Sir, – China’s expressed goal of achieving a system of government based on the rule of law must be encouraged.
In all cultures courageous lawyers perform an essential role in protecting basic rights integral to the rule of law. Yet in China, human-rights lawyers have been detained, intimidated, or disappeared.
For example, the lawyer Zhou Shefeng, who represented activists and families taking legal action over tainted baby formula, has been sentenced to seven years in prison for the crime of subverting state power.
The notion that defending human rights amounts to the vague and overbroad crime of subverting state power or inciting the subversion of state power is antithetical to the rule of law.
Concern must be heightened because the use of torture and ill-treatment is a feature of the Chinese criminal-justice system.
Ireland’s embassy in China has expressed the Irish Government’s concern about the Chinese government’s behaviour.
Shouldn’t the legal professions, law schools, law firms, and China-oriented businesses be more publicly active in defending the human rights of China’s rule-of-law defenders? Surely morals come before money. – Yours, etc,
TOM COONEY,
Rathfarnham,
Dublin 16.