• The Chinese government is persecuting and silencing lawyers who challenge official abuses a decade after a major crackdown on lawyers defending people’s rights.
• The Xi Jinping government has sought to eradicate the influence of lawyers who defend people’s rights while compelling the rest of the legal profession to serve the Chinese Communist Party’s political agenda.
• The Chinese government should stop persecuting rights defense lawyers and reinstate their licenses. Concerned governments should speak out to support rights defense lawyers, and support those seeking refuge abroad.

The Chinese government is persecuting and silencing lawyers who challenge official abuses a decade after the “709 crackdown” on lawyers defending people’s rights, Human Rights Watch said today. The Chinese Communist Party has also strengthened ideological controls over the broader legal profession.

In July 2015, Chinese police rounded up and interrogated about 300 lawyers, legal assistants, and activists across the country; members of a loosely connected community known as the “rights defense” movement, which had become increasingly influential between 2003 and 2013. Some were forcibly disappeared for months and tortured, and 10 were sentenced to harsh prison terms. In the decade since, the authorities have subjected many of them to surveillance, harassment, public shaming, and collective punishment, and revoked or cancelled their or their law firms’ licenses.

“The Chinese government under Xi Jinping has sought to eradicate the influence of lawyers who defend people’s rights while compelling the rest of the legal profession to serve the Chinese Communist Party’s political agenda,” said Maya Wang, associate China director at Human Rights Watch. “The authorities over the past decade have muted the rights defense lawyers, though many still find ways to fight against social injustice.”

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