By Jerome A. Cohen
My colleague Yu-Jie Chen and I wrote about the disbarment of human rights lawyers Tang Jitian and Liu Wei ten years ago. At the 10th anniversary today, Professor Eva Pils and I, in collaboration with Yu-jie Chen, have just published an op-ed in the South China Morning Post to remember this case and the plight of Tang Jitian and his colleagues.
A decade has passed, and the human rights lawyer movement in China has deteriorated with astonishing speed. We asked at the end of the article: Will liberal democracies and the international legal profession, preoccupied with the coronavirus and other major distractions, take note? Tang Jitian and his surviving colleagues in China try to remain hopeful. Are they right?
Tang Jitian
left, Wang Cheng, Tang Jitian, Jiang Tianyong, at the Nongken Procuratorate in Jiansanjiang before their detention on March 21, 2014. Source: Human Rights in China