Sunday, April 12, 2009

Top Lawyers on Bottom Cases

You don't usually see top lawyers work on small cases, but it's not automatically means a piece of cake success for sure, in China.

Liu Xiaoyuan is a high profile Beijing lawyer. For most of the past year, he tried all he could for a fair trail for Yang Jia. Shanghai police kidnapped Yang Jia's mother and locked her up in a mental facility for several months, until they killed Yang Jia. The case was so controversial that many people who never heard of Yang Jia traveled from all across the country to gather in front of Shanghai police bureau to protest. Many of them were arrested. Liu's blog covering the case become the focal point of people's attention. It was chosen as the 'Best Chinese Blog' by the Voice of Germany radio station. Liu followed up every possible threads within the law, and was stoned walled all the way along. Beijing government suspended license of all lawyers in Liu's YiTong Law Firm for half year on March 17, 2009. In a sense, this is a recklessly stupid move, as it converted Liu into a full time writer posting angry anti-government blogs.

Zhou Ze is an insider of the Communism justice system. Ten years ago when he was a clerk of the supreme court, he handled a case that a business woman Liu Ningli was robbed by Shanghai court of all her property, $4 million. It sounds a lot, but not that much for corrupted official's appetite. A small case indeed. Zhou had been working on the same for ten years to no end. Currently he is an associate professor in the Communist Youth League Academy and an established lawyer. He had been using his connections in the case. Three Congressmen introduced five bills regarding this specific case. The Justice Department instructed the Justice Department of Shanghai to appeal the original verdict. The Supreme Court picked up the case. Even the Central Discipline Committee of the CCP examined the case. Everyone told him the case is an obvious abuse of power. In March 2009, Zhou openly dared the legal system that if the case couldn't reach a satisfactory conclusion, he would exhausted all his resource and connections to veto the Supreme Court's Annual Report on the 17th National Congress. The case was not solved, and the Supreme Court received the lowest approval rate in history. However, nobody can do anything to it. It's so reticular that it is not funny.

Liu is a high profile lawyer with enormous media influence. Zhou is an Communist justice system insider with connections to the very top level. Though they were both tumbled by small cases. The ruling class is so terrified by the people, that they have to endorse every crime, regardless of how insignificant it may appears, committed by every corrupted official at the cost of the credit of itself.


<Farewell my Concubine (1993)> is acclaimed as one of the best movies in Chinese motion picture history. Through the life story of two Beijing Opera artists, traditional art was seen struggling through economic tough time, Japanese invasion, but not under communist reign.

Mr. Hu Jintao should pray that God be with him on every day and night, because under the mounting pressure of people's distrust on the communism generated by the communist government itself, any crack overlooked by Hu could explode the entire system into pieces.

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