By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 6,
2005
SHANGHAI, Nov. 5 — Judicial authorities in Beijing have shut down
the law firm of a prominent civil rights lawyer after he refused to withdraw an
open letter urging President Hu Jintao to respect freedom of religion and stop
persecuting members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement.
Gao Zhisheng,
among the most daring of a generation of self-trained lawyers who have been pushing
the Chinese government to obey its own laws, said that the Beijing Bureau of Justice
ordered his firm suspended for one year on Friday. The move came just hours after
he filed an appeal on behalf of an underground Protestant pastor accused of illegally
printing Bibles and other Christian literature.
According to Gao, the
government said the firm was being suspended because it had failed to register
with the authorities after moving into a new office this year. But he said the
action followed his refusal to renounce the open letter to Hu and withdraw from
politically sensitive cases as demanded by officials during a series of recent
meetings.
Gao said that his firm notified the government when it moved
but that officials refused to let the firm register at the new address.
"We’re
very angry," Gao said by phone Saturday. "By doing this, the Chinese
Communist Party is demonstrating it defies all laws, human and divine. They are
saying that anyone who believes in law, who criticizes the political system, who
exposes crimes against the people, will be targeted."
The closure
comes as officials crack down on religion, press freedoms and other civil liberties
in China, and confirms that Hu’s government is also willing to take action to
restrict the growing influence of members of China’s budding legal profession.
Lawyers such as Gao have been at the forefront of a campaign to inform citizens
of their rights under laws that are often ignored by the government and to help
them assert those rights in court.
Gao said he planned to fight his firm’s
suspension at a formal hearing next week.
In an Oct. 18 letter addressed
to Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao that he posted on the Internet and distributed widely
by e-mail, Gao described several cases he had investigated involving Falun Gong
practitioners who have been detained, sent to labor camps and tortured. In one
case, he said, a man was hanged from overhead pipes until his legs rotted.
In
another case, he said, police tracked down and arrested a practitioner, a college
sophomore, after he posted a note on the Internet announcing his resignation from
the Communist Youth League.
Under the direction of Hu’s predecessor, Jiang
Zemin, the Chinese government in July 1999 banned Falun Gong as an "evil
cult" and has all but crushed it in an often violent campaign involving the
arrests of thousands of people.
As practitioners have been released from
labor camps in recent years, Gao said, the government has renewed its brutal campaign.
"The persecution of Falun Gong compatriots by some local officials
has already reached the point where they are doing whatever they please,"
Gao wrote in the open letter. "We cannot accept these brazenly inhumane,
savage atrocities to occur in the society of mankind in the 21st century."
"This evil catastrophe did not begin with you, but the catastrophe
has continued while you two have led the government," he told Hu and Wen.
Gao also urged the government to accept that a revival of religious faith
in China was inevitable. In addition to working on behalf of Falun Gong members,
Gao is one of several lawyers who have volunteered to defend Cai Zhuohua, the
pastor of a house church in Beijing who has been jailed on charges of "illegal
business practices" for printing and distributing hundreds of thousands of
Bibles. The Bush administration has expressed concern about Cai, who was arrested
with several other Christian figures in September 2004.
Gao has been under
pressure from the authorities for months. Government officials recently demanded
that he withdraw from two politically sensitive cases: a citizen effort to impeach
the chief of Taishi village in southern China’s Guangdong province and a landmark
lawsuit brought by thousands of private investors accusing officials in northern
Shaanxi province of seizing oil wells from them worth as much as $1 billion.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/05/AR2005110501385.html
Posting
date: 9/Nov/2005
Original article date: 7/Nov/2005
Category: Media Report
