Dawu Legal Team, July 17, 2021 At 9 a.m., on July 17, 2021, the Dawu trial continued. In the morning, the defense lawyers continued to question the defendants who are suspected of “gathering a crowd to assault state organs”. The defense counsel once again filed an application to exclude illegal evidence based on new clues he learned about illegal evidence collection. At the same time, the defense lawyers jointly submitted to the court “Lawyers’ opinion requesting the court to investigate the criminal responsibility of the investigators of the Dawu case in using their authority to carry out illegal detention and the legal responsibility of the prosecutory organ for failure to conduct oversight”, requesting to check and verify the serious violations of law of inhuman Residential […]

Dawu Legal Team, July 16, 2021 At 9 a.m. on July 16, 2021, the Dawu trial resumed for the second day. ​​In the morning, the defendants mainly expressed their opinions on the decision of the pre-trial meetings. The prosecutors mainly responded to the defendants and defense lawyers’ request to exclude illegal evidence, to which the defense lawyers provided supplementary opinions. In the afternoon, the collegial bench nonetheless rejected all applications to exclude evidence on the grounds of “lack of needs” and “no illegal evidence collection”, and then proceeded with a court investigation on the crime of “gathering a crowd to assault state organs.” 1. Life was worse than death under “Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location” (RSDL); court’s rejection of “the exclusion of illegal evidence” […]

Wang Yu, November 13, 2017   Wang Yu (王宇), born 1971 in Inner Mongolia, was a lawyer with Beijing Fengrui Law Firm when she was abducted in the early morning of July 9, 2015. The date of her detention marks the beginning of, and gives name to, the most notorious human rights event over the last two years – the 709 Crackdown. She was released on bail on August 2016, but until recently Wang Yu, her husband and son have been sequestered in an apartment in Ulan Hot, Inner Mongolia, under severe surveillance. The family returned to their home in Beijing recently. Below is an excerpt of Wang Yu’s account of her first two months in Beijing from July to September, 2015. She is currently […]

Xie Yanyi, October 15, 2017   Xie Yanyi (谢燕益) is one of the twenty or so 709 detainees during China’s sweeping, still ongoing crackdown on human rights lawyers and activists. He was held incommunicado  from, July 12, 2015 to January 18, 2017, in Tianjin. As a human rights lawyers, Xie Yanyi’s career spans from 2003 to the time when he was detained, representing dozens of cases involving religious freedom, freedom of speech, forced expropriation of land and property, corruption, local elections, political prisoners, and more. Meanwhile, he has been known for passionately advocating democratic transition in China. During the 553 days of disappearance, his wife gave birth to a baby girl, and his mother died without him knowing it. In September he posted a book […]