National Post (National Edition)
Secret trial of rights lawyer backfires in China
Swift, scripted proceeding off the rails
BEIJING • For more than 1,200 days, the Chinese government sought to build a case against Wang Quanzhang as it held him incommunicado in secretive jails, denying him visits from his family and the lawyers he asked for.
On the day of his trial, Wang struck back: he denied the government a quick verdict.
A Chinese court in the city of Tianjin said Wednesday it held a hearing behind closed doors for Wang, one of the country’s prominent civil rights lawyers, and could not immediately reveal the verdict because “state secrets were involved.”
The real reason for the hiccup, Wang’s supporters say, was more embarrassing for the authorities: Wang fired his government-appointed lawyer soon after his trial began, throwing a wrench into what were supposed to be swift and scripted proceedings.
Four years after President Xi Jinping exhorted the Communist Party to strengthen the rule of law, international observers say the persecution of legal professionals like Wang shows the party-state moving in the other direction. In October, the United Nations human rights council criticized Wang’s detention and called for his release.
Firing his lawyer was Wang’s way “to show defiance, the only way he can to not let the Chinese Communist Party have its way,” said Peter Dahlin, a Swedish human rights activist who was a longtime friend and collaborator of Wang’s.
“The government tried to make this happen with minimal attention from diplomatic missions and the media,” he added. “Obviously, this backfired spectacularly.”
Wang, 42, attracted Beijing’s ire by helping train and fund a grassroots network of legal advocates with Dahlin in 2009 to organize lawsuits and protests to fight land grabs and police brutality. He was rounded up as part of what became known as the “7-09 crackdown,” when the government on July 9, 2015, seized more than 200 lawyers and activists.
When police notified Li Wenzu, Wang’s wife, that he was being held for serious crimes, they could not disclose his location, citing national security considerations. Since his arrest, seven different defence lawyers appointed by the family — as well as Li herself — have been denied visiting rights, she said.
“My husband was always an innocent man,” Li said. “They violated the law for so long, by illegally arresting him, by illegally detaining him for three-and-a-half years, by illegally denying him lawyers, that now they’re scared to have even an open court because it would expose the truth — that this is all illegal. That’s why they choose this excuse that the case touches national security.”
Arguing that the legal defence network was fanning popular unrest to destabilize the government, China systematically tried and sentenced more than a halfdozen of Wang’s peers and associates to five to eight years on subversion-related charges. Some were tried in show trials made for television, in which defendants read from printed scripts. Other prosecutions turned on confessional interviews taped for the state broadcaster China Central Television. Dahlin, the Swede, was detained in early 2016 and released and deported after being forced to film a confession for CCTV. But Wang, the last holdout of the “7-09” detainees, has not given any indications that he intends to co-operate with his prosecutors, and starting from dawn on Wednesday, neither did his supporters.
At 5 a.m., a dozen plainclothes security agents blocked Li as she tried to leave her Beijing home to attend her husband’s trial in Tianjin 128 kilometres away.
By afternoon, authorities had also blocked Western diplomats from attending the hearing, intercepted activists who were travelling from remote provinces to voice support for Wang, and stuffed a demonstrator calling for free elections and Wang’s release into a black vehicle outside the courthouse while foreign news cameras rolled.
By evening, word emerged that a decision would be pushed back, without clear signals that the trial had wrapped up at all.
Li and a group of wives of detained “7-09” lawyers have become savvy media campaigners, holding publicity stunts that Chinese authorities appear to loathe, yet generally treat with a light touch.
In April, Li and her friends walked almost 100 kilometres to Tianjin to demand answers about her locked-up husband before being turned back. A month later, German Chancellor Angela Merkel invited her to a meeting during a trip in Beijing as a gesture of support.
With a conclusion to her husband’s ordeal still out of sight, Li said she would continue to demand access to his court hearings or to visit.
“As a wife I have the right to know the truth,” she said. “All I can do is persist. I will persist until I cannot anymore.”
NOW THEY’RE SCARED TO HAVE EVEN AN OPEN COURT.