On July 9, 2015, many human rights lawyers in China began to vanish. The news quickly spread to other members of the human rights legal community through messaging apps, warning them that police officers were storming the offices and homes of lawyers, taking them away for interrogation or arrest. Though it was not uncommon for the Chinese government to harass and detain lawyers defending human rights cases, the crackdown that began that day, now referred to as 709, was the largest in decades — its repercussions continue to be felt today. In total, over 300 human rights lawyers and activists were targeted, many of whom were detained, questioned, and banned from leaving China.
One such lawyer was Liang Xiaojun, who has defended numerous human rights cases and founded the Daoheng Law Firm in 2009. Although the primary focus of this law firm was not originally on human rights, Liang and other Daoheng lawyers gradually represented an expanding array of human rights cases, including defending individuals facing the death penalty and providing assistance to those affected by forced house demolitions.
In the wake of the crackdown’s anniversary, I spoke with both Liang Xiaojun and a former colleague of his, a human rights lawyer who was also a victim of the crackdown and who will be referred to as “P” to maintain his anonymity.
The Development of Lawyers’ Suppression in China
Prior to 709, human rights lawyers were already suffering round after round of government suppression, such as threats to their law firms and police harassment. Still, they had the space to act, and as P explains, they often worked together or held events through organizations such as the New Citizens’ Movement and the Feng Rui Law Firm. What set 709 apart from other instances of government suppression was its intense focus on human rights lawyers, especially those associated with the Feng Rui Law Firm, and the extreme lengths that the government took to disappear, torture, and extract confessions out of lawyers.
One measure used by the government was Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location, a process in which the Chinese government is legally allowed to hold those it deems criminals incommunicado for up to six months, though in reality it often lasts longer. RSDL, detailed through the first-hand testimonies of human rights lawyers during 709 in the 2019 book “The People’s Republic of the Disappeared,” involves brutal physical and psychological torture, sleep deprivation, restriction of food, and forced intake of medicine. In 709, the goal of these tactics was both to break down the lawyers psychologically and to extract information about other human rights lawyers, as well as a forced confession of the victim’s plans to “subvert state power.” Even after being released, victims were denied the ability to practice law or to leave China, and many suffered from PTSD due to the torture they endured.
Years after 709, Liang laments that the human rights lawyer community has “never really adapted to the suppression.” Instead, most people simply stopped doing the work, either due to disbarment or fear of government retaliation. Liang himself remained in the line of work until his disbarment in 2021. Though he too was frightened, he felt that he still had a duty to fight for human rights. To maintain his safety soon after 709, Liang mostly worked behind the scenes and supported those working in public. He also protected the families of lawyers who had disappeared into RSDL, such as the family of human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang. The government did not detain these family members, but continued to harass them by cutting their water or electricity and regularly forcing them to move out of their home. To support this family, Liang would rent his house to them at a low price and help them find lawyers to defend Wang’s case.
Though 709 was unprecedented in its intensity and scale, crackdowns on human rights activists and lawyers have occurred before. In 2011, the government detained many people involved with the pro-democracy protests known as the Jasmine Revolution, including lawyer Teng Biao. To get people back in touch with each other and help revive civil society, Liang and other human rights lawyers responded to the crackdown by holding symposiums where they would discuss how to help and support arrested lawyers, as well as how to form a group of human rights lawyers. He and other lawyers attempted to hold such symposiums after 709 as well, but they were much more restricted than those of 2011. Back then, according to Liang, the political environment was still “more free … people were released very quickly, so civil society revived more quickly.” During this period in 2011, NGOs resumed activity, and activists and lawyers alike were able to work in a similar manner as before.
However, although symposiums were sometimes possible post-709, Liang explains that they were more suppressed and monitored by police than their previous iterations in 2011. Such police pressure included officers monitoring the meetings, pressuring participants and attendees alike, and even stopping the event altogether. Though the opportunity to revive civil society existed in the past, the heightened level of repression renders it very difficult now.
Extralegal Strategies and the Guise of Rule of Law
Although the Chinese Communist Party claims to be acting under “fa zhi,” a phrase that is frequently translated into “rule of law,” the term is quite malleable and is truly meant to denote “rule by law.” This “rule by law,” rather than providing a check against government power, typically represents the “rule of the party.” While the government has clear laws for cases that are not politically sensitive, once the CCP perceives a threat against itself (i.e. many human rights cases), laws become much more vague and arbitrary. The government often arrests human rights lawyers and will sometimes subject them to RSDL under charges of “intent to subvert state power” despite the lawyers’ actions being perfectly legal.
RSDL, in and of itself, is in violation of international law; not only does it often constitute enforced disappearance, which is strictly prohibited under international law, but it frequently involves intense levels of torture and forced confessions. Even though RSDL remains legal under Chinese law, its implementation still often breaches its legal stipulations. Based on its definition under China’s Criminal Procedure Law, RSDL can last for a maximum of six months, and it should take place in the defendant’s residence unless they lack a fixed residence of their own; in these latter cases, the defendant’s family must be informed of their detainment within 24 hours. All of the lawyers’ testimonies described at least one of these laws being broken. In a society where the government not only ignores their own laws, but also the laws of the international community, Liang argues that rule of law becomes a mere “slogan” used to “serve the CCP’s own purposes.” While in more “ordinary” or “shallow” cases, the law may still apply, “when it comes to political issues, there is no more rule of law.”
In a state where the rule of law is a facade, it may seem unclear why people would continue working as lawyers for cases whose outcomes have already been determined. As P states, “it is often impossible to acquit clients in human rights cases.” For Liang and P, the importance of their work is not acquittal, since the government has already deemed their clients guilty, but rather to understand and share their ideas with the world, as well as to “expose the absurdity of the allegations, which deviate from universal human rights and the rule of law.” Representing detained activists as clients granted Liang the unique ability to speak with them when he otherwise would not have access to them, and he used the court process and press coverage as a channel to spread awareness of their work.
Such work carries many risks. Though Liang believes disseminating information through the media to be most effective, he contends that “a major reason for my disbarment was that I was doing this kind of work [with the media].” Despite the risks of utilizing media coverage, it may soon be one of the only avenues through which lawyers can share their clients’ ideas and reveal the law’s arbitrary nature. According to Liang, it is becoming increasingly difficult to use court hearings to show the government’s human rights violations because the government has made it so that the trial process is conducted in secret and that neither the indictment nor the verdict can be released by lawyers to the public.
After disbarment, Liang can no longer represent or directly contact arrested activists, but he still uses extralegal channels to continue his advocacy work. For one, he used to still be able to hear the activists’ stories through other lawyers and write articles about them. The lawyers working the case directly cannot spread such information due to fear of disbarment, but at the time, Liang no longer faced this risk. Similarly, although Liang cannot act as the lawyer for activists who have yet to be arrested, he can contact them privately by inviting them to dinner or talking with their wives, relatives, or friends. For the clients Liang had previously represented, he preselected lawyers to replace him when he realized his disbarment was imminent, trained the lawyers on the cases, and continued to advise them from afar when necessary.
Though Liang was briefly able to publish articles that his colleagues could not, the government soon clamped down on his freedom of speech. He explained that he “can no longer spread this information because the lawyers who represent human rights cases rarely disclose information regarding the arrested people anymore out of fear of being disbarred.” Many of the articles Liang had previously written about these cases were difficult to publish or were quickly deleted. Even on social media, Liang’s actions are tightly monitored. He is still able to tweet, but he cannot post anything about Chinese activists or politics due to the risk that the government will “find me or arrest me.” To protect himself, he now rarely publishes articles or tweets under his name, choosing instead to write the articles anonymously or not at all.
The Future of China’s Judicial Environment
Though human rights lawyers were already in the minority of lawyers in China, their numbers have continued to dwindle post-709. In the past, even though human rights cases didn’t make much money, the lawyers could still take on other types of cases to make a living. However, Liang explains, the increased risk of disbarment after 709 means that people who take human rights cases may not be able to work as lawyers at all; it is no longer a matter of having less lucrative cases, but of not having a job. When I asked him what he thought the solution was, Liang stated that “[r]ight now, there is no solution. Because if people know they will be disbarred, they will not do this work.”
What’s more, now that Xi Jinping has secured his third term as the head of the CCP, Liang has increased doubts about how much China will heed international criticism of its human rights violations. He once believed that, despite the government’s “front” of being unconcerned about criticism from the international community, it still cared internally. At the time, it seemed that raising international awareness of lawyers’ suppression could eventually pressure the government into changing. Now, Liang is now less hopeful. Since Xi Jinping’s reelection, he has replaced many members of the Politburo Standing Committee with his supporters, “so the CCP really will not listen to international criticism. The impact of increased awareness is quite small.”
Instead, Liang argues that people must create change through other methods or through taking advantage of other opportunities. One such opportunity is the Chinese economy’s current decline. It is becoming increasingly difficult for young adults to find jobs, and as a result, people are becoming more and more dissatisfied with the government. To Liang, this mass dissatisfaction is what could garner political change. Reflecting on this stance, P explains that there are advantages to both economic growth and decline. “When the economy is improving, there are higher hopes for the future, not just the economy—we could still expect more freedom. It is more difficult to protest, but when the authorities restrict people’s rights widely, people will still revolt. When the economy is in a downturn, of course it is easier for these dissatisfied people to protest because everyone is uncertain about the future.”
Despite the political corruption that Liang cites, P also holds out hope that eventual change is possible. Due to former leader Xi Zhongxun’s focus on external affairs and building connections between China and the rest of the world, “the door between China and the world cannot be closed. As long as it cannot be closed, I personally think that there will be hope for Chinese society.” Though it is currently difficult to speak out against lawyers’ suppression and for the international community’s criticism to significantly impact Chinese politics, P believes that once there is even a little less restriction in China, major changes will come.
The problem remains that it is difficult to get young people to know about or pay attention to the suppression of human rights lawyers in China. In particular, Liang explains that “the CCP makes it very difficult for [human rights lawyers] to affect the young people” and suppresses these lawyers through methods like censorship, threats, the risk of disbarment, and arrest. This suppression has left Liang unconfident that human rights lawyers alone will be able to connect with and influence enough people to enact real political change.
Instead, Liang argues that it is necessary for these people, perhaps motivated by dissatisfaction with the government, to explore content outside the firewall and eventually come to their own understandings of China’s human rights violations and the ways they can best create change. This aspiration is difficult to achieve. As P states, “these young people, under the pressure of higher education or of brainwashing, seem uninterested in freedom, rule of law, democracy, or human rights.” Indeed, though they can use VPNs to access information outside the firewall, many people who grew up with and were educated by CCP propaganda find it difficult to conceptualize the government’s wrongdoings.
Despite these difficulties, the mobilization of Chinese young adults may not be as far away as it seems. P describes how leftist college students are participating in movements in many fields, such as the labor movement several years ago. More recently, we saw that “in the White Paper Movement, it was many young people we didn’t know who spoke up and became the vanguard of opposition.” Liang places great importance on this hope that the young people who have yet to be suppressed can develop their own ideas and do what the past generation of human rights lawyers could not. For him, “we have to wait for this next social movement to come.” It seems possible that, with the combination of increasing dissatisfaction among the masses and more young adults mobilizing for various causes, people protesting on a large scale will finally bring more freedom to China’s judicial environment.
Image by Ün Liu is licensed under the Unsplash License.
