China lawyers in touchy cases could be disbarred

Published 9:44 am Wednesday, May 27, 2009

BEIJING — China’s judiciary is warning law firms to rein in lawyers who take up human rights and other politically sensitive cases, lawyers said today, increasing the pressure in a government campaign that has so far failed to curb growing legal activism.

Lawyers said authorities had met or talked on the phone with senior members of at least nine law firms in recent weeks, urging them to not seek the renewal of licenses for certain lawyers or to submit partial applications that would allow authorities to reject them on technicalities.

If carried through, the disbarments would mark the broadest effort in recent years by China’s authoritarian government to rein in a growing number of activist lawyers.

“Before they used to pressure individuals but now they have turned to this more systematic method,” said Tang Jitian, whose employer, the Anhui Law Firm in Beijing, was among those warned. “The justice departments say the lawyers who defend human rights are inharmonious or unstable elements, but I think they are the ones who are unstable.”

The campaign will have a “chilling effect” on the Chinese legal profession even if the lawyers currently under threat manage to get their licenses back, said Nicholas Bequelin, Asia researcher for New York-based Human Rights Watch.

While lawyers have had their credentials pulled in the past, threats, beatings and other acts of intimidation have been common.

“There is a concerted effort to retaliate against lawyers who have taken some of the most sensitive cases in recent months and years,” Bequelin said. “The purpose is to deter all lawyers from taking those type of cases.”

Among those facing disbarment is a lawyer for a noted Tibetan Buddhist monk and others who have defended practitioners of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement or helped parents whose children died in last year’s devastating earthquake in Sichuan province. Many children were killed in schools that parents and others say were fundamentally unsafe due to corruption, cost-cutting and poor design.

The Justice Bureau did not immediately respond to a faxed request for informatitoday about accreditation delays and allegations of intimidation.

The warnings are especially chilling because they coincide with the license renewal period for both law firms and lawyers.

Lawyers said the implicit message was that firms should sabotage the applications of their “problem lawyers,” or risk having their firm’s license or the licenses of other employees rejected. The easiest ways for a firm to lose an employee, without having to fire them, are to submit incomplete accreditation paperwork or an unfavorable performance review, or to simply not submit an application at all, they said.

Tang, who has defended farmers against rural land grabs and challenged police detention without trials, said if his license was not renewed by Sunday, he would be barred from working.

At least 20 other lawyers spread across nine firms have reported the same delays in getting their licenses renewed, Tang and other lawyers said.

Jiang Tianyong, a lawyer with Beijing’s Gaobo Longhua Law Firm, said his application was still pending.

“They are using us as examples to scare the other lawyers into line,” said Jiang, who recently defended a Tibetan Buddhist cleric against charges of concealing weapons in an area of China where anti-government protests occurred.

Jiang and others said they believed the government campaign was linked to official anxiety about potential social unrest this year to mark the 20th anniversary of the June 4, 1989 pro-democracy protests.

Recent months have seen an upswing in detentions, harassment, and attacks on lawyers involved in sensitive cases. Earlier this month, Beijing lawyers Zhang Kai and Li Chunfu were detained and beaten by police in the western city of Chongqing while visiting the family of a man who died under suspicious circumstances in a labor camp.

Another Beijing lawyer, Gao Zhisheng, took on several politically charged cases including the defense of Falun Gong practitioners. He has been missing since February and is presumed to be in police custody.

“The lawyers we are talking about have shown they are not deterred by administrative or political interference or threats or physical violence,” said Bequelin, the Human Rights Watch researcher.