Author: Jerome A. Cohen and Yu-Jie Chen, NYU

The Chinese government’s continuing attacks on human rights lawyers rarely make foreign headlines these days. Monitoring, intimidating, disbarring and prosecuting activist lawyers have become routine in China. Even the tragic ‘disappearance’, while in police custody, of defence lawyer/political reformer Gao Zhishen, now feared to be dead, has hardly attracted attention. It is also unremarkable for even non-political Chinese defence lawyers to suffer sanctions. The recent conviction of Beijing lawyer Li Zhuang for allegedly counselling his client to lie and bribe witnesses would not have been noted abroad if the case had not involved Chongqing’s extraordinary campaign to suppress organised crime.

By contrast, the Taiwan government’s new interest in curbing vigorous defence lawyers does constitute ‘news’. Read more…