In China, the “smarter” lawyers tend to focus their businesses on property transactions, initial public offering, overseas investments, marriage and inheritance, immigration and taxation. The rapid economic growth in China of the past thirty years could easily bring them fame and fortune, help them connect with powerful “friends” and become social elites. After all, as many claimed, it was not that difficult to become the new rich in China.
On the contrary, when a lawyer chooses to fight for justice for disadvantaged groups, they are likely to offend the rich and powerful, their hard-earned lawyer’s license can get revoked and they lose their means of living as a result. Detention, torture and imprisonment is also not uncommon and most Chinese lawyers know this path of self destruction very well.
Yet, despite knowing all the risks, some lawyers stubbornly and determinately choose to do what they believe. The Chinese idiom, “to wilfully go up a mountain although knowing that tigers are there” seems a suitable description for them. They start by defending the human rights of their defendants, then they must fight for their own rights as suppression reaches them as well.
One of the most vivid examples of this is Lawyer Zhou Shifeng.
He was finally released from prison in late September 2022, after more than seven years of imprisonment due to the 709 Crackdown. Two months later, he released a long article, documenting his painful experience of being illegally detained, interrogated, placed in a secret jail, tortured, refused the rights to counsel and appeal. He made his appeal public and went on to complain at more than twenty relevant authorities, accusing the former Chinese Minister of Justice Fu Zhenghua and former Deputy Minister of Public Security Sun Lijun in taking the lead of the 709 Crackdown. Furthermore, he plans to sue the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the National People's Congress, and calls for setting up an investigation team to rehabilitate the victims who suffered from the 709 Crackdown.
Building a Decent Habitat for Human Rights Lawyers
Zhou Shifeng, born in 1964, and, like many his contemporaries, became a lawyer after years of working in other sectors and self-studying. He worked as a rural teacher before he was admitted to Peking University for his master degree in law in the mid-1990s. After graduation, he worked as a lawyer in his hometown Anyang City, Henan Province, Beijing as well as other places. In the mid-2000s, he obtained his Ph.D. at Macau University of Science and Technology and set up his own law firm in Beijing in 2007 - Beijing Zhou Shifeng Law Firm. The firm changed its name to Beijing Fengrui Law Firm in 2010 and employed 100 lawyers at that time. It would sound like a success story, if he had not chosen the so-called path of self-destruction.
Beijing Fengrui Law Firm was famous for handling human rights cases. The firm employed many outstanding human rights lawyers, including Wang Yu, Liu Sixin, Wang Quanzhang, Liu Xiaoyuan, Xie Yang and many others. Many of Beijing Fengrui Law Firm employees had been previously employed by other law firms, but lost their jobs or had their licenses revoked due to their involvement in the Weiquan (Rights Protection) Movement. Lawyer Zhou’s vision in recruiting these outstanding lawyers and brave human rights defenders was to offer them a decent living condition; to make sure they could make a living with their legal knowledge; and to create a platform for promoting social justice and civilisation.
These lawyers have represented many significant cases since the start of Weiquan Movement in the early 2000s. During the eight years between the law firm’s grand opening and its forced closure, they have taken on such cases as: against Sanlu Group on behalf of the victims of contaminated milk products; representing artist Ai Weiwei during his 2011 “tax-evasion” case; providing legal assistance and consultation to Ji Zhongxing, a suspect in the Beijing airport bombing in 2013; lobbying for the closure of “legal education center (black jail)” in Jiansanjiang, Heilongjiang Province in 2014; calling for full investigation of the death of human right lawyer Cao Shunli, who died in custody in 2014 after claims of torture; defending Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti on charges of separatism in 2014; the shooting of Xu Chunhe, an unarmed man killed by the police at Qingan train station in 2015.
Demonstrating the Purpose of Lawyers in the Case of Nie Shubin
The case of Nie Shubin is one of the most famous misjudged cases in China. A young man in Hebei Province named Nie Shubin was charged with rape and homicide in 1994. In 1995, he was sentenced to death after two closed-door trials and executed secretly, at the age of 20. In 2005, Wang Shujin, who was involved in numerous rape and murder cases, was arrested and confessed that he was the real culprit, instead of Nie. Although the court convicted and sentenced Wang to death, it refused to retry Nie’s case. Reportedly, Zhang Yue (member of the Standing Committee of the Hebei Provincial Party Committee and Secretary of the Political and Legal Affairs Commission) has been preventing the case from being reviewed in order to protect his ex-colleagues. Nie’s family, the media and civil society kept campaigning for Nie and in December 2014, the Supreme People’s Court finally ordered the Shandong Provincial Court to review Nie’s case, the first case in China where a court bypassed the authorities’ influence in another province.
Considering the complexity and significance of this case, Zhou Shifeng, together with Yang Jinzhu and Yang Xuelin, decided to set up a team of “Independent Observers on Nie Shubin’s Case". This team provided lawyers to analyse the case materials, using their professional knowledge on legal procedure, to provide technical support to Chen Guangwu and Li Shuting, the two lawyers representing Nie’s parents. Through this action, Zhou and his friends hoped to show that lawyers could be independent of politics, make a significant contribution to their defendants and the rule of law with their professional knowledge and dedication. From this landmark case, the public were able to see the significant role of that lawyers play in society and politics, as well as the importance of rule of law in their daily life.
With joint efforts from many parties, the Second Circuit Court of the Supreme Court pronounced Nie's innocence in December 2016, 21 years after his wrongful execution. On 30 March 2017, the Higher People's Court of Hebei Province paid Nie's parents a state compensation of RMB 2.68 million.
The “Fund for Protecting Chinese Lawyers’ Rights"
Noticing that by defending their clients’ rights, lawyers could also face persecution and were unable to provide for their families, Zhou hoped to alleviate human rights lawyers’ psychological and financial burden, which in turn would protect the rights and interests of lawyers in the long run. In 2014, he set up a “Fund for Protecting Chinese Lawyers’ Rights”, with his own saving of RMB 8 million. The purpose was to support families of persecuted lawyers and other human rights defenders across the country. “Shortly before the 709 Crackdown, I had already got the money ready and was working on the documents required to set up such a fund. The fund had indeed been operating, to provide financial or legal support to its recipients. However, in 2015, I was detained.” Zhou recalled. Zhou’s detention prevented the fund from ever being officially established.
The Last Straw: Defending Zhang Miao
In October 2014, police in Beijing detained Zhang Miao, a news assistant of German Weekly (Die Zeit) after she had returned from helping to report on the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong. She was subjected to torture such as solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, and was coerced to write confessions. As her lawyer, Zhou Shifeng informed the public of these ill-treatments and called for her release. The Chinese authorities originally wanted to prosecute Zhang Miao with the vague charge of "picking quarrels and provoking troubles", but as the German government and international human rights groups watched Zhang’s case attentively, they finally released her nine months later on the night of 9 July 2015, without any charges or conditions.
Lawyer Zhou rushed to the Tongzhou Detention Center and had dinner with Zhang to celebrate her release. A few hours later, some unidentified men broke into his hotel room, covered him with a black hood, handcuffed him behind his back, taped his mouth and kidnapped him, taking him to an unknown location. In China, it is not uncommon that a lawyer faces such retaliation, after he has won a case and embarrassed the police or the procuratorate. Quite often, the authorities do not only fail to protect lawyers’ rights in exercising their responsibilities, they even take the lead on violating lawyers’ human rights.
The Shock of The 709 Crackdown
The kidnapping of Lawyer Zhou Shifeng, alongside the enforced disappearance of Lawyer Wang Yu’s family, marked the start of the 709 Crackdown, which shocked both China and the world. The authorities arrested, summoned, criminally detained, took away, and interviewed hundreds of lawyers, civil rights defenders, petitioners and their relatives across 23 provinces. According to Lawyer Zhou’s recollection, the police said at the time: “We will arrest any lawyer you hire.” This turned out to be the reality. Zhou recalls that, “When we proposed to hire a certain lawyer, that lawyer would then either be threatened, detained or his license would get revoked.” This was a large scale and systematic repression of human rights lawyers in China.
Compared with other law firms, Fengrui Law Firm was hit the hardest during the 709 Crackdown. The firm consisted of more than 60 administrative staff in Beijing, and had a second branch in Nanchong City, Sichuan Province. During the 709 Crackdown, nine staff members from Fengrui Law Firm, including Zhou Shifeng himself were arrested, and others were either temporarily detained or forced into interviews. On 19 March 2018, the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice revoked the business license of Beijing Fengrui Law Firm - the fortress, once to shelter human rights lawyers, was brutally demolished.
Most of the charges against Zhou Shifeng focused on Fengrui Law Firm’s strategy of encouraging protestors to gather together and show support for the defendants in front of the courts. The prosecutor accused Zhou Shifeng, director of Beijing Fengrui Law Firm, of using the law firm as a platform “to encourage lawyers to highlight sensitive cases and hire protesters to disturb the judicial system.” The verdict also said Zhou "played a major role in a group of activists who attempted to manipulate public opinion and damage national security by spreading subversive thoughts.”
China’s Constitution does entitle citizens to assemble, and it is duty of lawyers to seek the interests of their clients, including publishing online articles to gain media support, questioning the authorities' handling of their clients, as long as this is performed through legal means. However, China's prosecutorate distorts the basic duties of lawyers, labelling them as criminals who subvert state power.
Detention, Interrogation and Sentence
Among the lawyers of the 709 Crackdown, Zhou was handed down the longest sentence. On 4 August, 2016, Zhou was sentenced to seven years in prison for "subversion of state power" and deprived of political rights for five years. According to analysis by China Aid, an American human rights organisation, Zhou is one of types of person the regime considers a “threat”. They refer to Zhou having the organisational ability to handle various human rights cases, operational ability to raise funds, and being able to unite and recruit human rights defenders. Therefore, he and the law firm he founded inevitably became key targets of the 709 Crackdown.
Zhou completed his sentence and was released in September 2022. Within two months, he published an article over 10,000 words, documenting the torture he faced and his forced confession at the beginning of his detention. “I was tortured with threats of violence and physical assaults, also sleep deprivation.” He accused the police and judiciary authorities of creating false evidence, including filing false police reports and blog posts. His rights to choose a lawyer independently, make a final statement at court and appeal after the verdict were all deprived. Throughout his imprisonment, he was tortured physically and mentally including: 24-hour close surveillance from other inmates (among them murderers, fraudsters and drug offenders), he was prohibited to talk to any other prisoners, not allowed to hold a pen to write for over three years, only allowed to call his family twice during his seven-year imprisonment (other inmates were entitled to call their families once or twice per month).
Fearless and Vocal as Before
Zhou has been followed and under surveillance after his release, which makes it difficult to resume his social life and professional practice. His WeChat ID (the most popular social media in China) has been permanently blocked. Not only Zhou but also his family members and their children encounter different forms of discrimination and difficulties in school. Despite all these difficulties, his goal remains the same: to rehabilitate the victims of the 709 Crackdown. Only when the lawyers can practice and lead a normal life can they contribute to the pursuit of human rights.
For those who are familiar with the operation of China’s Communist Party, his pledge seems not only a doomed petition, but also a ticket to get him back into prison again. Yet, seeing it from his perspective, isn’t he simply fighting for the most basic legal protection, the basic dignity of lawyers? Shouldn't we, readers and legal practitioners living in places where the rule of law is protected, show him and his fellow Chinese human rights lawyers our support?