| China Shuts Down Legal Challengers |
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| Written by Mark O'Neill | |
| Monday, 31 August 2009 | |
 Beijing turns away from expanding the scope of legal reform
In 2003, four lawyers from China's most prestigious university set up a non-governmental organization to advance the rule of law and constitutional rights. Knowing only too well official sensitivities, they promised that it would be not ‘critical' but ‘constructive' and work scrupulously within the law. But on July 14, officials from the Beijing Tax bureau marched into the office of Open Constitutional Initiative (OCI) and handed over a document that announced a fine of 1.42 million yuan. On July 17, officials from the city's Civil Affairs Bureau came to announce the office's closure; they sealed it and seized its computers and a large number of documents. Two weeks later, police arrested one of the four founders, Xu Zhiyong, 35, for tax evasion. Following an international outcry and campaign on the Internet on his behalf, he was released on bail on August 23; he is awaiting notice of a hearing. The closure is only the latest blow to the small community of public interest lawyers in China who seek to represent the weak and marginalized. So far this year, the government has cancelled the licenses of more than 20 of them, representing the death knell for what was once seen as one of the most promising strands of the reform process. With the government unwilling to expand the scope of democracy, lawyers and scholars have long proposed reform of the media and the law as the best way to modernize China and deal with the many abuses in the system of government. This was Xu's mission statement: "we are responsible Chinese citizens who completely understand the pressures and difficulties, abroad and at home, faced by the central government. We fully understand the impatience and difficulties of Chinese people facing an old system. We want to do our very best to do something for society. We are not critics, we are constructive. Everything we do is legal. We consider the pace at which society is progressing and the ability of the public to bear the strength of conservatism. We must act justly and virtuously." In this spirit, OCI was set up as a non-profit NGO, charging no fees for its services and relying entirely on donations. It worked not through street protest or petitions but through the law. With its limited resources, it could take only a small number of cases and chose those of the greatest social importance. Xu and his colleagues made their name in 2003 by taking up the case of Sun Zhigang, a student of Wuhan University, who was beaten to death on March 23 in a Guangzhou detention centre. They petitioned the National People's Congress about the legality of the detention process, in place since 1982. Astonishingly, within two months, the NPC abolished the detention law. The police reacted with fury, forcing the resignation of the editors of the Southern Metropolitan Daily in Guangzhou, which had broken the story and made Xu a marked man. Nonetheless, the OCI went on to take a series of high-profile cases, including victims of chemical accidents in Shanxi, families of victims of contaminated milk powder and that of Deng Yujiao, the hotel worker who stabbed an official to death after he had demanded sex from her. In 2008, Xu spent 25,000 yuan on an advertisement in the Southern Weekend, China's boldest newspaper, asking for victims of the milk powder scandal to hire him. OCI used the media and the Internet to give publicity to what it was doing, making it well-known at home and abroad.Yale University's China Law Centre has been working with OCI since 2004. "Xu is doing careful, thoughtful and important work of international caliber – not much different to what mainstream public interest lawyers and scholars do every day in the U.S. and elsewhere," said the Centre's deputy director, Jeffrey Prescott. "He is someone of rare idealism, judgment, commitment to law, selfless dedication and fundamental decency." All this angered the conservatives within China's judiciary and law enforcement agencies who regard lawyers as servants of the justice system and not independent operators. They won the argument within the government over closing the OCI, arguing that ‘stability' was a priority during a year of many anniversaries, including 20 years after June 4 and 60 years after the founding of the Communist state. For his part, Xu denies that he has evaded taxes and calls the closure illegal. "We helped the weak uphold their legal rights and promote the rule of democracy. This could have upset some vested interests. Since the progress of society will not be smooth, this was not unexpected. We cannot predict the outcome of the hearings. Our biggest obstacle has been an unreasonable system, the lack of independence of the judiciary and the inability of public interest firms to get legal status." The closure and the cancellation of the licenses cast a dark shadow over attempts to reform and improve China's legal system. The message to the country's lawyers is clear: stick to business and personal cases and avoid anything sensitive – your career and even your freedom are at risk. A somber commentary came from Xiong Peiyun, an independent scholar and journalist: "If the government has to crack down on NGOs like this which are constructive and reasonable and in addition charge them with a crime, then the conflicts in society will continue to intensify. In effect, the Chinese government is giving the country's future to criminals and to those who treat violence with violence."
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