Beijing brands law firm ‘criminal organisation’

Hong Kong Democratic Party’s Albert Ho  (C) and legislator Leung Kwok-hung (top C), known as “Long Hair”, attend a protest in Hong Kong after at least 50 Chinese human rights lawyers and activists were detained.AFP/BeijingChina has denounced a law firm that specialises in rights cases as a “major criminal organisation” after more than 50 lawyers and activists were said to have been detained in a sweeping crackdown.At least five lawyers from the firm, Beijing Fengrui, have been “criminally detained”, said a report late Saturday in the Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily. The term is used often used to indicate an individual will face later charges in China’s court system, which has a near-perfect conviction rate.Zhou Shifeng and his colleagues from Fengrui established “a major criminal gang that organised and planned creating an uproar in more than 40 sensitive cases and that seriously disturbed social order”, said the report in the People’s Daily that laid out the charges.A wide-ranging crackdown on dissent has been under way since president Xi Jinping took office two years ago, with scores of government critics detained and dozens jailed. The dozens of lawyers and activists detained this week had used the legal system to challenge the government and Party’s authority.“These no-holds-barred lawyers staged open defiance inside the courtroom and on the Internet, and behind the scenes instructed their key troublemakers to organise petitioners,” the report said. “Zhou Shifeng and the others are suspected of other serious crimes, and the case is still under investigation,” it added, citing police.According to the police, Zhou organised groups in a series of so-called sensitive cases, and then used the Internet to publicise their claims and used aggressive strategies in court, the paper said. The lawyers looked to personally profit from their work and attack the party, the report added.Zhou was most recently in the news for taking on the case of Zhang Miao, a Chinese journalist detained for nine months after helping a German magazine report on democracy protests in Hong Kong. State security detained him on Friday, the day of her release, covering his head as they hustled him out of a Beijing hotel.One of the lawyers and two other activists have allegedly confessed, the People’s Daily said.The Chinese Communist Party has repeatedly imprisoned those who openly challenge its right to rule or have protested publicly and state-run media said in December that torture by police to extract confessions is “not rare”. Aside form Zhou, Wang Yu, Liu Sixin, Wang Quanzhang and Huang Liqun, all lawyers at Fengrui, were also detained, as well as Bao Longjun, Wang Yu’s husband, who had helped with her work.The vice president of China’s highest court has been put under investigation, the ruling Communist Party’s anti-corruption agency said, the most senior member of the judiciary to be probed as part of a highly publicised anti-graft campaign.Xi Xiaoming, 61, who joined the Supreme People’s Court in 1982, is being probed for suspected “serious disciplinary violations and breaking the law”, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said in a one line notice.In May, Xi was tapped to lead a newly created research group focusing on China’s civil code. The notice gave no further details of the charges in the brief statement posted on its website.Under president Xi Jinping, China’s ruling Communist Party has repeatedly vowed to combat rampant graft in the face of public anger over the issue, with Xi vowing to target both high-level “tigers” and low-ranking “flies”.Last month, a court jailed China’s former security chief Zhou Yongkang for life on corruption charges, making him the highest-ranking ex-official to be sentenced in decades.Xiao Tian, a deputy head of China’s sports administration, was also put under investigation in June, and is the most senior sport official snared by the campaign so far.State media meanwhile reported that the ruling Communist party’s disciplinary body has targeted 26 state-owned enterprises in a round of investigations that began late February.The most recent announcement may point to the beginning of corruption probes into the judicial system.President Xi has emphasised improving the “rule of law” in China, but maintained that the justice system must still ultimately answer to the ruling Communist Party. But critics say no systemic reforms have been introduced to increase transparency and help tackle the problem, leaving the drive open to being used for factional in-fighting, while anti-corruption demonstrators have been jailed.