New | Top law experts issue global call for China’s President Xi Jinping to release detained rights lawyers
Twenty top legal experts, lawyers and judges from across the world have issued a joint letter calling on China’s President Xi Jinping to release mainland rights lawyers and advocates swept up in an unprecedented crackdown that led to about 300 people questioned, harassed or detained by police.
Critics say the sweeping crackdown was aimed at silencing advocates and activists and stifling the burgeoning rights defence movement.
They say it shows the mainland authorities’ fear of the fast-growing civil society and their wariness over the crucial role played by an expanding community of rights lawyers in the grass-roots “rights defence” movement.
READ MORE: Chinese rights advocates Wang Yu, Bao Longjun formally arrested on subversion charges
They also called on China to ensure they have access to counsel, confirm the whereabouts of those forcibly disappeared and ensure that their rights, including the right to adequate medical treatment, are safeguarded.
“By detaining and disappearing these lawyers and law firm staff, China is in breach of its international obligations as well as Chinese domestic criminal law and constitutional principles,” the letter said.
The sweeping crackdown on mainland human rights lawyers started on July 9 last year, with the detention of lawyer Wang Yu and her husband, Bao Longjun, after she saw him and their 16-year-old son off at the airport – the boy was due to start school in Australia.
Since then, hundreds of lawyers, law firm staff and their relatives have been subject to harassment, interrogation, detention and forced disappearance.
After having been detained for six months incommunicado, 13 lawyers and legal assistants caught up in the crackdown remain under criminal detention or arrest, the petition said. Most have been formally arrested on the charges of “subversion of state power” or “inciting subversion of state power”.
These include Wang, Bao, Zhou, and her former colleagues, lawyers Wang Quanzhang and Li Shuyun, and legal assistant Liu Sixin.
Also included are Zhao Wei, an assistant to Li Heping, another rights lawyer not associated with Fengrui, also arrested for “subversion of state power” while her colleague, Gao Yue, was arrested for “assisting in destroying evidence”.
Another two lawyers caught up in the crackdown, Xie Yanyi and Xie Yang, were also formally arrested for “inciting subversion of state power”, while lawyer Li Heping and his brother, Li Chunfu, have disappeared and not been heard of since the start of the crackdown.
READ MORE: Published ‘confessions’ stoke fair trial fears for lawyers held in Chinese crackdown
Wang Qiushi, defence lawyer of Wang Quanzhang, has been placed “under residential surveillance in a designated location” – a form of solitary detention outside the jail which can last up to six months.
The signatories of the letter included Robert Badinter, former French Minister of Justice and former president of the French Constitutional Council, Michel Benichou, president of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe, Kirsty Brimelow QC, chair of the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales, and Asma Jahangir, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association of Pakistan and founding member of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
