基督教科学箴言报：中国打压人权律师

yangfuguang

【网址】http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0225/p01s01-woap.html
【译文】

中国打压人权律师

北京一家为著名活动家辩护的事务所被关闭。代理人在别处被拘留或审判。

北京报道——北京一家最突出的人权律师事务所在和政府的关闭命令斗争，因为当局加强对令人讨厌的律师的打压。据管理合伙人李劲松（音）说，在下个星期的听证会上，处在几个引起高度关注的政治案件中心的易通（音）律师事务所将会因为长达六个月的停业问题向当地司法部门提起上诉。

李先生说：“那会害死公司的。他们歪曲事实……为了复仇”，因为事务所的律师曾经批评或反抗政府部门”。

关闭命令被积极分子们认为是不可能在听证会上别推翻的，香港的中国人权律师关注组织主席Albert Ho说，这是恐吓和镇压那些为人权和公共利益服务的律师，这实在是很严重的事件。

易通公司因为维护几个中国最有名的反对者而出名，包括去年被欧洲议会授予人权最高奖、最近因煽动颠覆而被判处三年刑罚的胡佳。

这家公司也因为用法律武器为宣称受当局不公待遇的人谋利益而出名。

易通是‘权利维护组织’的领袖，通过它们“越来越多的市民拿起法律的武器作为补偿他们被侵犯的权利的工具”，中国2007年一份人权报告这么写道，它来自于纽约的一个观察组织。结果是，据报告说，越来越多的律师因为为那些人辩护而遭到攻击。

公司所在地的北京海淀区的一位司法部门的女发言人说，她不能对易通的案件做评论，因为它还没有最终裁决。

有计划的恐吓系统

李先生说，关闭命令是因为公司雇用了一名没有从事律师资格证书的员工。他否认了指控，说那名雇员从事管理工作而不是法律事务。

这个陈述却强调了中国法律实践的一个主要障碍。

律师遇到了麻烦，李素斌（音）是这家公司的前副总干事，在河南首府部门延长他的资格证时被否定了，他刚刚和当地的司法部门为它的收费太高而打了一场官司，并且赢了。当他搬到北京时，河南当局拒绝移交他的档案，使得他没有办法再从事法律事业。

中国律师必须每年审核他们的证书，批评者说，这给当局一个给他们施加压力的机会。 Ho先生说，那是一个恐吓的系统。

李劲松说，在反对上海警察，北京一个资深法官，铁道部部长后，不管是在法庭或公开谴责他们，“很多权力部门讨厌我”。

他指出：“我们在很多案件中给当局带来挑战，他们杀鸡给猴看呢，通过关闭我们来压制其他律师”。

同时他说，很多律师在积极推进要求北京律师协会自由选举领导人的运动，那是一个国家掌控的地方机构。

在该协会去年九月发布的严厉声明中，警告说这个运动是‘违法的’，‘违反现阶段中国管理律师的体系，司法体系，甚至政治部门后，李要求他的几个积极的同事从易通辞职

他说：“我这样做是为了挽救公司，挽救他们”。尽管这个举动看起来并没有阻止关闭。

如果司法当局坚持国家控制这个协会的选举，中国人权的主管Albert Ho担心：“这将对律师独立发展的能力带来麻烦的问题”。

她补充说：“我们不得不问，没有独立的行业协会，如何捍卫权利”。

中国最近在自己人权记录方面展示了好斗性。北京非常气愤地否定了联合国禁止酷刑委员会的一份批评报告里的所有指控，拒绝其他国家在联合国人权委员会审视其人权记录时给予的建议。

Hom先生说：“在国际上，中国否认有任何问题，在国内，对于那些指出问题的人予以严厉处罚”。.

遭遇麻烦的律师人数在上升

易通的伙伴只是最近不断遭受中国当局打压的律师中的最新受害者。

自己的律师事务所在05年被当局关闭的高智晟（音）在三个星期前被警察从家里带走之后就再也没有见到了。袁贤臣(音)曾经帮助土地维权，上个月因‘颠覆人民争权’被审判。郑恩宠（音），权利辩护的老兵，因在公开要求国内改革的08宪章签字而被软禁。

Ho说：“这表明距离中国领导人说的法治目标还有一段距离”。律师被要求顺从这个系统，任何不服从的将会冒着被惩罚的危险。

【原文】

China cracks down on human rights lawyersA Beijing firm known for defending famous activists is told to close. Attorneys elsewhere have been detained or tried.By Peter Ford | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the February 25, 2009 edition

Beijing - One of China's most prominent human rights law firms is fighting a government closure order, as authorities here step up a crackdown on troublesome lawyers.

At a hearing next week the Yitong law firm, which has been at the center of several high-profile political cases, will appeal a ruling by a local Justice Department in Beijing suspending the practice for six months, according to managing partner Li Jinsong.

"That would kill the firm," says Mr. Li. "They are distorting facts ... to get revenge" for the way the firm's lawyers have criticized or defied government agencies, he charges.

The closure order, which activists here say is unlikely to be overturned at the hearing, is part of "a wider effort to stifle and intimidate lawyers who aspire to defend human rights and the public interest," says Albert Ho, chairman of the China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group in Hong Kong. "This is really a very serious matter."

The Yitong partnership is well known for having represented some of China's most famous dissidents, including Hu Jia, an AIDS activist who received the European Parliament's top human rights award last year and is now serving a three-year sentence for inciting subversion.

The firm also has a reputation for taking up legal cudgels on behalf of ordinary citizens who claim to have been mistreated by the authorities.

Yitong has been a leading light in the "rights defense movement," through which "increasing numbers of citizens are using the legal system as a means of redress for violations of their rights," states a 2007 report by Human Rights in China, a New York-based watchdog group.

The result, according to the report, is that "lawyers are increasingly being attacked for defending them."

A spokeswoman for the Justice Department in Haidian, the Beijing district where the firm is headquartered, says she could not comment on the Yitong case because it had not yet been finally decided.

A system 'designed to intimidate'

Mr. Li, however, says the closure order accuses his firm of illegally employing a lawyer who does not have a professional license to practice law. He denies the charge, saying the employee dealt only with administrative, not legal matters.

The allegation, however, underscores a major hindrance to the practice of law in China.

The lawyer in question, Li Subin, a former deputy director of the firm, was denied the chance to renew his professional license by the provincial authorities in Henan, whose judicial bureau he had successfully sued for overcharging.

The Henan authorities' refusal to process Li Subin's paperwork when he moved to Beijing made it impossible for him to practice law.

Chinese lawyers must renew their licenses every year, a regulation that critics say offers officials great scope to put pressure on them. "The system is designed to intimidate," argues Mr. Ho.

Li Jinsong says that after having gone up against the Shanghai police, a senior Beijing judge, and the Minister of Railways among others, either in court or in forthright public denunciations, "a lot of powerful officials hate me."

"We have been involved in many cases that challenged the authorities," he points out. "They are killing the chicken to warn the monkeys," he says, "trying to close us down to suppress other lawyers."

At the same time, he says, a number of lawyers in his practice have been very vocal in a campaign to hold free elections for the leadership of the Beijing Law Association, the state-controlled local bar.

After the association issued a "stern statement" last September warning that the campaign was "illegal" and "a total repudiation of China's current [system for managing lawyers], judicial system, and even political system," Li asked several of his activist colleagues to resign from Yitong.

"I did it to save the law firm and to save them," he says now, though the gesture does not appear to have been enough to prevent the closure.

If the judicial authorities insist on stage-managed elections to the bar, "it raises very troubling questions about the capacity for independent lawyers to develop in China," worries Sharon Hom, executive director of Human Rights in China.

"We have to ask whether it is possible to defend rights if there is no independent bar association," she adds.

China has appeared truculent recently in the face of challenges to its human rights record. Beijing reacted to a critical report by the UN Committee Against Torture last November by angrily denying all the charges, and rejected almost all the recommendations that other countries made during a review of its record earlier this month by the UN Human Rights Council.

"Internationally, China denies there is any problem, and domestically it takes punitive action against those who point out the problems," says Ms. Hom.

A growing list of lawyers in trouble

Yitong's partners are the latest casualties in a growing list of rights lawyers to have suffered at the hands of the Chinese authorities.

Gao Zhisheng, whose own law firm was closed by official fiat in 2005, has not been seen since police took him from his family home three weeks ago. Barefoot lawyer Yuan Xianchen was put on trial last month for "inciting subversion of state power" after having assisted land rights activists. Zheng Enchong, a veteran rights defense lawyer, is under house arrest for signing "Charter 08," a public appeal for democratic reforms.

These cases "show there is a long way to go to the rule of law," which Chinese leaders say is their goal, says Ho. "Lawyers are treated as subservient to the system. Any who are not obedient run the risk of being penalized."