China targets critics, lawyers
ANALYSIS: The country’s new hard-line regime is arresting critics and harassing, even assaulting, their counsel, writes MALCOLM MOORE.
CBEIJING hina’s president has accelerated the country’s descent into a police state by arresting scores of critics and targeting their lawyers following a Communist Party edict banning all discussion of western values.
Six months after Xi Jinping became president, he has confounded hopes that he might tread a more liberal and constitutional path.
Instead, his administration has cast China into an existential battle against seven western dangers, including universal values, such as press freedom, civil society and judicial independence. Not only have these topics been made taboo on university campuses, but a recent internal Communist Party memo warned officials that these subversions could lead to the country’s collapse.
China’s main evening news bulletin Tuesday night devoted its first eight minutes to Xi’s speech at a national conference on propaganda and ideological work. Xi underlined that cadres “must resolutely maintain unity with the Communist Party’s Central Committee” and help people draw a “clear line between right and wrong”.
In a sign of Xi’s determination to quash all constitutional debate, China’s vast and well-funded security apparatus has been encouraged to arrest all government critics and harass — and in some cases assault — their lawyers.
In July at least 44 lawyers were obstructed, detained or beaten up while trying to represent their clients, according to records compiled by the solicitors and seen by The London Daily Telegraph.
“I took a case in Hainan province recently, but when I tried to visit my client with a group of lawyers I was stopped at my hotel by the People’s Armed Police [the paramilitary wing of the police force] and forced to leave the province,” said Sui Muqing, a lawyer from the southern city of Guangzhou.
“My colleagues tried to check into another hotel but within five minutes the same thing happened,” he said. “This kind of thing has never happened before and it is very disturbing.”
Cheng Hai, a lawyer from Beijing, said he had taken a case in the city of Dalian, representing 13 people who had illegally installed satellite dishes to watch broadcasts funded by the Falun Gong, a banned quasi-spiritual movement.
“When we got to Dalian, the police searched our hotel rooms without a warrant,” he said. “On Aug. 2, as I left the intermediate court in Xigang, I was beaten up by police, who put me in a choke hold. On Aug. 15, when I went to the detention cells to see my clients, I was beaten up again. The police said they had orders from their captain.”
Cheng said he had been assaulted by police in the past, but that the situation “is definitely getting worse.”
“There are many more horrors in the future,” predicted Liu Weiguo, who represents Xu Zhiyong, another lawyer who has been arrested for advocating “constitutionalism,” the idea that the Communist Party’s power should be limited by China’s existing constitution. At least 50 and perhaps as many as 100 people have been arrested for supporting constitutionalism.
“Whenever a lawyer wants to take a case, he is at risk,” said Liu. “No one is trying to limit police power, they can do anything they like.”
Li Fangping, a human rights lawyer in Beijing, pointed to a document issued by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, China’s top prosecutors’ office, in June calling for the police to hunt down any “illegal assembly” or “crowdgathering.”
Li said the document from the prosecutors’ office “has gone beyond the rule of law.”