full here.
A few days earlier, 6 June, Mary Lawlor of Front Line wrote a thoughtful piece on the same issue stating that it “would be fitting that the 25th anniversary of the Square massacre be marked by a renewed international effort to provide greater support to Chinese human rights defenders.“
Human rights defenders (HRDs) currently working in China are frequently seen as challenging the Party and as such must be prepared to risk everything, including death, to continue their work. Although the Party’s methods may have changed in the past quarter of a century, its intention to crush dissent at any cost has not. On 3/4 June 1989 hundreds of peaceful demonstrators were killed in the approach roads to Tiananmen Square in Beijing, bringing an end to seven weeks of protests which had drawn up to a million people onto the streets. What started off as a student protest in the capital calling for political reform quickly morphed into a mass movement supported by broad cross-sections of society which spread to dozens of other cities throughout the country.
The legacy of these protests and the massacre that followed is still keenly felt by HRDs in today’s China. The events of 1989 remain a key touchstone to many Chinese HRDs and as the CCP works to erase the memory of what happened that June, HRDs are equally determined to keep that memory alive, and honor those who died. They do this not only through yearly commemorations of the dead, but also through their day-to-day work defending the rights for which the 1989 protesters struggled. These HRDs highlight injustice, campaign against discrimination, defend in court those who have been arrested for expressing themselves freely and shine a spotlight on the myriad of abuses, including corruption, carried out by the CCP.
So threatened does the Party feel by the memory of its actions 25 years ago that it criminalizes the very act of remembering. In early May, five HRDs were arrested following a low-key memorial at a private residence in Beijing. They are being held on charges of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” The only “quarrel” these HRDs “picked” was with the CCP’s whitewashed version of history, and the Party’s hysterical overreaction to such a commemoration is as clear an admission of guilt as any signed confession. The author then refers to groups such as the The Tiananmen Mothers and the New Citizens Movement…
On the surface, the China of today is a much changed place to the China of 1989… Yet beneath the confident exterior lies the reality that the CCP remains a fragile entity, haunted by the possibility that the values of equality, justice and dignity espoused by HRDs in China might threaten its legitimacy, which is based almost solely on an economic growth model…..While various countries trip over each other in a race to secure lucrative trade deals with China, emphasis on human rights gets pushed further and further down the agenda. The CCP knows that no matter how egregious its abuse of rights – as in the recent death of human rights defender Cao Shunli in custody – international reaction will be muted at best. These are the same rights which workers and students died for twenty five years ago and whose deaths were met at the time with a robust international response.
The weakening of such international support for HRDs working today can only be seen as a betrayal of the values espoused in 1989. It would be fitting that the 25th anniversary of the massacre be marked by a renewed international effort to provide greater support to Chinese HRDs as they bravely continue their work in advancing and protecting internationally recognized rights, despite knowing with full certainty that they will be targeted as a result of this work.
Tiananmen 25: More than a Symbolic Legacy | Sharnoffs Global Views.
China continues harassment and reprisals against human rights defenders
May 29, 2014The Treaty Body that oversees the implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, composed of independent experts, recently completed its review of China‘s compliance. In its conclusions (called ‘Concluding Observations’), the UN committee expressed serious concern about ‘instances where labour and human rights activists, and their lawyers, have been victims of repression and reprisals while taking up cases of violations of economic, social and cultural rights’ and said that China is obliged under international law ‘to protect human rights and labour activists, as well as their lawyers, against any form of intimidation, threat and retaliation‘.
[The ISHR had briefed the treaty body experts on the case of Chinese human rights defender, Cao Shunli, on of the 3 Final Nominees of the MEA 2014, who died in detention after being denied access to adequate health care. In its briefing, ISHR also expressed concern at ongoing intimidation and reprisals against other human rights defenders, saying, ‘The Chinese Government again restricted human rights defenders from travelling to Geneva to attend this session, a pattern which is widespread. We call on the Committee to recommend that the government immediately cease its harassment and intimidation of human rights defenders, and that it guarantee the right of everyone to safely access and communicate with international bodies, such as this Committee. Further, we request that the Committee remain vigilant about reprisals, and that it recommend that the Government investigate all cases of alleged reprisals, and hold perpetrators to account.’] [http://www.ishr.ch/news/china-un-committee-demands-respect-human-rights-activists-and-end-reprisals]
Two days earlier, 26 May, the NGO Chinese Human Rights Defenders reported that Chinese authorities have detained a top rights lawyer and questioned dozens of activists and family members of victims of the 1989 military crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement after they held a seminar to mark the sensitive 25th anniversary.
CSM piece on lawyers as HRDs in China gives a fuller picture
May 22, 2012With all the attention now focussed on Chen Guangcheng, the blind legal activist, this article of 21 May by Peter Ford, staff writer at the CSM, is most welcome. It describes the extremely difficult circumstances under which lawyers and legal activists have to work, explaining the difference between the two categories. It starts with describing the case of Jiang Tianyong, who went to visit his friend Chen Guangcheng, soon after he had emerged from the US embassy.
Last year, as authorities cracked down on lawyers in the wake of the Arab Spring, Jiang “disappeared” for two months. He was “taken to some secret places, beaten, criticized, and brainwashed” by police officers, he recalls. Landlords have bowed to official pressure and evicted him five times from different homes, Jiang says. He has been subjected to several periods of house arrest; his wife and children have been harassed; guards have sealed his front door shut; and once, in a particularly petty act, they locked his wife’s bicycle, he says. And he lost his license to practice law in 2009.
“Human rights lawyers face a perilous life in China,” says John Kamm, a human rights activist who heads Duihua, which works on behalf of political prisoners in China. “They face many barriers.”
When lawyers are beaten, “disappeared,” or jailed, their plight generally attracts wide attention. Far more often, though, says Wang Songlian, a researcher with the Hong Kong based China Human Rights Defenders, it is “unqualified” legal advocates – such as Chen – who are abused for taking cases the government regards as sensitive. “There are probably dozens of them in jail, most of whom are not well known,” she says.
Qualified lawyer’s status gives them a measure of protection, but they are vulnerable to all kinds of official pressure. Crucially, they are obliged to renew their licenses with their local bar association each year – a hurdle Jiang failed to surmount in 2009. This means most lawyers pay attention when the Justice Ministry or the bar association issues “guidance” or “opinions” that they do not take sensitive cases, or that they handle them in a certain way, says Eva Pils, a legal expert at the Centre for Rights and Justice at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
If they don’t, she says, the authorities often warn the head of a recalcitrant lawyer’s firm that his business risks trouble. “At the point when it is felt that neither the Ministry of Justice nor the bar association nor a lawyer’s firm can control him, the security apparatus gets involved,” Professor Pils says.
Human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang says that “99 percent of lawyers will be affected by this sort of pressure.” He adds, “There is no organization in China supporting lawyers doing pro bono work, so very few will take it on because of all the trouble it gets you in.” The pressure on lawyers has been mounting for several years, says Pils, amid “fears that the [ruling Communist] Party might lose control over lawyers, who are not oriented to upholding party rule, but toward working for clients.”
In 2008, the judicial authorities proclaimed the “Three Supremes” doctrine, according to which judges were told to uphold the cause of the Communist Party, the interests of the people, and the Constitution and the law, in that order. Earlier this year, the Justice Ministry published a regulation requiring newly licensed lawyers to swear an oath of loyalty to the party. Despite the difficulties he and his colleagues face, Pu is optimistic. “Though the authorities would like to control the situation, society is getting more open, and I think it will continue to do so,” he says.
Twenty years ago, Mr. Kamm says, “there was no such thing as a [human] rights defender in China. Now we have a very different situation. Nothing encourages anyone to take on a human rights case, but the fact that there are people doing it is tremendously heartening.”
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