Asian Lawyers Network
Asian Lawyers Network
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Asia Lawyers Network (ALN) is a network that advocates for the rights of lawyers and legal activists throughout the Asia region that are subject to arbitrary detention, sanction, and harassment for their legal advocacy, as well as for strengthening standards of protection for lawyers and for civil and political rights generally.
News
News
News about lawyers and legal activists in the Asia region, including statements, reports, and activities of ALN
Human Rights Lawyer Gao Zhisheng
11 April 2025. [Article] Disappeared Chinese Human Rights Lawyer Gao Zhisheng Turns 61
By Patrick Poon, Board Member, Asian Lawyers Network
I first heard of Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng in 2004 when he was representing a group of rural migrant workers in Dongguan, Guangdong province, in southern China, to sue a Taiwanese-run shoe supplier. His spirited defense speech on why the workers applied extreme measures to fight for their rights attracted wide attention. He was then one of the best known and highly respected lawyers in China.
Yang Caiying in front of the Chinese consulate in Nagoya
4 March 2025. [Statement] Mother and Sister Detained after Petitioning Against Illegal Land Grabs Chinese Woman living in Japan Threatened to be Kidnapped back to China
By Patrick Poon, Board Member, Asian Lawyers Network
Yang Caiying was leading a pretty good life in Nagoya, Japan. Unexpectedly, she received bad news from her town in Changzhou, Jiangsu province, in China. Her 71-year-old mother Xu Dongqing and 45-year-old younger sister Yang Li were intercepted and kidnapped from Zhongnanhai in Beijing to their hometown in Jintang District, Changzhou city, on 10 October and 16 October 2024 respectively. Why? It’s because they had been petitioning against the Jintang District government’s deceptive land grabs and violent forcible evictions. The authorities refused to investigate their family’s claim that their savings were illegally held by a local bank as a result of retaliation against their petitioning.
Lu Siwei
27 February 2025. [Joint Statement] Detention and deteriorating health of human rights lawyer Lu Siwei
The Law Society of England and Wales, International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute, Asian Lawyers Network, Lawyers’ Rights Watch Canada, The Rights Practice, Lawyers for Lawyers, and Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE) are gravely concerned about the detention and deteriorating health of human rights lawyer Lu Siwei while he is detained in Chengdu, China. It has been reported that his health is deteriorating due to being held in poor, cramped conditions, a lack of adequate nutrition, and a ban on his family sending him imported medicine which he was previously reliant on to control his thyroid disease.
Lu Siwei was visited by his lawyer on 14 and 24 February 2025. After these visits, Lu Siwei’s wife reported several issues surrounding Lu Siwei’s health and detainment conditions that are gravely concerning.
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Benny Tai
27 February 2025. [Article] Reflections on Benny Tai’s Legacy in Hong Kong Following his Arbitrary 10 Year Sentence
On 19 November 2024, 45 pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong were sentenced for prison terms between four to ten years for “conspiracy to commit subversion” for participating in an unofficial primary election in 2020 to gain support for the upcoming election at the time. [...] The action was part of a larger plan to gain a majority of seats in the Legislative Council allowing the bloc to take certain disruptive but legal and non-violent legislative actions in an effort to pressure the government to enact democratic reforms including universal suffrage. The largest prison sentence was given to Benny Yiu-ting Tai, a former law professor at the University of Hong Kong with a history of organizing civil society action in Hong Kong, whom the judges in the Hong Kong 47 conspiracy case labeled as the “mastermind” of the plan. This article takes a broader look at the significance of Tai’s work, legacy, and sentencing in the context of Hong Kong’s descent into authoritarianism since 2020.
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Xu Zhiyong & Ding Jiaxi, two victims of the crackdown
10 February 2025. [Joint Statement] "Joint Statement on the Fifth Anniversary of the ‘Xiamen Gathering’ Crackdown"
26 December 2024 marked the fifth anniversary of the crackdown on the “Xiamen gathering”, a private gathering that about 20 Chinese human rights defenders and lawyers convened in Xiamen, China in December 2019 to discuss the situation of human rights and civil society in China. In the weeks after, Chinese authorities interrogated, harassed, detained and imprisoned every participant who was not able to leave China then and subjected almost all of them, including some families and friends, to travel bans, up to the present day, under the pretext of national security.
A relative of the convicts cried as she heard the sentencing of 45 Hong Kong pro-democracy figures at the Kowloon Law Courts Building on Nov. 19, 2024. © AP
22 January 2025. [Editorial] "Hong Kong's rule of law has been derailed" By Patrick Poon
Several friends of mine in Hong Kong will face long-overdue trials this year. One of these is Chow Hang-tung, a barrister and a vice chairperson of the disbanded Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China (commonly known as the "Hong Kong Alliance"). She has had the courage to speak out while in detention, but what stands out more is her incomparable vision and determination in activism.
Patrick Poon
26 December 2024. [Editorial] "Overlooking China’s Tyranny Endangers Japan’s Security; Suppression of Hong Kong Democracy Leaves No One Safe" By Patrick Poon
Hong Kong legal scholar Benny Tai was sentenced to 10 years in prison by Hong Kong’s High Court last month under the national security law. Tai, a cofounder of the Occupy Central movement in 2014, which came to be known as the 79-day Umbrella Movement, was the initiator of an unofficial primary election held by pro-democracy figures and activists in Hong Kong in 2020.
Journalist and Public Intellectual Dong Yuyu
4 December 2024. [Urgent Message] "Urgent Message from Japan on Mr. Dong Yuyu's Prison Sentence"
On November 29, 2024, the Second Intermediate People's Court of Beijing, China, sentenced Mr. Dong Yuyu, a Chinese national, to seven years in prison. We are deeply concerned about this and protest to the Chinese government and relevant authorities, and we strongly urge that he be released without charge.
[Read the full Urgent Message...]
You can sign the petition to release Dong Yuyu here.
Rights lawyer and legal scholar Xu Zhiyong
22 November 2024. [Joint Statement] "Joint statement on lawyer Xu Zhiyong’s hunger strike over inhumane treatment in Lunan prison, China"
The [undersigned organisations] are gravely concerned about human rights lawyer and legal scholar, Dr Xu Zhiyong who is currently on hunger strike in Lunan prison, Shandong province in China. Mr Xu started his hunger strike on 4 October 2024 to call attention to the inhumane treatment he is being subjected to in prison. Our organisations have been informed that Mr Xu is held in a cell with three other detainees who have been instructed by prison guards to monitor and torment him, even when he is using the toilet.
Xu Yan and Yu Wensheng
1 November 2024. [Joint Statement] "Joint Statement on the sentencing of Chinese human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng and his wife Xu Yan"
We, the undersigned organisations, are seriously concerned about the recent sentencing of Chinese human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng, sentenced to 3 years imprisonment, and his wife Xu Yan, who was sentenced to 1 year and 9 months, by the Suzhou Intermediate People’s Court on 29 October 2024. The couple are both prominent human rights defenders, and Yu Wensheng has represented many victims of human rights abuses, including fellow lawyers targeted in mass arrests.
Chinese human rights lawyer Lu Siwei in Laos
21 October 2024. [Joint Letter] "Re: Arrest and Detention of Lawyer – Lu Siwei"
Asian Lawyers Network, along with six other organisations, sent a joint intervention letter to the government of China expressing grave concern that the detention of Chinese rights lawyer Lu Siwei is related to his professional duties as a lawyer and that the offence he has reportedly been charged with is based on an exit ban that lacks legitimacy, rendering his arrest and detention arbitrary.
We urge the relevant authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Lu Siwei from detention and drop the charges against him and, pending his release, ensure he is held in adequate conditions of detention that comply with international human rights standards.
Activists during a protest march against Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her government in Dhaka on August 2.
(Photo: AP)
16 October 2024. [Report] "An Overview of Bangladesh’s Transitional Process and the Role of Lawyers in it"
This report considers the role of lawyers in Bangladesh’s current period of transition under the interim government following the dramatic resignation and flight of Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed to India on 6 August 2024 following months of student protests and violent police crackdowns.
The student protests which led to Hasina’s departure, ending the authoritarian rule of her and her party, the Awami League (AL), over much of the last 15 years during her consecutive administrations from January 2009 to August 2024, are already being hailed as one of the most important political events in Asia this year, inspiring activists and human rights defenders in other authoritarian states in the region.[1] Inside of Bangladesh it is common to see the event described as akin to a second independence, as officials and the public debate how the transition back to liberal democracy should be handled after more than a decade of authoritarian rule.[2]
David Edmond Neuberger, Baron Neuberger of Abbotsbury
19 August 2024. [Joint Letter] "45 civil society organisations urge Lord Neuberger to resign from Hong Kong Court"
Today, 45 civil society organisations from around the world sent a letter to Lord Neuberger, a former president of the British Supreme Court, urging him to seriously reconsider his position on the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal.
The letter follows Lord Neuberger being one of five judges who unanimously upheld the convictions of Jimmy Lai, Martin Lee, Margaret Ng, Albert Ho, Lee Cheuk-yan, “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung and Cyd Ho for “participating in an unauthorised demonstration” on 18 August 2019. The alleged unauthorised demonstration involved a peaceful march against the Hong Kong police’s use of force, which involved 1.7 million people marching without violent incident from Causeway Bay to Central.
Hejaaz Hizbullah
30 July 2024. [Statement] "ALN Protests the Continued Arbitrary Detention of Lawyer and Anti-Discrimination Activist Hejaaz Hizbullah in Sri Lanka"
On 26 July 2024, the trial in Sri Lanka of Hejaaz Hizbullah, a lawyer and activist for Muslim rights, resumed after being delayed by the prosecution on 17 May 2024.1 The delay follows a pattern of witness pressure, delays, and judicial harassment against Hizbullah, which itself is part of a broader trend by Sri Lankan authorities of increasing discrimination, harassment, and restrictions on the civil and political rights of ethnic and religious minorities since 2019.
Harvard University
22 July 2024. [Joint Statement] "206 Groups Call Upon Harvard to Respond to Concerns About Transnational Repression"
ALN has joined 205 other organisations in calling on Harvard University administrators to respond to transnational repression concerns after student protestors were violently dragged, interrogated, and followed by Chinese individuals during an April protest of Chinese Ambassador Xie Feng at Harvard.
Dismissed Wall Street Journal Reporter Selina Cheng
Karakalpak Activist and Lawyer Dauletmurat Tajimuratov
5 July 2024. [Statement] "ALN protests the continued arbitrary detention of Dauletmurat Tajimuratov"
July 2, 2024 marks the second anniversary of the start of the arbitrary detention of the lawyer, activist, and former newspaper editor Dauletmurat Tajimuratov by Uzbekistan authorities following his advocacy and call for protests against proposed constitutional amendments to end the autonomous status and right to secede of Karakalpakstan, an autonomous region in West Uzbekistan. Tajimuratov was later convicted to a 16 year sentence which he is currently serving, and there are reports that he has suffered inhuman conditions and ill-treatment during his incarceration.
Nguyen Van Binh, head of the legal department of Vietnam's Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs
30 May 2024. [Statement] "ALN protests the arbitrary arrest of Nguyen Van Binh in Vietnam Following His Advocacy for Labor Rights Reforms"
ALN protests the arbitrary arrest in mid-April in Vietnam of Nguyen Van Binh, a lawyer and head of the legal department of Vietnam’s Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA), for allegedly disclosing state secrets.... Binh’s arrest is part of a wider crackdown the government of Vietnam has been waging against human rights activists, journalists, government officials, and other critical voices in Vietnam over the last several months, the origins of which stem from a shake-up in political leadership and a related policy shift in 2023 in an authoritarian direction associated with Directive 24 as explained below.
26 April 2024. [Joint Report] "A Legal Analysis of Hong Kong’s New Safeguarding National Security Ordinance and What it Means for Lawyers"
Jointly issued by Asian Lawyers Network, The 29 Principles and Lawyers for Lawyers
On March 19, Hong Kong’s Legislative Council (LegCo) passed the “Safeguarding National Security Ordinance” (SNSO) popularly known as Article 23 or the Article 23 law, referring to Article 23 of the Basic Law, which calls on the region to pass domestic national security legislation. On March 23, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive John Lee signed it into law. This statement provides some legal analysis of the law and surveys possible threats it poses for Hong Kong lawyers.
Rights lawyer Yu Wensheng, his wife activist Xu Yan, and their son.
14 April 2024. [Joint Statement] "China: Immediately release human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng and activist Xu Yan"
13 April marks the first anniversary of the detention of human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng and his wife, activist Xu Yan. We, the undersigned civil society organizations, are deeply concerned about this case and call for the immediate and unconditional release of Yu Wensheng and his wife, activist Xu Yan, as they have been detained solely for the peaceful exercise of their human rights including the right to freedom of expression.
Rights lawyer Maria Saniata Alzate, killed on 14 September 2023
23 February 2024. [ALN Statement] "More must be done in the Philippines to Prevent Attacks on Lawyers"
Since Bongbong Marcos Jr. became president of the Philippines in 2022, at least nine lawyers have been physically attacked for their legal work, three of whom were killed (Danny Pondevilla, Elmer Mape, and Maria Saniata Alzate) and six severely injured (Ariff Lao, Karen Quinanola-Gonzales, Alexander Lacaba, Hamilcar Bigornia, Gerome Tubig, and Maria R.M. Melendez).
19 February 2024. [Joint Statement] "Over 80 organisations sign joint statement on the Hong Kong Government’s Consultation for Article 23 Legislation"
Asian Lawyers Network (ALN) co-signed this important statement. Lawyers' rights and the rule of law are at risk in Hong Kong.
_____
We, the undersigned, representing civil society and human rights organizations across the world, condemn the Hong Kong government’s plans to introduce domestic security legislation under Article 23 of the Basic Law.
China's 4th UPR Review in Room XX of the UN Palais des nations in Geneva
2 February 2024. [ALN Report] "ALN's Observations and Analysis of China's 4th UPR Review in Relation to Lawyers' Rights"
1. Introduction and Background on China’s UPR Session
On 23 January 2024, the session for China’s fourth UPR cycle was held at the Human Rights Council in Geneva. The session was video recorded, and one can watch it from the link in the following footnote.[1] Very briefly, the Universal Periodical Review (UPR) is an administrative process under the UN’s Human Rights Council to review the human rights record of all states on a four-and-a-half year cycle, administered by the UPR Working Group (WG) of states.
Arnon Nampa (Photo credit: Reuters/Athit Perawongmetha)
18 January 2024. [ALN Statement] "Arnon Nampa’s Latest Conviction under the Lèse-Majesté Law in Thailand Emphasizes that the Law Remains a Significant Threat ... in 2024"
On 17 January 2024, activist lawyer Arnon Nampa was convicted to a four year sentence for three social media posts he made in 2021 under Thailand’s Computer Crimes Act and its draconian lèse-majesté law, which criminalizes defamatory speech against Thailand’s king or royal family. Arnon’s posts, made on January 1 and 3, 2021, were deemed to defame, express hatred towards, and lead to public misunderstanding about the king and monarchy.
29 December 2023. [ALN Statement] "Eight Ways that Rights Lawyers in China and Hong Kong Continue to Face Arbitrary Detention, Harassment, and Repression"
As 2023 ends, this article highlights eight important or recent developments in the arbitrary detention, harassment, and repression of rights lawyers and activists in China and Hong Kong over the last year.
The context remains the hostile environment for rights lawyers and human rights defenders created by President Xi Jinping and his administration since the early years of his rule, characterized by “rule by law” authoritarianism, that is, by crackdowns on all potential oppositional actors, including (especially) rights lawyers assisting such oppositional actors, through “legal” procedures ostensibly in the name of “upholding law and order”.
[Read More...]
22 December 2023. [Joint Statement] "Month-Long Disappearance of Lawyer Tang Jitian. Concern Over Well-Being of Tang’s Daughter in Japan" (Chinese, Japanese English)
唐吉田律師失蹤逾月 在日女兒身體狀況令人擔心 (中国語、日本語、英語)
唐吉田氏弁護士の一ヶ月にわたる失踪。 日本にいる唐氏の娘の安否を懸念。(中国語、日本語、英語)
人權律師唐吉田律師自2023年11月4日再次失聯，再次失蹤的情況令人擔心，除了他身體狀況過去因為肺結核令身體虛弱，他幾年來一直沒法赴日本探望昏迷的女兒琪琪。唐律師面對的困境正是很多在中國的人權捍衛者面對的情況，不單是本人失去人身自由，連和家人見面的機會也被剝奪。
中国の人権派弁護士・唐吉田氏の所在を確認し、拘束されているのであれば釈放し、日本在住で重病の娘との面会のための出国を許すよう、ようせいします。
The prolonged disappearance of Chinese human rights lawyer Tang Jitian since 4 November 2023 is a cause for concern, especially considering his weakened physical condition due to previous lung tuberculosis. For years, he has been unable to visit his comatose daughter, Qiqi, in Japan.
[Read More...]
14 December 2023. [ALN Statement] "Update on the Dire Situation of Rights Lawyers in China, Cambodia, and Myanmar in Four Cases"
In 2023, three countries have stood out in the Asia region for their harassment and arbitrary detention of lawyers and other human rights defenders, China, Cambodia, and Myanmar. The four relatively recent cases listed below emphasize the dire situation of lawyers attempting to work in these countries.
[Read More...]
7 November 2023. [ALN Co-signs Public Letter]
ALN has co-signed a public letter to US President Biden along with 58 other organizations calling for him to prioritize human rights when speaking to Xi Jinping during the upcoming APEC Summit.
Dear President Biden,
On behalf of 59 organizations and individuals devoted to improving respect for human rights in China and communities the Chinese government impacts, we write to urge you to prioritize concerns about Beijing’s lack of concrete human rights improvements in your discussions with Chinese leader Xi Jinping during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco.
[Read More...]
More than eight years after the “709 Crackdown” in China on 9 July 2015, in which more than 300 human rights lawyers and activists were arbitrarily detained, greatly expanding Xi Jinping’s assault on all voices of dissent in China, Chinese human rights lawyers continue to face disappearances, arbitrary detention, torture, disbarment, travel restrictions, surveillance, relentless harassment of them and their families, and other abuses.
[Read More...]
27 October 2023. [VOA News] "Li Yuhan, Rights Lawyer in China, Given 6 ½ Year Sentence"
Li Yuhan, the Chinese human rights lawyer who won the 2020 Franco-German Prize for Human Rights and the Rule of Law, has been sentenced to six and a half years in prison. Detained six years ago, she was charged with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” [Read More...]
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