Chow Hang-tung, December 22, 2022 In September 2021, the National Security Department of the Hong Kong Police Force accused the Hong Kong Alliance of being a “foreign proxy,” demanded organizational documents from the seven members of the Alliance’s Standing Committee, and arrested five of them after the demand was rejected. Two of the five p [...] Keep reading »

Chow Hang-tung, September 7, 2022 On September 2, 2022, a preliminary inquiry into the strength of the national security case against Chow Hang-tung (鄒幸彤), former vice-chair of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, was held at the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts. Hong Kong Free Press has a detailed r [...] Keep reading »

July 25, 2022 China Disbars Lawyers to Remove a Perceived Threat / 中國人權律师被剝奪執業權 In a very real sense, the 709 Crackdown is still ongoing. Over the years following the initial campaign to arrest and torture human rights lawyers, China has disbarred over 40 lawyers for representing clients in human rights cases. As recently as [...] Keep reading »

Li Fangping, July 9, 2022 Li Fangping started practicing law in China in the mid-1990s, first in Jiangxi and then in Beijing. Over the years since the onset of the rights defense movement in the early 2000s, he has been one of the leading human rights lawyers and has defensed clients in nearly all types of human rights and public interest cases, in [...] Keep reading »

Xu Zhiyong, June 18, 2022 This autobiographical essay was written shortly before his arrest in 2013. It was translated into English and first published in Xu Zhiyong’s collection of essays “To Build a Free China – A Citizen’s Journey” in 2017. We make this important essay available to online readers before Xu Zhiyong&# [...] Keep reading »

February 11, 2022 This wide-ranging, fascinating conversation was initially conducted on The American Bar Foundation’s Rule of Law: World Tour podcast on December 21, 2021. Professor Halliday has since expanded it to include more details of his study of China’s lawyers since 2005, how the work of Chinese lawyers is part of a bigger struggle for [...] Keep reading »

Chair Merkley, Co-Chair McGovern, Members of the Commission, thank you for holding this hearing and for asking me to share my thoughts on the case of the Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai. Indeed, Peng Shuai has become a special kind of political prisoner. Meanwhile, the Women’s Tennis Association’s decision to suspend all tournaments in China has [...] Keep reading »

Andréa Worden, February 2, 2022 “The Olympics and Paralympics send a fantastic message of ‘peace and of mutual respect between people of all cultures, all civilizations and all ethnicities,’ said Guterres, days before his trip to China to attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics. …… It is necessary to shine a light [...] Keep reading »

January 30, 2022 Zhang Qing (张青), mother of two children, wife of prominent Chinese rights movement activist Guo Feixiong (郭飞雄), died of cancer on January 10, 2022, in Gaithersburg, Maryland. She fled China in 2009 with her two children to the United States, settling in Midland, Texas, with the help of ChinaAid, while her husband was serv [...] Keep reading »