Update | Heilongjiang police accuse four rights lawyers of 'disturbing order' after detention and alleged beating

Police in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang yesterday issued a statement accusing four lawyers of "disturbing social order", "shouting cult slogan"and practising without a legal license, after they were detained and allegedly beaten up by officials last month while representing members of the banned spiritual group Falun Gong.

The detention of the lawyers and the beating of at least one of them have drawn the condemnation of fellow lawyers and legal experts from around the nation. One of the four lawyers, Zhang Junjie, was released last week with three broken ribs, which he said were the result of severe beating by police officers while he was in detention.

The other three lawyers, Jiang Tianyong, Wang Cheng and Tang Jitian, were still under detention and fellow lawyers fear they have also been subjected to police violence.

Zhang has insisted that he and his colleagues were investigating the illegal detention of Falun Gong members at a so-called "legal education centre" set up by local authorities in Jiansanjiang, a state-run forestry and farming community about 400 kilometres east of the provincial capital Harbin, and that accusations against the lawyers were fabricated.

The four lawyers had “incited and gathered 38 members of the Falun Gong cult and their relatives to create chaos, and shouted cult slogans to support the Falun Gong organisation” on March 20, according to a statement by the Jiansanjiang Public Security Bureau yesterday.

The police statement also accused the lawyers of using mobile communication tools to “fabricate facts, spread malicious speculations and to disturb social order”. Local police put 11 people, including the lawyers, on administrative detention between five to 15 days for "using cult activities to endanger society, it added.