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Chinese Lawyers Issue Joint Statement Protesting Security Checks by Local Courts

Date: 2013-12-04

In a strong collective signal from China’s professional legal community, 132 lawyers issued a joint statement protesting the unlawful practice of imposing security checks on lawyers by local courts. The statement, whose signatories include prominent Beijing rights defense lawyers Li Fangping (李方平), Jiang Tianyong (江天勇), and Tang Jitian (唐吉田), has been made available in both Chinese and English by Human Rights in China. According to the statement, ‘unlawful security inspection of lawyers upon entering courthouses has become a common phenomenon in many local-level courts.’ In the opinion of the statement’s signatories, ‘this practice not only contravenes existing relevant regulations currently in force, but also seriously violates the personal rights of licensed lawyers.’
 

In a strong collective signal from China’s professional legal community, 132 lawyers issued a joint statement protesting the unlawful practice of imposing security checks on lawyers by local courts. The statement, whose signatories include prominent Beijing rights defense lawyers Li Fangping (李方平), Jiang Tianyong (江天勇), and Tang Jitian (唐吉田), has been made available in both Chinese and English by Human Rights in China here. According to the statement, ‘unlawful security inspection of lawyers upon entering courthouses has become a common phenomenon in many local-level courts.’ In the opinion of the statement’s signatories, ‘this practice not only contravenes existing relevant regulations currently in force, but also seriously violates the personal rights of licensed lawyers.’

In particular, the statement highlights the wrongful detention and “barbaric manhandling” of lawyer Zhang Jun (张军), who refused to submit to a security check by authorities at a local courthouse in Wuhan, where he attempted to file a case on November 27. Through the statement, lawyers collectively called for immediate accountability from local officials on the mistreatment of Zhang Jun, as well as for the Supreme People’s Court to ‘order local courts at all levels to assess and rectify the problem of unlawful security inspection of lawyers, and conduct spot inspection and monitoring thereof.’