How Tiananmen spurred veteran lawyer to defend activists when no-one else dared
How the crackdown spurred rights lawyer Mo Shaoping and intellectual Cao Siyuan's dedication to human rights struggle
When tanks rolled into Beijing and troops opened fire to crush the pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square in the early hours of June 4, 1989, many people’s lives were changed forever.
Many gave up their dreams for a democratic China and focused on making a better living for themselves, but for a few, the event spurred them into dedicating their lives to their ideals.
Leading human rights lawyers Mo Shaoping and liberal intellectual Cao Siyuan were among them.
If there had not been a Tiananmen crackdown 25 years ago, Mo says he probably would have never embarked on a career as a human rights lawyer.
Mo, 56, is one of China’s longest serving and most prominent rights lawyers, having represented political activists, journalists and dissidents for nearly two decades.
Speaking recently about how he started defending government critics, he said it was his sympathy for people implicated for their links with the Tiananmen pro-democracy movement that spurred him to defend them.
In the 1990s, only veteran lawyer Zhang Sizhi and Mo would take on political cases, many of which involved former Tiananmen activists, he said.