Lawyers: Rights and wrongs
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Jun 15th 2017 | BEIJING
THE transformation of Li Heping from a dark-haired, full-bodied healthy man to a gaunt, greying one with poor eyesight took less than two years. In July 2015 he was seized by police, as were some 300 other civil-rights lawyers, support staff and activists. Most of them were soon released, but around 40 were kept in custody. They included Mr Li (pictured, left, on a mobile phone held by his wife during her dogged campaign for his release). His jailers did not use his name: as “Number 108” he spent six months in solitary confinement on military bases. For eight weeks he was made to stand each day in a single stress position. Beatings were common. He was forced to take pills, purportedly for high blood pressure (a condition he does not suffer from), that left him drowsy and gave him muscle pain and blurry vision. In the end Mr Li was lucky—he received a suspended sentence for “subversion of state power”, and was set free last month.
Since he took over as China’s leader in 2012, Xi Jinping has often pledged to improve the rule of law. There have been some positive results. Professional standards have improved in some spheres, particularly in commercial law. Lower-level courts have gained greater independence from local governments. In May 2015 a new procedure made it far easier to file suits. Since then, the number of court cases has increased by a third compared with the previous two years, say state media.
But in any area where the rule of law is in contest with the power of the Communist Party, it is the party that wins. It has no truck with people like Mr Li, who has not only represented the weak and dispossessed, such as farmers thrown off their land, but also people whose beliefs the party finds threatening: house-church Christians and followers of Falun Gong, a banned religious sect. Other rights lawyers have found themselves in court for offending officials. The party demands that the legal system shore up the party’s control. In January China’s highest-ranking judge denounced the idea of an independent judiciary as a “false Western” one.
In Mao’s day people like Mr Li would have been shot or sent to labour camps. Now the party is trying to appear more respectable. In recent years it has abolished the once standard practice of sending lesser offenders to labour camps without trial. It has also tightened rules on obtaining evidence through torture. But that has had little effect. In February 2016 the UN said the use of torture was “deeply entrenched” in China’s criminal-justice system, which it said relied too much on confessions rather than evidence. China, unconvincingly, has rejected allegations of torture by Mr Li and several of his fellow lawyers. It calls their accounts “fake news”.
As the second anniversary of the round-up of legal activists approaches, the government appears close to wrapping up their cases. Only four of them remain in custody. They face serious charges, including of subversion. Officials are refusing to allow visits to one of them, Wang Quanzhang (whose photograph is displayed by his wife on the right of the picture).
Those who have been released remain under intense scrutiny. Police guard the entrance to Mr Li’s door round the clock and monitor all his communications. Some lawyers have been forced to move to different cities with their families. Most of them have been disbarred.
Rights lawyers are used to harassment by police. Now their families have to endure similar treatment. Mr Li’s seven-year-old daughter finds that no school will accept her. Mr Wang’s four-year-old son is similarly shunned by kindergartens. The two men’s wives are often detained; Mr Wang’s says that on one occasion she was hit by police and later forced to strip naked and told to say “hello” into cameras. Mr Li’s relatives cannot renew their identity cards or passports. Some rights lawyers who remained free in 2015 are not allowed to leave the country.
The government has launched a public campaign to discredit the lawyers and their families. State media have accused them of causing serious social disorder, with financial backing from abroad; lawyers’ confessions, almost certainly given under duress, have been aired on national television. (A foreign diplomat says that in conversations with him, some Chinese officials refer to the lawyers as “scum”).
But the lawyers and their families are not entirely cowed. Though police warn relatives to keep quiet about those detained, some family members have formed a strong, outspoken group which is campaigning for legal reform in China. In May four wives testified to America’s Congress about what they called China’s “war on law”.
That war is making it more difficult to defend civil rights in court. It is part of a wider campaign to silence those who fight for labour rights, organise resistance to polluting factories, or who fight expropriation of their land. Each year thousands of such people are harassed or detained.
Sporting their detained husbands’ names
Under Mr Xi, the space for loyal dissent has been shrinking. Now even those who do not directly challenge the party’s right to rule (the lawyers rarely do) risk being treated as subversives. And the government is using the law to crush them. In the past two years it has published a raft of security-related legislation, including a proposed version released in May of what is called the National Intelligence Law. These bills offer a vague and extremely broad definition of behaviour that threatens national security. One civil-rights lawyer in Beijing says he is still free to practise but finds it hard to imagine a legal system in China that offers true protection for the rights of individuals. Rule of law is an “empty slogan”, he says: “The law is a tool of the authorities.”
A decade ago some observers in China were more optimistic. Rights lawyers were emerging as a powerful new voice in defence of those who felt marginalised and downtrodden. Officials’ tolerance of such lawyers suggested they were becoming more enlightened. Repressing them has extinguished many people’s hopes that the party might allow itself to be held to greater account before the law.
