CHINA IS stepping up its crackdown on human rights lawyers as fears grow among the Communist Party leadership that “Jasmine Revolution”-style unrest could threaten its grip on power, a report by Amnesty International has shown.
A major security operation here has seen lawyers, writers and artists detained amid official concerns that unrest, inspired by violent protests in the Arab world, might spread to the world’s most populous nation.
“Human rights lawyers in China are harassed, threatened and have their licences revoked. Some lawyers have been ‘disappeared’, even tortured, simply for defending the human rights of their clients,” said Colm O’Gorman, executive director of Amnesty International Ireland.
There are 204,000 lawyers in China, the report showed, but only a couple of hundred take on rights cases because the repercussions are so serious. “Human rights lawyers are being targeted because they try to use the law to protect citizens from their own government. All those detained or forcibly ‘disappeared’ for exercising, or even protecting, fundamental rights must be released,” said Mr O’Gorman.
In the last few days, heavyweight human rights activists such as controversial artist Ai Weiwei and HIV/Aids campaigner Hu Jia have been freed, but their releases are not thought to signify any major change in the policy of clamping down on dissent.
China’s human rights record has been up for increased scrutiny since the writer Liu Xiaobo was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. Mr Liu is serving an 11-year sentence for subversion, and his wife, Liu Xia, is under house arrest in Beijing.
The Amnesty report, Against the Law – Crackdown on China’s Human Rights Lawyers Deepens, shows how efforts to control lawyers have intensified over the last two years – and particularly in recent months.
The crackdown started following the recent revolts in the Middle East and North Africa, when anonymous online voices called for Chinese people to gather to emulate the “Jasmine Revolution” in support of democratic change.
Lawyers operate under very difficult circumstances in China, especially if they are active in supporting human rights cases.
Every year members of the legal profession in China have to undergo an “annual assessment”, which many believe has no basis under Chinese law. Lawyers who dare to take up so-called sensitive cases, such as human rights cases, often fail this assessment, which leads to their licence being suspended or revoked.
When annual assessment or threats fail to deter them from taking on such cases, lawyers are silenced by the authorities in ways that violate their human rights.
There are ongoing fears about the fate of probably the most prominent of the human rights lawyers, Gao Zhisheng, who has been missing for over a year and who said he had been tortured during a series of detentions since 2006.
The report shows how new regulations introduced in 2009-2010 prohibit lawyers from defending certain clients, commenting on their work to the media or challenging court malpractice, and expand the basis for lawyers to be charged with the crime of “inciting subversion” when carrying out legal defence.
Mr O’Gorman said: “Lawyers must be protected – only then will they be able to exercise their full role in the protection of human rights.”