Not long after Xi Jinping ascended to the pinnacle of power in China in 2013 as its new president, his regime targeted lawyers who act to defend human rights. Frontline Defenders reports that China is renewing its crackdown.
Today [July 10, 2023], we mark China Human Rights Lawyers Day, in remembrance of the Chinese government’s roundup of over 300 human rights lawyers and legal assistants in the days following July 9, 2015, in what is known as the ‘709 crackdown’ [because it started on July 9]. UN experts are dismayed that ‘the profession of human rights lawyer has been effectively criminalised in China.’…
The Defenders discuss several examples of the latest crackdown, including the imprisonment of several people who attended a meeting in Xiamen in 2019 “to discuss the future of civil society in China.” (Presumably, they found the prospects bleak.)
In April, lawyer Yu Wensheng and his wife Xu Yan “were detained…[and] have since been formally arrested, Yu for ‘picking quarrels and provoking trouble,’ Xu for ‘inciting subversion of State power’. Yu left prison in March 2022 upon completion of a first four-year sentence on national security grounds, prompting concerns that he may now face a harsher sentence.”
Detained human rights lawyers are constantly subject to physical and psychological torture and ill treatment in pre-trial detention and prison. They are routinely denied contact with their relatives and access to medical care, despite critical health issues. The government impedes family-appointed lawyers from accessing court documents and representing victims, instead imposing government-appointed lawyers whose identities are not disclosed or [who] refuse to communicate with relatives. Detained lawyers are often convicted during sham closed-door trials, without notification to families or disclosure of court verdicts for prolonged periods.
The Chinese government relies on the alleged dictates of “national security” to rationalize such treatment. The authors of the FD article, “Global call against China’s renewed crackdown on human rights lawyers,” observe that the authorities of Hong Kong have been “following a similar path since the imposition [in 2020] of the National Security Law.”
