BEIJING (AP) — Just half a year ago, civil rights lawyer
Pu Zhiqiang was earning accolades in the Chinese media for his work
pushing for the abolition of labor camps. On Friday, Pu made headlines
again — but this time for being arrested by Beijing police on charges
that fellow activists say are trumped up in an attempt to silence the
vocal government critic.
The dramatic turnaround highlights the
thin line that activist lawyers often find themselves having to walk if
they seek to drum up public support for causes that embarrass the ruling
Communist Party: success can come at great personal cost.
"I feel
that this is a form of political suppression," said Si Weijiang, a
close friend and lawyer who has worked with Pu on several prominent
cases in recent years. "Because Pu Zhiqiang is someone who dares to do
and dares to speak. He’s an outspoken person and they want to put
pressure on people like him."
Pu, 50, is the closest a person gets
to being a celebrity lawyer in China, where defense attorneys who take
on sensitive cases are often shunned by the heavily censored
state-controlled media. Yet Pu has been on the covers of Chinese
magazines and earned awards for his work, most recently in lobbying
against the much-despised labor camps.
All this, despite being
also known for representing the dissident artist Ai Weiwei, defending
free speech and speaking up for Communist Party officials tortured in a
secretive internal detention system.
Pu’s arrest, announced by
Beijing’s Public Security Bureau on its microblog website, is being seen
by activists as part of an effort by Chinese authorities to rein in
outspoken public intellectuals who have harnessed social media and other
platforms to raise awareness about civic rights.
He was actively
engaged on China’s popular Twitter-like microblog sites, posting updates
on politically sensitive trials and questioning the party’s legitimacy.
Censors frequently deleted his accounts and his posts, forcing him to
set up new ones which quickly attracted followers, often in the
thousands — before they got shut down again.
Chinese political
analyst Zhang Lifan said Pu’s campaign for the abolition of labor camps
might have angered officials who had previously benefited from the
system, and embarrassed them by exposing how arbitrarily it was used to
lock people away without trial. The cases Pu and Si represented often
generated public outrage over abuses by local officials.
When
party leaders announced a decision to shut down labor camps last year,
the lawyers were credited in the media with providing the catalyst for
liberal-minded officials to push through urgently needed changes that
might otherwise have stalled.
"Because the cases he handled often
involve the freedom of citizens, I think no matter what problems he is
facing now, his past record shows he has made contributions to judicial
progress in China," Zhang said.
But Pu seemed aware of the risks
of his work. Speaking at a forum at a Japanese university in February,
Pu said: "If it is said that I played a little role in the movement to
abolish re-education through labor, then I should not be at all smug
about such a thing. I should take preventive measures and should think
that in the future there might be problems with my own security."
Police
said Pu was arrested on suspicion of "creating a disturbance" and
"illegally obtaining personal information." It did not provide details,
but the former offense, a kind of public disorder crime, has been widely
used to prosecute activists in recent months. Si, Pu’s friend, said the
accusations were groundless.
His lawyer, Zhang Sizhi, a veteran
rights attorney, confirmed the arrest when reached by phone but declined
to provide details on what the charges could involve, saying it was at
Pu’s request.
The police bureau said investigations into other
alleged crimes were ongoing, an indication that Pu could eventually face
more charges.
Pu’s most recent cause was one that most lawyers
would not touch: the party’s internal interrogation system for officials
accused of corruption. Known as "shuanggui," in practice, it’s a shady
form of detention without trial that subjects Communist Party members to
torture due to the secrecy surrounding the system.
In the eastern
city of Wenzhou, one such party member died from torture in this
system. His wife, Wu Qian, said she looked all over the city but no
lawyer would represent her. Pu and Si offered to help — and their
efforts to generate publicity were instrumental in forcing authorities
to respond, she said.
"After the first reports about my husband’s
death, the local media stopped reporting what was happening to us
because they had been instructed not to. Pu Zhiqiang helped me contact
major news organizations and their reports helped to create pressure for
the government," Wu said. Months later, several of the interrogators
who tortured Wu’s husband were brought to trial and sentenced to jail.
But
what little tolerance the authorities have had of Pu’s brand of
activism might be waning if a commentary about Pu by the Communist
Party-run Global Times newspaper in early May is any indication.
"These
activist lawyers, who have wild intentions to challenge and change the
law, have deviated from their own job scope. They are more like social
activists rather than legal practitioners," it said.
Pu was one of
several activists who were detained in early May after attending a
small, private meeting in Beijing to discuss the 1989 Tiananmen Square
crackdown on protesters ahead of its 25th anniversary, a taboo subject
in China. The others were released earlier.
Because of his
national profile, Pu became a symbol of the most expansive security
sweep in recent years to prevent public commemorations of the deadly
military crackdown on June 4, 1989.