Access to Justice
Local officials again beat blind legal activist Chen Guangcheng near his home in Shuanghou township, Shandong province, on October 24, according to a report the same day on Radio Free Asia. Since September 6, officials have held Chen under house arrest for publicizing abuses by local population planning officials.
Chen attempted to leave his home to greet two friends whom security officers guarding the house had prevented from visiting him. Eight or nine men, including two officials, then began beating and kicking Chen, according to the RFA account. Family members brought him back inside the house, but officials subsequently denied the family’s request to send him to the hospital. Local officials also beat Chen on October 4.
Anhui provincial authorities have expanded an experimental merger of Communist Party and government township level posts to 17 counties throughout the province, according to an October 19 article in the 21st Century Business Herald. The experiment began in late 2004 in Xuancheng city. The reforms require the township Party secretary to serve concurrently as the head of the township government. Individual township reforms require lower level Party officials to hold other government positions. For example, one township's rules require deputy township Party secretaries to head both the local people's congress (LPC) and the discipline committee.
The government of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region has approved the establishment of a legal aid center in the city of Urumqi and in each of the six counties that the city administers, according to an October 21 Urumqi Evening News report. All of the centers will begin operation by the end of 2005. To date, defendants in 574 criminal, 226 civil, and 16 notarization cases have received legal aid in Urumqi.
A Henan woman lost a labor arbitration case in which she alleged that her employer's rule that she retire at the nationally-mandated age of 55 violates the Chinese Constitution's protection of gender equality, according to an October 17th Xinhua report. The 1978 "Temporary Measures on Providing for Old, Weak, Sick, and Handicapped Cadres" require women to retire at 55, and men at 60. Zhou Xianghua sued the Pindingshan branch of the China Construction Bank, her employer, in a labor arbitration proceeding.
Members of over 400 households gathered on the streets of Chengdu, Sichuan province, to hold a press conference protesting the government's inadequate regulation of a local development company, according to an October 15 Radio Free Asia (RFA) report. Riot police eventually dispersed the crowds. A Chengdu Economic Daily report revealed that more than 80 households filed a complaint against the same company with the local investigative unit of the public security bureau on October 10, identifying themselves as victims of fraud.
Chinese legal scholars have completed a working draft of the second set of revisions to China's Criminal Procedure Law (CPL), according to an October 11 report by government-run China Radio International Online (CRI). Professor Xu Jingcun of Southwest University of Political Science and Law formally announced completion of the document during the 2005 National Conference on Procedure Law, held from September 24 through 26 in Tianjin. In his interview with CRI, Professor Xu revealed that a scholar-led working group has been discussing the revisions since June 2004 and should be ready to release their draft to affected public security, procuratorial, and court agencies for review and comment in November.
In mid-April, villagers in Huaxi village, Zhejiang province, began to protest the operation of factories that cause devastating pollution in their village. The villagers recently hired a lawyer to represent them in a court case, claiming that the factories were built illegally, according to a report on May 14 in the South China Morning Post (subscription only).
Since the riots ended, police detained a journalist, and the April 20 edition of the South China Morning Post (subscription only) reports that at least one protester, Wang Zhongfa, was arrested and charged with inciting rebellion against the government.
The government of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region has spent over 40 million yuan since 2001 on its Fourth Five-Year Work Program for Popularizing the Law, the Xinjiang Legal Development Net reported on September 26. As part of the work program, in 2001 the Xinjiang government's Law and Politics Office began sending legal experts and educators to counties throughout the region to conduct seminars on how best to increase adherence to the law by juveniles. The teams have conducted 216 seminars in 13 prefectures and 62 counties, reaching an audience of 360,000 middle school students, teachers, and parents, according to the report. In another of the programs, some 300,000 government officials have participated in yearly legal examinations since 2002.
The following translation of the judgment in the Shi Tao state secrets trial was prepared by CECC staff based on versions provided by the Independent Chinese PEN Center and the Dui Hua Foundation (via Reporters Without Borders). The original Chinese version of the judgment, along with what is reported to be a copy of the communication to the Asia Democracy Foundation referred to therein, can be viewed by clicking "more" below.
Additional background on this case is available here.
Public security officials interrogated Chen Guangcheng on September 23, according to a September 25 report of the Voice of America (in Chinese). Chen is a lawyer who brought international news media attention to illegal physical coercion by population planning officials in Linyi in Shandong province. Officials continue to hold under house arrest Chen and at least one other person who has been associated with him.