We reported last week on Beijing law firm Yitong. Closed down by authorities because officially they had hired an "unlicensed lawyer"..unofficially because a number of their lawyers supported direct (democratic) elections to the Beijing Bar.
Christian Newswire… updates the story and provides more details than we’ve otherwise come across as yet.
They write:
Yitong Law Firm Closed for Defending Human Rights Cases
BEIJING, Mar. 6 /Christian Newswire/ — On March 3, a hearing was held for the Beijing Yitong Law Firm which is being forced to shut down for six months by the Haidian District Judicial Bureau. ChinaAid sources say the reason behind the forced closure is that authorities are punishing the firm because some of its attorneys signed an open letter in August 2008 asking that independent candidates be allowed to run in the election of the leadership of the Beijing Lawyers Association [equivalent to the U.S. Bar Association], and because the firm has provided representation for a number of human rights cases, including cases of persecution against house church Christians.
Only Li Jisong, the director of the law firm, was allowed to attend the public hearing on March 3 at 9:30 a.m. in North Room B101, Office Area No. 1 of Haidian District People’s Government of Beijing Municipality (Address: 17, Changchunqiao Road, Haidian District, Beijing). The other 12 lawyers and workers from the firm were forbidden to attend the hearing, even though the hearing was public and they filed official request forms asking permission to attend immediately after receiving the hearing notice on February 23. The government officials said there was no room, because all the seats were filled by February 25. In fact, the government deliberately filled all the seats with Haidian District Bureau of Justice officials. Presiding over the two-hour hearing was a committee organized by the Bureau of Justice. The committee has not yet released a decision.
The government says the forced closure is because the firm allowed Christian attorney, Li Subin, to practice law without a license. However, the firm says that Li Subin, who worked as deputy director of the firm, served only in administrative duties and acted as a legal advisor. Although he has been a fully qualified and licensed attorney since 1991, he never acted as an attorney at the firm because the government refused to renew his license after he brought a lawsuit in 2001 against the Louyang City Bureau of Justice and Louyang Bar Association for collecting illegal lawyer license registration fees. Even though Li Subin won the suit, his license has been refused renewal ever since, and he has had no explanation from authorities for the reason.
The forced closure of the firm is the most recent in a series of government tactics to shut down the firm in order to stop their human rights defense work. In October, government officials pressured the firm to fire some of their attorneys, including Li Subin, because they signed the open letter asking for the free election of the leadership of Beijing Lawyers Association. The implication for a free election is that the member lawyers would be able to choose their own leadership rather than accept the leaders the government chooses.
A Chinese news source (www.canyu.org), interviewed Attorney Liu Xiaoyuan of Yitong Law Firm. Attorney Liu said that the law firm will defend itself on the basis of the following three aspects: 1) Haidian District Bureau of Justice is not qualified to impose the administrative penalty of forcing the law firm to close for six months. 2) Li Subin did not act as an attorney in the firm’s cases; he was only involved as a legal advisor. 3) Even if the charge was legitimate, the penalty of closing down the law firm for six months is not fair or just. In similar cases, the penalty is generally a warning, an order for improvement, or a fine.
