US ambassador to China urges end to crackdown on rights lawyers

In a week that has seen focus on China’s human rights record, the US ambassador to Beijing has urged the government to end its crackdown on rights lawyers and activists, saying they should be treated as partners rather than enemies of the people.

Max Baucus’s statement on International Human Rights Day is sure to anger the Chinese government, which rejects Western criticism of its human rights record, saying it is a country ruled by law and that it opposes foreign interference in its domestic affairs. The Communist Party argues that bringing the country out of poverty is a basic human right.

According to UN figures, 200 lawyers have been rounded up in a nationwide crackdown since July, and at least 25 of them remain in detention, including prominent lawyer-activists Wang Yu, Li Heping and Zhang Kai.

"We remain concerned over the crackdown on human rights lawyers and others who seek peacefully to contribute their views to the public discourse on the future of China, " Baucus wrote in a statement carried on the embassy's website.

A similar statement was issued by the German embassy in Beijing, saying “serious problems persist” in China with regard to freedom of opinion.

Baucus said detaining the lawyers in secret locations without access to their families or their lawyers was “deeply troubling”. “Lawyers such as Wang Yu, Li Heping and Zhang Kai bravely fight for the legal rights of religious believers, journalists, victims of forced evictions and women who simply want to protest sexual assault. They should be embraced as partners, not enemies, of the government.”

This week saw the United Nations Committee Against Torture call for a halt to the crackdown on lawyers and activists. The committee of 10 independent experts called on China to halt torture of detainees that it said remained widespread in police stations and prisons and to close its secret illegal "black jails".

The committee was reporting after it held a two-day hearing to examine China’s record on torture, the first time since 2008 that the meeting has been held. During the meeting, China denied it held political prisoners, said it did not use secret detention facilities and that torture was banned.

The trial is expected soon of Pu Zhiqiang, a rights lawyer who has represented many dissidents and activists, including the artist Ai Weiwei, on charges of "inciting ethnic hatred" and "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" for posting online messages critical of the government and also for satirising two government officials. At a pre-trial meeting on Tuesday, some of the evidence previously held against him was dismissed, his lawyers said. He still faces eight years in jail.

An editorial in the Global Times newspaper, which is part of the People's Daily publishing group that is close to the Communist Party, criticised the West for trying to impose "universal values". The paper urged the judiciary not to allow the West to set the tone of the case, just as they did in 2009 when sentencing dissident writer and Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo to 11 years in jail.

“Behind the Western point of view is its political interest,” the paper said in an editorial. “China’s judiciary will never accept the West setting the tone for Pu’s case. Even before, it had never accepted that for Liu Xiaobo and other Chinese citizens.”