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A few good men: Lawyers in China who dare stand up to bullying officials
By Ni Tao |
December 24, 2010, Friday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
IN "A Few Good Men" (1992), Tom Cruise plays the dashing navy lawyer Daniel Kaffee, who bravely takes on the US military's secret lynching system.
Despite the risk of being disbarred for smearing senior officers - in case of a guilty verdict, he defends two marines who has killed a fellow soldier, under orders to carry out a "code red," a euphemism for extrajudicial corporal punishment.
While disciplining criminal lawyers in the movie is no worse than disbarment, the penalty is much graver for their Chinese counterparts, who are sometimes stalked by death in their struggle to seek justice for victims of official excesses.
Civil rights lawyer Zhang Kai had a brush with death last Tuesday night, when he was attacked and chased by thugs who apparently intended to kill him. The fact that Zhang was in the capital city of Beijing, the most unlikely place to be attacked so brazenly, didn't afford the least protection.
Zhang detailed his narrow escape in a blog entry at www.caing.com, a news portal. He was driving home with his friend as a passenger in downtown Beijing, when three cars came out of nowhere and blocked his vehicle.
Zhang kept his doors locked to keep at bay a dozen thugs who emerged from the cars, metal bars in hand. They tried to smash Zhang's shock-resistant windshield, which remained intact and protected the lawyer from being dragged out and mauled. At the critical juncture, Zhang revved up the car, rammed through the barricades and sped off - the assailants in close pursuit.
The chase continued until they reached Chang'an Avenue, the main thoroughfare, where his assailants fled at the sight of the armed police stationed along the route.
Hired thugs
The well-organized attack led Zhang to suspect triad members, backed by officials his legal work had threatened, were involved, since it bore striking similarity to attacks against his lawyer friends Li Heping and Teng Biao. They also had taken up damning cases against the authorities.
Zhang's role as the attorney representing the victim's family in the high-profile "Li Gang case" may have made him a target. In that case in October, Hebei University student Li Qiming killed one female student and injured another in a drunk-driving incident. Li brazenly claimed his father Li Gang was a local police chief and challenged bystanders to call the police.
With the victim's family compensated, probe into the case seemed to have stalled. Some officials might have reckoned that if they stayed low, the public would soon forget the case.
Yet bitter memories of this incident remain raw, and the recent attack on lawyer Zhang keeps the heat on officials to take legal action against the culprit.
Criminal lawyers like Zhang must tread carefully in cases that pit them against the authorities. The perjury clause in China's laws governing lawyers resembles a sword of Damocles dangling above their heads.
Threats of death
The bleak financial career prospects and the risks of undertaking criminal defense once led my university professor, himself a criminal lawyer, to conclude that they are plying a risky trade and that the legal eagles in Western films are a rare breed in China.
Sometimes it's only faith that keeps them going in a system where the odds are stacked against them. But these few good men will become even fewer as official coercion rears its ugly head.
In the latest case of official apathy toward petitioners, Yang Weijun, 89, a retired top political adviser in Yunnan Province, was threatened with death when he assisted some farmers with their petition about seizure of their land.
Driving the car assigned to him as a retirement benefit, Yang escorted peasants to the headquarters of the provincial political advisory body to air their grievances. In so doing, the farmers would "stand a greater chance of being received by cadres," he said.
When some officials criticized him for not using official car properly, Yang countered that official cars should not be used for "wining, dining and pleasures only."
While Yang's empathy with the peasants' plight should indeed be hailed, the fact that an 89-year-old was forced out of his retirement to offer help says a lot about the patchy system of social justice. Can we expect systemic injustices to be redressed only by the retail efforts of a few good men?
Despite the risk of being disbarred for smearing senior officers - in case of a guilty verdict, he defends two marines who has killed a fellow soldier, under orders to carry out a "code red," a euphemism for extrajudicial corporal punishment.
While disciplining criminal lawyers in the movie is no worse than disbarment, the penalty is much graver for their Chinese counterparts, who are sometimes stalked by death in their struggle to seek justice for victims of official excesses.
Civil rights lawyer Zhang Kai had a brush with death last Tuesday night, when he was attacked and chased by thugs who apparently intended to kill him. The fact that Zhang was in the capital city of Beijing, the most unlikely place to be attacked so brazenly, didn't afford the least protection.
Zhang detailed his narrow escape in a blog entry at www.caing.com, a news portal. He was driving home with his friend as a passenger in downtown Beijing, when three cars came out of nowhere and blocked his vehicle.
Zhang kept his doors locked to keep at bay a dozen thugs who emerged from the cars, metal bars in hand. They tried to smash Zhang's shock-resistant windshield, which remained intact and protected the lawyer from being dragged out and mauled. At the critical juncture, Zhang revved up the car, rammed through the barricades and sped off - the assailants in close pursuit.
The chase continued until they reached Chang'an Avenue, the main thoroughfare, where his assailants fled at the sight of the armed police stationed along the route.
Hired thugs
The well-organized attack led Zhang to suspect triad members, backed by officials his legal work had threatened, were involved, since it bore striking similarity to attacks against his lawyer friends Li Heping and Teng Biao. They also had taken up damning cases against the authorities.
Zhang's role as the attorney representing the victim's family in the high-profile "Li Gang case" may have made him a target. In that case in October, Hebei University student Li Qiming killed one female student and injured another in a drunk-driving incident. Li brazenly claimed his father Li Gang was a local police chief and challenged bystanders to call the police.
With the victim's family compensated, probe into the case seemed to have stalled. Some officials might have reckoned that if they stayed low, the public would soon forget the case.
Yet bitter memories of this incident remain raw, and the recent attack on lawyer Zhang keeps the heat on officials to take legal action against the culprit.
Criminal lawyers like Zhang must tread carefully in cases that pit them against the authorities. The perjury clause in China's laws governing lawyers resembles a sword of Damocles dangling above their heads.
Threats of death
The bleak financial career prospects and the risks of undertaking criminal defense once led my university professor, himself a criminal lawyer, to conclude that they are plying a risky trade and that the legal eagles in Western films are a rare breed in China.
Sometimes it's only faith that keeps them going in a system where the odds are stacked against them. But these few good men will become even fewer as official coercion rears its ugly head.
In the latest case of official apathy toward petitioners, Yang Weijun, 89, a retired top political adviser in Yunnan Province, was threatened with death when he assisted some farmers with their petition about seizure of their land.
Driving the car assigned to him as a retirement benefit, Yang escorted peasants to the headquarters of the provincial political advisory body to air their grievances. In so doing, the farmers would "stand a greater chance of being received by cadres," he said.
When some officials criticized him for not using official car properly, Yang countered that official cars should not be used for "wining, dining and pleasures only."
While Yang's empathy with the peasants' plight should indeed be hailed, the fact that an 89-year-old was forced out of his retirement to offer help says a lot about the patchy system of social justice. Can we expect systemic injustices to be redressed only by the retail efforts of a few good men?
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