Twenty prominent legal experts, lawyers and judges from Europe, Australia, Canada, and the U.S. have issued a joint letter urging Chinese President Xi Jinping to release mainland rights lawyers and advocates held in detention.
The open letter appeared in the British Newspaper The Guardian on Monday. In the letter, the Western legal professionals expressed worries that the Chinese lawyers have been denied legal access since their July detention. The top legal experts urged Xi to prove China was a "respected global superpower" by freeing the lawyers, The Guardian reported.
The Chinese government's move against the country's rights lawyers began on July 9 last year with the detention of a prominent lawyer Wang Yu and her husband in Beijing. Since then, hundreds of lawyers and legal officers have been subject to intimidation, interrogation, detention as criminal suspects, and forced disappearance.
As of today, twelve rights lawyers and legal assistants remain under criminal detention and arrest. Most of them are accused of 'subversion of State power' or 'inciting subversion of State power.'
The sweeping crackdown raised critics that Chinese goverment aims at silencing advocates and activists and stifling the rights defense movement, South China Morning Post reported. The critics said that the lawyers detaining shows Chinese authorities' fear of the fast-growing civil society and expanding community of rights lawyers.
In the draft letter reported in Human Right Watch, the world's top legal expert wrote that by detaining and disappearing the lawyers and law firm staff, China is in breach of its international obligations as well as Chinese domestic criminal law and constitutional principles.
The experts also wrote that by detaining the rights lawyers, China is violating the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers, the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders as well as the UN Body of Principles for the Protection of all Persons under any Form of Detention or Imprisonment.
In the letter, the legal experts wrote to President Xi, "we respectfully remind you that China has signed and ratified the Convention against Torture and signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights."
The signatories of the joint letter included former French justice minister Robert Badinter as well as top British human rights lawyers such as Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, Michael Mansfield QC and Clive Stafford Smith. The signatories also included President of the International Union of Lawyers Jean-Jacques Uettwiller, chair of the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales Kirsty Brimelow QC, president of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe Michel Benichou, as well as president of the Supreme Court Bar Association of Pakistan Asma Jahangir, and other top legal experts.
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