Chinese lawyers trapped by obeying China』s laws

Heng He

When China finally achieves the rule of law, the case of Mr. Tang Jitian and Mr. Liu Wei will be remembered as one of the battles in a long struggle.

On May 7, Tang and Liu each received phone calls from legal authorities in Beijing informing them that their legal licenses had been permanently revoked.

This is not a surprise. They had received notice from the Beijing Municipal Justice Bureau on April 12 informing them that their licenses were going to be revoked for 「disturbing the court order and interfering with the regular litigation process.」

The charges referred to events that took place one year ago, in the trial of Falun Gong practitioner Mr. Yang Ming on April 27, 2009, in Luzhou City, in Sichuan Province.

According to Tang and Liu, the judge was late the day of the trial. During the trial, the judge interrupted and stopped their defence more than 10 times. In the court, there was an unidentified man who was videotaping the trial, especially the defence lawyers.

When Liu and Tang pointed out to the judge that filming in the court was against the law and protested, the judge didn』t do anything to stop the illegal recording. The lawyers felt that their client』s legal rights were being violated and decided to leave the courtroom in order to protect their client. Before they left, they submitted the written defence argument. Witnesses of the trial confirmed the lawyers』 story.

Obviously, Luzhou Intermediate Court was in the wrong, from the viewpoint of either the law or of common sense. However, the Chinese have an expression for the Luzhou Court』s response—「the bad guy complains first.」 In May 2009, it filed a complaint to the Beijing Municipal Justice Bureau, asking the two lawyers be punished for 「disturbing the court order.」

Mission Impossible

This story started with the Beijing Olympics. With the excuse of providing security for the Olympics, there were mass arrests of Falun Gong practitioners in China in 2008. According to the name list submitted to the United Nations by the Falun Gong Human Rights Working Group, more than 10 thousand Falun Gong practitioners were detained or arrested.

After the Olympics, most of those arrested were not released. Instead, they were tried and sentenced to jail terms, or simply put in the forced labour camps without trial.

Yang Ming was one of them. He was abducted on March 13, 2008. Ten months later, the Jiangyang District Court of Luzhou City secretly tried Yang and sentenced him to five years in jail.

The court did not make a public announcement of the trial and did not notify the family, steps it is required by law to take. Yang appealed to the Luzhou Intermediate Court. That』s how Tang and Liu got involved in the case.

The court faced a 「mission impossible.」 On the one hand, the 610 Office—the office created by then-paramount leader Jiang Zemin for the purpose of eradicating Falun Gong—had circulated a memo in February 2009 warning courts that a verdict of 「not guilty」 was not allowed in the trials of Falun Gong practitioners.

On the other hand, the judge had no legal basis to rule against Yang, and the prosecutor also had no legal basis to make the necessary arguments in court. In order to keep his job, the only alternative the judge had was simply to break the law in public. So he did.

At least Tang and Liu did not get beaten. In similar cases around the same time, Beijing-based human rights lawyers did get beaten. In Chengdu in April 2009 when Cheng Hai met his Falun Gong client and in Chongqing when Li Chunfu and Zhang Kai met their Falun Gong client, they were beaten up by the local 610 officers and law enforcement personnel.

The local authorities faced the same dilemma as the judge in Luzhou City. They could not afford to lose the case but knew the law as written was not on their side. Beating the lawyers seemed to the officials to be a reasonable choice.

Systematically Breaking the Law

Lawyers like Tang and Liu choose to defend Falun Gong practitioners in part because they want to argue that the Chinese state should have to obey its own laws. In defending practitioners, the lawyers are seeking to make the case for China』s own legal system.

After having apparently made some progress toward adopting the forms of law, the authorities started systemically breaking the law following the persecution of Falun Gong in July 1999. Since then, arbitrary arrests, the wide use of forced labour without trial, illegal detentions (including 「black jails」—secret jails where individuals are often held without benefit of trial or charges), and brainwashing centres have been common practices in China, both inside and outside the legal system.

Behind all these abuses is the invisible hand of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In Yang』s trial, when the judge, Mr. Li Xudong, was uncertain how he should react, he would look at a certain person in the audience to get approval. Sometimes, the judge struck the gavel to stop the defence lawyer』s statement right after he heard this person cough.

Who was that person the judge must obey, following his every order? He shouldn』t have been another judge and was obviously not from the court. If this mysterious man had been another judge, it would have been much easier just to replace the judge with the 「trusted」 and 「qualified」 one before the trial.

Then who could this individual be, who was not the judge but overpowered the judge, or even overpowered the legal system in Luzhou City? He had to be from the Political and Legal Committee of the CCP Committee or the 610 Office, which is also a CCP organisation.

When the CCP decided to establish a modern legal system after the Cultural Revolution, it didn』t realise that one day the system could apply to itself. To avoid this situation, it has only the choices of breaking the law, silencing the lawyers, or both.

In China, the police, the courts, the prosecutor, and the judge are all on the same side. Within the whole legal community, only some lawyers are not totally on the side of the CCP.

Because individual lawyers like Tang and Liu stand out, we see them get persecuted and punished. In the future, Tang and Liu will carry the order revoking their licenses as a badge of honour, a testament to their service to the Chinese people.