The \u2018war on law\u2019 must end.<\/b>
\nPRESIDENT XI JINPING of China has been tireless in stamping out dissent. He has demanded that journalists, charities and university professors, among others, bow to the supremacy of the Communist Party. He told journalists for party organs that they must show absolute loyalty and \u201chave the party as their family name.\u201d Mr. Xi seems particularly eager to keep a firm hand on the reins of power before this year\u2019s key meeting of the Chinese Communist Party to seal his second five-year term.
One of the most vicious campaigns has been the so-called war on law, using arrests, detentions and show trials to punish lawyers who have courageously defended human rights victims in recent years. The crackdown was launched in July 2015, and more than 250 people were detained. Among them was Li Heping, a prominent lawyer who had defended Chen Guangcheng, the blind legal advocate and rights champion, as well as villagers evicted from their homes and practitioners of Falun Gong, a religious discipline banned by the Chinese authorities.
After nearly 22 months in prison during which he was reportedly tortured with electric shocks, Mr. Li was tried April 25 in the port city of Tianjin. The court announced April 28 that he had been convicted of \u201csubversion of state power\u201d for, among other things, using the foreign media and his postings on social media to \u201csmear and attack state organs and the legal system.\u201d He was given a three-year prison sentence, with a four-year reprieve, meaning he will have the convictions hanging over him.
His wife, Wang Qiaoling, insisted on his innocence, saying the party-state had \u201cturned an innocent man into a criminal, and then suspended the sentence so it seems really humanitarian. But this is absurd. I don\u2019 t acknowledge it, and I don\u2019 t recognize it.\u201d She added, \u201cScrew your suspended sentence.\u201d When Mr. Li was released May 9, his wife said he had \u201cwasted away\u201d in detention and added that Chinese security officers are shadowing him everywhere.
In Changsha, separately, a Chinese court on May 8 began the trial of prominent human rights lawyer Xie Yang, who was also taken into custody in July 2015. The proceeding began in true show-trial fashion, with the court releasing what appears to be a forced confession in which Mr. Xie admits to subversion, denies he was tortured and urges his fellow lawyers not to \u201csmear the image of the nation\u2019s party organs\u201d while representing cases. This is not rule of law.
Mr. Xie\u2019s relatives, including a daughter born in the United States, managed to flee China for Thailand, but were jailed there for entering the country illegally. Chinese agents were lurking at the jail, hoping to repatriate them, when the United States intervened, literally sweeping the family out the back door of the jail to safety. This unusual example of activism by the administration is to be welcomed. President Trump, who has described Mr. Xi as \u201ca very good man, \u201d must also speak up for China\u2019s beleaguered lawyers and others who have been cruelly silenced.
Read more on this topic:
Thomas Shattuck: China brazenly arrests a Taiwanese activist \u2014 and the Trump administration says nothing
The Post\u2019s View: A billionaire\u2019s disappearance has China\u2019s heavy-handed touch
Angela Gui: Who will remember my father, Gui Minhai?
Fred Hiatt: China is bent on world domination \u2014 but not in the way you think
Josh Rogin: China\u2019s smear campaign against a U. S. admiral backfires<\/p>\n