Published 14 Januray 2021 they write..
On 19 January 2020, the Henan Provincial Judicial Department will hold a hearing in Zhengzhou, at the request of human rights lawyer Ren Quanniu (???), who will challenge the authorities’ decision to initiate the process to revoke his lawyer’s license in response to his human rights work.
Ren Quanniu (???) is a human rights lawyer based in Zhengzhou, Henan province in central China. He has provided legal assistance to detained or prosecuted human rights defenders and journalists, including Ding Lingjie, Zhen Jianghua, and Zhang Zhan. He has also defended individuals who faced prosecution due to their religious affiliations, including Falun Gong followers. In 2016, he was placed under criminal detention for almost a month after he publicly called on the local police to investigate allegations that his client, woman human rights defender Zhao Wei, was ill-treated in a detention centre.
In 2020, Ren Quanniu was hired to defend one of the 12 Hong Kong youth activists who were intercepted by Chinese authorities in August 2020 while fleeing to Taiwan by boat, but the authorities refused to allow him to meet his client and repeatedly threatened him in a bid to force him to abandon the case. Lu Siwei, another human rights lawyer who also represented one of the Hong Kong activists, is also facing revocation of his license and attended a hearing in Chengdu on 13 January to challenge the decision. On 28 December 2020, The European Union criticised the trial and subsequent sentencing of ten of the Hong Kong activists for not respecting the defendants’ fair trial and due process rights, including the right to appoint legal counsel of their choice.
In early January 2021, Ren Quanniu received two official notices, both dated 31 December 2020, from the Henan Provincial Judicial Department informing him that it opened an investigation on 21 December 2020 into his conduct. The Department indicated it has decided to initiate the process to revoke his license as an “administrative punishment” for his actions during a trial in November 2018 where he was legal counsel to an individual prosecuted for “using a cult to harm the implementation of laws”, a trumped-up charge often used to target members of religious groups not approved by the government.
[…]
https://www.rfi.fr/en/lawyer-who-handled-hong-kong-12-case-loses-legal-licence
