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Concerns Grow Following New Arrests in Ongoing Crackdown on Chinese Lawyers

Date: 2014-07-07

(New York) – Chinese lawyers Chang Boyang (常伯阳) and Ji Laisong (姬来松), who were arrested last week on charges of “suspicion of illegal commercial activities” and “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” respectively, should be immediately released from custody and all charges against them should be dropped, the Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers said today. According to reports, the two lawyers were formally arrested along with five other activists on July 2 in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province. Until then, they had been held in Zhengzhou without formal arrest for over a month since being detained in the days leading up to the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown of June 4, 1989.

(New York) – Chinese lawyers Chang Boyang (常伯阳) and Ji Laisong (姬来松), who were arrested last week on charges of “suspicion of illegal commercial activities” and “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” respectively, should be immediately released from custody and all charges against them should be dropped, the Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers said today. According to reports, the two lawyers were formally arrested along with five other activists on July 2 in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province. Until then, they had been held in Zhengzhou without formal arrest for over a month since being detained in the days leading up to the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown of June 4, 1989.

Chang, a well-respected legal aid lawyer from Zhengzhou, has spent years representing disadvantaged groups in China, including rural women, migrant workers, and people living with HIV/AIDS. He was initially called in for questioning and detained in May after attempting to visit his clients who had previously been detained on suspicion of “gathering to disturb public order.” Chang and Ji both represented a local disability rights organization, and had participated in a ceremony along with the other activists commemorating the Tiananmen anniversary.

The arrests of Chang and Ji are the latest developments in a recent crackdown on human rights lawyers in China. Pu Zhiqiang (浦志强), one of China’s leading civil rights lawyers, was arrested last month on charges of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” and “illegally obtaining citizens’ personal information.” Shortly thereafter, another Chinese lawyer Tang Jingling (唐荆陵) was arrested on the far more severe charge of “inciting subversion of state power.” Numerous other lawyers and activists remain in criminal detention around the country. The Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers reiterates its strong concern over this escalation of suppression of rights lawyers and calls on the Chinese authorities to immediately cease targeting these individuals for merely executing their professional duties as lawyers.

 

The Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers (CSCL) is a group of independent lawyers from outside China whose mission is to support lawyers in their endeavor to uphold the rule of law in China.  The CSCL, which is housed at the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham Law School in New York City, seeks to strengthen the role of lawyers and to promote their independence.

For further inquiries, please contact the Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers at csclawyers@gmail.com or (212) 636-6862. Follow the Committee on Twitter at @CSCLawyers and on Facebook at facebook.com/CommitteeToSupportChineseLawyers.

 

An earlier version of this statement described the charge against Chang as “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” This was corrected on July 10, 2014 to “suspicion of illegal commercial activities.”