This is a must read for anybody interested in the role of lawyers in China in 2010. One short statement says it all… Careers of 11 of 14 featured lawyers? (From Article in HK’s Asia Week magazine) have run into serious trouble.
Here’s the introduction to the article – we do suggest you link through and read it all
http://www.smh.com.au/business/flickering-light-of-chinas-legal-reform-20101206-18mx6.html
Flickering light of China’s legal reform
A year ago I showed one of the doyens of China’s civil rights lawyers, Mo Shaoping, a back copy of Hong Kong’s Asia Week magazine. He was one of 14 of China’s leading lawyers pictured on its cover. “They fully deserve to be Asia Week’s ‘People of the Year’ because in 2005 they have brought dazzling light to institutional reform,” the inside story said.
Between that article, in 2005, and my conversation with Mo, in November 2009, the careers of 11 of the 14 featured lawyers had run into serious trouble. One of them, Gao Zhisheng, publicly wrote about how he had been badly tortured. He has now “been disappeared” for most of the past two years.
A few of the 14 lawyers got together that night to reminisce. “Now it’s only me, Pu Zhiqiang and Fan Yafeng,” Mo said. “The others are either in jail or have had their licences removed.”
Law, politics and corruption are tangled so tightly together in China that it is impossible to invest faith in any given legal outcome. Criminal proceedings are commonly used as leverage in commercial disputes.