The Chinese government's continuing attacks on human rights lawyers rarely make foreign headlines these days. Monitoring, intimidating, disbarring and prosecuting activist lawyers have become routine in mainland China. Even the tragic 'disappearance' while in police custody of defence lawyer/political reformer Gao Zhisheng - now feared to be dead - hardly attracts attention.
It is also unremarkable for even non-political Chinese defence lawyers to suffer sanctions. The recent conviction of Beijing lawyer Li Zhuang for allegedly counselling his client to lie and bribe witnesses would not have been noted abroad if the case had not involved Chongqing's extraordinary campaign to suppress organised crime.
By contrast, the Taiwanese government's new interest in curbing vigorous defence lawyers does constitute 'news'. Although Taiwan's president Ma Ying-jeou recently used the island's Law Day to call for greater efforts to promote judicial reform and human rights, his Ministry of Justice has been moving in the opposite direction.
Last year, the ministry, concerned about the conduct of ex-president Chen Shui-bian's defence lawyers in its graft prosecutions against him, failed in its efforts to impose disciplinary sanctions against one of Chen's lawyers for supposed ethical violations. Now it is trying to introduce legislation to punish 'obstructions of justice' that will inevitably restrict defence lawyers' activities.
The ministry has proposed to amend the criminal code in several ways that threaten the modified adversarial legal system that Taiwan adopted a decade ago. Instead of supporting the equal contest between prosecutors and defence lawyers on which that system is based, the ministry proposals, reflecting traditional Chinese distrust of defence lawyers, would subject Taiwan's lawyers to some of the same dangers confronted by their counterparts on the mainland, including significant prison time. One amendment would punish anyone, including lawyers, for abetting defendants or others to 'fabricate, alter, destroy or conceal' important evidence in criminal cases, even when their advice has been ignored and caused no harm.
Further, it would punish anyone for abetting defendants to make false statements concerning important facts in trial or investigation. Thus, if a court rejects the defendant's claim that his pre-trial confession was coerced by police, his lawyers might be prosecuted for having urged him to repudiate the confession. This sword of Damocles hangs over mainland lawyers, at times intimidating them from giving such advice, despite the prevalence of pre-trial torture.