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August 20th, 2013 
Peter Nolan
“I took a case in Hainan province recently, but when I tried to visit my
client with a group of lawyers I was stopped at my hotel by the People’s
Armed Police (the paramilitary wing of the police force) and forced to leave
the province,” said Sui Muqing, a lawyer from the southern city of
Guangzhou.
“My colleagues tried to check into another hotel but within five minutes
the same thing happened,” he said. “This kind of thing has never
happened before and it is very disturbing.”
Another lawyer from Beijing, Cheng Hai, said he had taken a case in the city
of Dalian, representing 13 people who had illegally installed satellite
dishes to watch broadcasts funded by the Falun Gong, a banned
quasi-spiritual movement.
“When we got to Dalian, the police searched our hotel rooms without a
warrant,” he said. “On August 2, as I left the intermediate court
in Xigang, I was beaten up by police, who put me in a choke hold. On August
15, when I went to the detention cells to see my clients I was beaten up
again. The police said they had orders from their captain.”
Mr Cheng said he had been assaulted by police in the past, but that the
current situation “is definitely getting worse”.
“There are many more horrors in the future,” predicted Liu Weiguo,
who represents Xu Zhiyong, another lawyer who has been arrested for
advocating “constitutionalism”, the idea that the Communist
party’s power should be limited by China’s existing constitution.
At least 50, and perhaps as many as 100 people have been arrested for
supporting “constitutionalism”.
“Right now, whenever a lawyer wants to take a case, he is at risk. No one
is trying to limit police power, they can do anything they like,” said
Mr Liu. “It is not just on dissident cases, they intervene even on
mundane cases.”
Mr Liu said Beijing’s police had detained him when he tried to visit Mr Xu and
tried to frame him for stirring up a public protest because a group of Mr
Xu’s supporters had gathered outside the detention centre. “When they
took my statement, they did not write down what I said, they simply made
stuff up,” he said.
Li Fangping, a prominent human rights lawyer in Beijing, pointed to a document
issued by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, China’s top prosecutors’
office, in June calling for the police to hunt down any “illegal
assembly” or “crowd-gathering”.
“Since March, when the new leaders were confirmed, they have strengthened
their policy of maintaining stability and their monitoring of the public,”
he said.
Mr Li said the document from the prosecutors office “has gone beyond the
rule of law”, adding: “It represents the determination of the
government to strengthen its position”.
“The average Chinese thought there might be a series of new [reform]
policies, but in fact this only last for a couple of months and has now
petered out. What they promised has not come true.”
China’s liberals began to hope that Mr Xi would represent a force for change
last December, when he announced that the “authority of the
Constitution and the law” must be “firmly established throughout
society”.
Instead, his administration appears to have performed a volte-face.
Muerong Xuecun, one of China’s leading authors, said the current campaign was
aimed at “brainwashing” and “silencing independent thought”.
“The idea is to dismantle public gatherings and leave the individual
alone in the face of the irresistible force of the mighty government,”
he said.
Additional reporting by Adam Wu
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