Template talk:Weiquan lawyers

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[1] The China Quarterly, Volume 205 / March 2011, pp 40-59 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0305741010001384 (About DOI), Published online: 01 April 2011 Bibliographic data [2],Hualing, Fu (2011). "Climbing the Weiquan Ladder: A Radicalizing Process for Rights-Protection Lawyers". The China Quarterly. 205: 40–59. doi:10.1017/S0305741010001384. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help) With quotes below

There are multiple entry points to weiquan lawyering. Some lawyers are clearly motivated by a particular event, such as the generation of 1989. He Weifang 贺卫方, Zhu Jiuhu 朱久虎, Pu Zhiqiang 浦志强, Mo Shaoping 莫少平 and a few others became dedicated to political reform through law largely because of their personal experiences in the June Fourth Incident in 1989.5 Their political lawyering thus needs to be looked at within this context. There is also the generation of 2003 when lawyers and the public at large reacted passionately to the wrongful death of a young man named Sun Zhigang 孙志刚 who was initially detained by the police for failing to carry a proper identity card. Famous human rights advocates Teng Biao 滕彪 and Xu Zhiyong 许志永 made their debut by petitioning the national legislature to abolish a central government regulation authorizing the detention.6

Few of the radical lawyers were political at the beginning of their legal careers; they are transformed by their legal experiences and became radical because of their sympathy for, and later identification with, their clients, and their frustration with the legal and political process. Lawyers like Gao Zhisheng 高智晟, Chen Guangcheng 陈光诚, Tang Jingling 唐荆陵, Zhang Xingshui 张星水, Li Boguang 李柏光, Jiang Tianyong 江天勇, Li Xiongbing 黎雄兵 and Yang Zaixin 杨在新 typically started by providing pro bono legal assistance and then encountered difficult cases. These were often cases with a degree of political sensitivity that mainstream lawyers were less likely to take.....

The People's Daily, the CCP's mouthpiece, twice publicized Hao Jinsong's 郝劲松 actions in filing a series of lawsuits against the Ministry of Railways and other high-ranking government offices for illicit fee-charging, and called for citizens to follow this example to seek legal protection of rights rationally.13 An important point is that there are many lawyers and advocates who are doing exactly what Chen Guangcheng and Gao Zhisheng did a few years ago before their direct confrontation with the government and the system.

One consequence of legal hostility to weiquan cases is that most lawyers practise self-censorship and refrain from touching cases they know may draw hostile official responses. According to lawyers from Shanghai, no lawyers are willing to take on land appropriation cases in the whole of Shanghai after the persecution of lawyer Zheng Enchong 郑恩宠 for “leaking state secrets.”35 Political dissidents typically experience difficulties in finding lawyers who are willing to defend their cases with vigour. Lawyers like Mo Shaoping, Zhang Sizhi 张思之, Teng Biao and a few others have represented most of the political dissidents and other lawyers in trouble.

Lawyer Li Jianqiang 李建强 advised younger weiquan lawyers that the best way to avoid persecution while working as a weiquan lawyer is to do it without talking about it.

Less moderate lawyers tend to be more doubtful of their ability to understand just where the line is drawn. They are well aware that the government may find excuses to harass and punish them, and therefore become cautious not only in their professional life but also in their daily life. While aggressive in the court room in suing local government departments, barefoot lawyer Zhou Guangli 周广立 was actually a “model villager” and well-behaved, to the extent that he would never violate any rules of the government, even the apparently unlawful ones. He did so only to prevent giving the government any excuse for harassment.49 Another lawyer described his underground working strategy:

Lawyers with political status and more institutional support are treated more leniently than an ordinary weiquan lawyer. The best example is Guo Feixiong 郭飞雄 in the Taishi village election case. The police in Guangdong 广东 named three “black hands” behind the recall campaign: Lu Banglie 吕邦列, Ai Xiaoming 艾晓明 and Guo Feixiong. But Guo was the only one singled out for investigation and harassment.51

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--_{(comparingChinese Wikipedia vs Baidu Baike by hanteng)} 12:36, 13 March 2013 (UTC)