Crackdown on Defense Lawyers Is Intensified in China

By Joseph Kahn | The New York Times
August 18, 2006

BEIJING, Aug. 18 — Chinese officials intensified a crackdown on defense lawyers today, the latest sign that Communist Party leaders are determined to stamp out legal challenges to their authority.

In Beijing, the police detained Gao Zhisheng, one of the country’s most outspoken lawyers and dissidents, on suspicion of criminal activity, according to reports in state-run news media.

In Shandong Province, another well-known dissident legal expert, Chen Guangcheng, was tried today in a closed criminal trial that Mr. Chen’s defense attorneys condemned as a heavy-handed political persecution.

While the Chinese leadership is eager to create the impression that it is building an impartial legal system, the latest actions suggest that at least some powerful officials want to curtail the growing use of lawsuits to contest abuses of power, human rights violations, land seizures and official corruption.

The ruling party has encouraged the idea that ordinary people have legal rights, as a way of checking petty corruption, improving efficiency and channeling social grievances into the party-controlled judicial system.

But a surge in social unrest in recent years, including protests by people who feel thwarted in exercising their constitutional rights, has alarmed local and national leaders.

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