IAPL: Authorities in China target volunteer lawyers helping anti-lockdown protesters

State security police seek out lawyers who offered to represent detained anti-lockdown protesters pro bono.

State security police across China have been questioning lawyers who volunteered to help people arrested during recent anti-lockdown protests, with some withdrawing from the scheme due to political pressure from the authorities, Radio Free Asia has learned.

Chinese human rights lawyers have been scrambling to assist the friends and families of people arrested during a wave of anti-lockdown protests at the end of November, many of whom have little experience being treated as dissidents by Chinese authorities.

Lawyer Wang Shengsheng, who compiled and published a list of dozens of attorneys offering to volunteer to help people detained for protesting China’s “zero-COVID” restrictions or mourning the victims of a Nov. 24 lockdown fire in Xinjiang’s regional capital, Urumqi, said state security police had starting investigating her after she started helping detained protesters.

Wang, who hails from the central city of Zhengzhou but works for a law firm based in the southern city of Guangzhou, said the city’s justice bureau had turned up at her law firm and taken away all of the files linked to previous cases she has represented.

“They sent people from the judicial bureau’s [Communist Party] committee,” she told RFA on Tuesday. “They were checking whether my records were in order, for example, we need to sign a contract when taking a new case, and issue a receipt when we receive our fees.”

“They’re trying to find some [error] they can pick up on, also whether or not I have taken any politically sensitive cases,” Wang said. “They are deliberately trying to catch me making a mistake.”

“The reason behind it was the fact that I offered pro bono legal advice … I don’t know why they think that was such a bad thing to do that they need to put pressure on me via my law firm,” she said, adding that the state security police had also contacted her.

“The Zhengzhou state security police came looking for me, because I’m in Zhengzhou right now,” Wang said.

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https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/china-protests-lawyers-12062022164132.html

https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/watch-chinese-human-rights-lawyer-yu-wensheng-his-wife-kept-under-house-arrest-by-men-in-hazmat-suits/ar-AA14Jb5N

https://statenewswire.com/stories/636094273-human-rights-lawyer-detained-for-three-years-without-trial

https://www.scmp.com/comment/article/3201964/banning-overseas-lawyers-security-cases-drastic-step

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2022/12/02/hong-kongs-judicial-system-has-been-debased.html

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-06/hong-kong-threat-to-move-jimmy-lai-case-to-china-revives-fears

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/blank-pages-china-protest-1.6668661

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/12/1/hong-kongs-courts-under-scrutiny-as-beijing-rewrites-rules

https://29principles.uk/en/contents/foreign-lawyers%E2%80%99-right-offer-legal-representation-and-independence-legal-profession-hong