May 28 2009
the reward for doing human rights work? get disbarred.
The New York Lawyer had an article yesterday entitled “ Chinese Lawyers Could Be Disbarred for Taking Human Rights Cases“. It should come as no surprise to most readers that stuff like this happens in China. I wasn’t all that surprised. The only interesting twist? Its the judiciary in China that is threatening to disbar attorneys who take up human rights issues. More after the jump.
The article reads:
China’s judiciary is warning law firms to rein in lawyers who take up human rights and other politically sensitive cases, lawyers said Wednesday, increasing the pressure in a government campaign that has so far failed to curb growing legal activism.
Lawyers said authorities had met or talked on the phone with senior members of at least nine law firms in recent weeks, urging them to not seek the renewal of licenses for certain lawyers or to submit partial applications that would allow authorities to reject them on technicalities.
If carried through, the disbarments would mark the broadest effort in recent years by China’s authoritarian government to rein in a growing number of activist lawyers.
“Before they used to pressure individuals but now they have turned to this more systematic method,” said Tang Jitian, whose employer, the Anhui Law Firm in Beijing, was among those warned. “The justice departments say the lawyers who defend human rights are inharmonious or unstable elements, but I think they are the ones who are unstable.”
Wow, so instead of going after the individual lawyer, they are going after the entire law firm. Which of course, makes sense. If you want to scare someone, scare his employer into a blame game. It works well, unfortunately. (The Chinese government has used this tactic before) That way, the government does not have to ask you to stop. Your boss does. Dirty, but effective.
I do also find it ironic that human rights advocates are considered to be not-so-harmonious to a harmonious society. After all, their job to help the poor and underprivileged and neglected get legal help. They advocate for the voiceless against the powers that be. Harmonious only seems to be when the government has absolute rule that creates “harmony” I suppose. But it is ironic, because a harmonious society in China (which is an admirable goal, don’t get me wrong) really requires that the downtrodden have someone to speak up for them, so that they can enjoy harmony with others as well.
While lawyers have had their credentials pulled in the past, threats, beatings and other acts of intimidation have been common.
“There is a concerted effort to retaliate against lawyers who have taken some of the most sensitive cases in recent months and years,” Bequelin said. “The purpose is to deter all lawyers from taking those type of cases.”
Among those facing disbarment is a lawyer for a noted Tibetan Buddhist monk and others who have defended practitioners of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement or helped parents whose children died in last year’s devastating earthquake in Sichuan province. Many children were killed in schools that parents and others say were fundamentally unsafe due to corruption, cost-cutting and poor design.
The warnings are especially chilling because they coincide with the license renewal period for both law firms and lawyers.
Lawyers said the implicit message was that firms should sabotage the applications of their “problem lawyers,” or risk having their firm’s license or the licenses of other employees rejected. The easiest ways for a firm to lose an employee, without having to fire them, are to submit incomplete accreditation paperwork or an unfavorable performance review, or to simply not submit an application at all, they said.
Tang, who has defended farmers against rural land grabs and challenged police detention without trials, said if his license was not renewed by Sunday, he would be barred from working.
At least 20 other lawyers spread across nine firms have reported the same delays in getting their licenses renewed, Tang and other lawyers said.
“The lawyers we are talking about have shown they are not deterred by administrative or political interference or threats or physical violence,” said Bequelin, the Human Rights Watch researcher.
Again, it’s a scary situation for a law firm to have this sort of threat levied against it. What will this lead to? Probably law firms screening their recruits far more carefully, and making sure any political dissident never crosses their doors. Who wants to get disbarred for hiring a problem attorney with a bleeding heart? No one. It’s a good way to cause a chilling effect.
Of course, I feel sad for my brethren who have to go through this. Now that I am working in the NGO sector, I find the work to be just as interesting and to know it has social benefit is a great motivator. Knowing that more will be deterred from this sort of path is pretty sad.
A harmonious society would want such suits to go through. If you have to punish people to make them behave, well that’s only a shell of harmony, but it’s not real. Have these people made a conscious decision to look scummy? There are much better and more discrete ways to handle things you don’t like.
Agreed with that statement, though for some, even the idea of lawsuits does not seem harmonious. In an ideal society, we would have rational discussions that avoid lawsuits… but in my mind, I agree that lawsuits (when used properly and not completely abused) are a good way to enforce harmonious society.