Note: These are the remarks I made at the Columbus School of Law, Catholic University of America in Washington, DC on September 19, in conjunction with a screening of the documentary “The Defenders: 20 Years of Human Rights Lawyers in China”, organized by the Center for Human Rights, the Center for Law & Human Person, and the Center for Religious Liberty of the university. – Yaxue Cao
Friends, ladies and gentlemen,
Thank you all for this occasion and thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. Thank you for coming.
Eleven years ago, when I started the ChinaChange.org website, I went through an intense learning period. At the time, I had already lived in the U.S. for twenty years. Among the first things I read was the story of a human rights lawyer, whose name is Gao Zhisheng. In an article titled “Dark Night, Dark Hood, Kidnapped to a Dark Underworld,” he detailed how secret police snatched him away and the horrific torture he was subjected to. It was a surreal reading for me, even though I grew up in Communist China and had lived long enough to know a thing or two about its atrocities. I can still recall that sensation of being catapulted into a realm that I didn’t know existed. Then I was hit by a pang of guilt: I was ashamed of my blithe ignorance and moral failure. Gao Zhisheng’s essay was written in 2007, on my visits around that time, I saw gleaming new skyscrapers and highways, bustling construction sites for the 2008 Olympics; I enjoyed friends and family, fine food, and made excursions to remote Great Wall sites. But I had no idea that somewhere in a basement, a brave lawyer was being beaten, urinated on, his genitals being pricked by toothpicks for speaking up against the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners.
He is a Christian, defending the religious freedom of a Buddhist group.
Rights defense lawyers emerged in China in the early 2000s. They are the first generation of human rights lawyers. Gao Zhisheng is one of them. They were a small band of lawyers who had taken it upon themselves to defend dissidents, journalists, believers, private entrepreneurs, farmers whose homes and land had been forcefully expropriated to make way for government backed developers, victims of poisoned infant milk powder, women’s rights, workers’ rights, victims of workplace and other forms of discrimination. They fought, often for years on end with little pay, to correct wrongful convictions. In some cases, they even defended communist party officials who found themselves in desperate need of due process. In Beijing, they sought to directly elect the Beijing Lawyers Association with no avail.
The communist regime doesn’t like them. Punishment has followed on the heels of these lawyers, as in the case of Gao Zhisheng and many others, in many forms.
But before we get to that, I think a brief orientation regarding the Chinese lawyers’ unique position in China’s judicial system is called for.
The Unwinnable Position of Lawyers, Especially Criminal Defense Lawyers, in China’s Judicial System
