Australia under pressure to confront China over detained activists and foreigners
- Lawyers and foreign policy experts have petitioned the foreign minister to make diplomatic representations to Beijing over the detentions
Australia is coming under increasing pressure to address China’s detention of activists and foreign citizens, as it attempts to balance diplomatic and trade ties with the secretive state.
The incoming president of the Law Council of Australia, Arthur Moses, has written to Marise Payne as one of his first acts, asking the foreign affairs minister to make “immediate diplomatic representations to China regarding human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang” following his imprisonment in July 2015.
Wang was detained as part of a crackdown on human rights lawyers and activists, which began on July 9, 2015, and became known as the “709” arrests. While most of the 300 or so people taken into custody are thought to have been released, Wang remains behind bars, facing closed courts on charges of subversion of state power.
Moses said the Law Council of Australia believed Wang’s case to be “urgent and grave” and wrote to Payne, asking her to press the need for a “fair and transparent trial for Mr Wang”.
“In accordance with the United Nations’ basic principles on the role of the lawyers, it is vital for every nation to have an independent legal profession that can practise without fear of reprisal,” Moses said in a statement.
