Lawyer for Hong Kong activist comes with licence revoked by China

A Chinese lawyer who represented a Hong Kong activist was stripped of his licence by China on Friday (Jan 15).

Lu Siwei, who represented among 12 Hong Kong activists who tried to flee to Taiwan, had his licence revoked by the Sichuan Provincial Justice Division in a formal find given on Friday.

Ten of the 12 activists caught at sea in August were sentenced by a Shenzhen court found in December to prison conditions ranging from seven weeks to three years for illegally crossing the border and organizing against the law border crossings.

They are part of an exodus of Hong Kong residents following Beijing's imposition of a hardcore new security law they say is destroying the territory’s Western-style civil liberties. Because the regulation was created in response to anti-government protests that commenced in 2019, dozens of activists have already been arrested or detained.

Regulations has been denounced by European nations, the US and others.

Beijing says the legislation permits Hong Kong to “have fun with more social stability, economic development and greater independence". Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying referred to as the 12 activists "elements wanting to different Hong Kong from China", not democratic activists.

Beijing, which requires lawyers to swear a great oath of loyalty to the ruling Communist Get together, has tightened control more than the profession. Other legal representatives have already been stripped of their licences for representing defendants in politically hypersensitive cases. Some have been imprisoned.

In a notice last week, the Chengdu office of the Sichuan Justice Department said Lu had violated laws and regulations on specialist legal conduct. It accused him of earning comments online that acquired a "negative effect on society".

Also the other day, Ren Quanniu, another attorney for just one of the 12 activists, was notified by the Zhengzhou office of the Henan Justice Section that he could lose his licence. He was advised that comments he made in courtroom had caused a "bad impact on contemporary society". His hearing continues to be pending, but is seen as a formality.

On Wednesday, Ren and a small group of supporters arrived at the hearing for Lu's licence in Chengdu to rear him. They were forcibly separated by law enforcement and Lu was considered inside by itself, Ren said.

Both Lu and Ren were hired by groups of the activists, but were blocked from seeing their clients through the entire legal process.

“They wouldn’t even let me in leading door, much less the entranceway to the administrative area where you deal with the paperwork,” Ren said of his attempted first visit to a police station in Shenzhen, where the Hong Kong activists were taken by authorities.

On his second visit, he was told that his client had already decided to a court-appointed lawyer.

Throughout the case, families of the activists protested that they will be able to use attorneys they selected instead of the court-appointed lawyers.

Lu has been summoned sometimes by the local bureau of the Justice Section found in Chengdu for meetings in which the bureau officials told him to keep the case.

Neither Lu or Ren backed straight down. “Why should I quit when there’s no legal reason behind me to quit? How can I explain myself to the spouse and children?” Ren advised The Associated Press.

A person at the neighborhood Justice Department workplace in Chengdu at first told the AP to contact back. Later calls went unanswered. Calls to the Justice Department’s business office in Zhengzhou proceeded to go unanswered.

The two legal representatives both have a brief history of dealing with sensitive cases, and of navigating the fraught and murky waters of defending persons who are deemed to be political targets by authorities.

Ren has handled circumstances linked to the Falun Gong, a good spiritual movements which China has labelled a good cult and may be the subject matter of persecution following its followers protested found in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1999. Lately, he represented citizen journalist Zhang Zhan, who was sentenced to four years in prison for wanting to report on the problem in the city of Wuhan through the starting point of the coronavirus pandemic early on last year.

Lu, an insurance legal professional by trade, possesses handled cases in a good crackdown on human privileges legal representatives and activists led by President Xi Jinping which commenced found in 2015. Lu defended prominent human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng, who acquired criticised Xi.

Nonetheless, neither was prepared for how sensitive the circumstance of the 12 activists will be.

“They can’t punish anyone else. Can they punish the European press? Can they punish Pompeo? They are able to only take it out on us because we happen to be legal professionals in the mainland," Lu said.