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Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers Calls for Investigation of Xu Zhiyong’s Detention

Date: 2009-08-21

In a letter sent today, the Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers called on Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao to investigate the detention of Mr. Xu Zhiyong, a legal scholar and rights defender who was detained by police on July 29, 2009. Mr. Xu is a lecturer at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, and a former Visiting Scholar at the China Law Center at Yale Law School. He is serving his second four-year term as a deputy of the Haidian District People’s Congress in Beijing, and in 2003, he founded the Open Constitution Initiative, which later became Gongmeng, a legal aid center which had been working on citizens’ civil rights cases.

In a letter sent today, the Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers called on Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao to investigate the detention of Mr. Xu Zhiyong, a legal scholar and rights defender who was detained by police on July 29, 2009.

Mr. Xu is a lecturer at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, and a former Visiting Scholar at the China Law Center at Yale Law School. He is serving his second four-year term as a deputy of the Haidian District People’s Congress in Beijing, and in 2003, he founded the Open Constitution Initiative, which later became Gongmeng, a legal aid center which had been working on citizens’ civil rights cases. Mr. Xu and his fellow lawyers provided legal assistance to the parents of children affected by melamine-contaminated milk and issued a report regarding the Chinese government’s handling of unrest across the Tibetan plateau.

On July 14, 2009, Gongmeng was notified by the Beijing Municipal Office of the State Administration of Taxation and the Beijing Local Taxation Bureau it was being fined 1.42 million RMB for tax evasion. Gongmeng Legal Research Center was shut down on July 17, and Mr. Xu was detained by police on July 29, on charges of tax evasion. Another Gongmeng staff member, Ms. Zhuang Lu (庄璐), was also detained. Mr. Xu was formally arrested on August 12, and he was informed on August 17 that Gongmeng Legal Research Center was shut for providing “false data” when it registered as a company. The Haidian Industry and Commerce Bureau claimed that the public interest activities of Gongmeng were inconsistent with its registration as a commercial enterprise. Prior to its closure, numerous unsuccessful attempts were made by Gongmeng lawyers to pay the fines for tax evasion.

In its letter, the Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers highlighted relevant international and domestic laws, and emphasized to Premier Wen its concern that Mr. Xu’s detention resulted from his professional commitment to providing legal assistance in politically sensitive cases, undermining the development of the rule of law in China.

The Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers is housed at the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham Law School. It is a group of independent lawyers from outside China whose goal is to support lawyers in China in their quest to strengthen the rule of law there.