Lawyers Must Follow the Party

Aiying Wu, the Minister of Justice request lawyers to follow the Party. She gave the talk at a provincial head of justice department meeting on August 6, 2009.

Minister Wu stated, lawyers must firmly obey leadership of the Party, and follow the correct political direction. She emphasized the importance of establishing Party organizations in all law firms.

By this time, among 140,000 law firms in mainland China, 3895 has build-in Party organization; 8075 firms share combined 2692 Party organizations. Appointees or liaisons have been appointed to each of the rest 2741 firms. Every law firm in China is under the direct and firm control of the Party.

Lawyer Xiaoyuan Liu questioned the legality of Wu's talk in his blog. Liu argued Liu's talk was contradictive to the Lawyer Code of the PRC.

Wu, born in 1951 and taking office in 2005, is the second women Justice Minister in China.

Women Change World

A woman changed the world - what did Secretary Rice tell Georgia on July 10?

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Georgia on July 10, 2008. Rice met Georgian President Saakashvili, and discussed issues of Georgia's perspective in NATO and South Ossetia separatism.

South Ossetia is a autonomous republic within Georgia, across the Russia-Georgia border to the North Ossetia, part of Russia. Based on a truce agreement between South Ossetia and Georgia made in 1992, Russia keeps a peace keeping force in South Ossetia. More than 70% of the South Ossetia citizens hold Russian citizenship.

What happened after this was history.

On August 8, 2008, Georgia military bombarded Russian peace keeping forces and seized the capital city of South Ossetia despite resistant from local militias. One thousand of five hundred residents were to die in the very first day of this war. At the time, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was in Beijing watching the opening ceremony. As anyone can expect after the Bear is awakened, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ordered counter attack. Russian Tanks rolled into Georgia, with Russian bombers bombed military targets across entire Georgia. It has been reported that up to 7000 Georgian soldiers had been captured out of the total of 27000 strong army. Georgian military withdrew from the capital city Tskhinvali. In diplomatic field, Georgia President begged Russia for an immediate truce.

What did Rice tell him?