Tang Jitian

Tang Jitian ( Chinese  唐吉田 ) was born in 1969 in Yanji , Jilin Province in northeast China. He is a lawyer in the People's Republic of China . Based in Beijing , he is a prominent figure in the Weiquan (legal defense) movement and has defended illegal land seizure victims, Falun Gong supporters, HIV / AIDS victims and other disadvantaged groups, including human rights lawyers.

Due to the politically sensitive situation of the cases that Tang had taken on, he encountered reprisals from the Chinese authorities. He has defended clients in a variety of areas including freedom of religion , freedom of expression , freedom of assembly, and human rights abuses. Therefore, his lawyer license was permanently revoked in 2010. Regardless, he continued his legal defense. Tang was placed under house arrest and has been arrested, monitored, beaten and tortured multiple times. In 2011, Tang Jitian disappeared for several weeks.

Legal career and advocacy

Tang Jitian began his career as a prosecutor in the Yanbian Procuratorate in Jilin in 1988 . He worked as a prosecutor for several years, during which he realized that corruption and injustice had permeated the entire judicial system in China. Ultimately, in 2004, he gave up a promising career and became a lawyer helping those who suffered and treated unfairly. In a taping for New Tang Dynasty Television , Tang stated what led him to quit his job and become a human rights attorney: "I believe that when I help others defend their rights, I am actually defending my own rights." Tang is a human rights lawyer Lawyer who believes in professional ethics, honesty and the law. He believes it is important to help others and not ignore those around you.

Tang Jitian began his legal career as a lawyer in Guangdong Province in 2005 and later moved to Beijing to work with the Anhui Law Firm . In this, he took on some human rights violations, including representing people who had been sentenced to re-education-through-labor camps for petitioning. Tang also represented victims of evictions and land expropriations; Parents whose children fell ill from milk poisoned with melamine; religious minorities, Falun Gong practitioners and others. Tang is one of the signatories of Charter 08 . However, since he started defending Falun Gong practitioners who were illegally arrested and detained, he himself has been severely persecuted and ill-treated by the Chinese authorities.

prehistory

In March 2014, Tang Jitian and three other lawyers were arrested and detained for investigating a report on a person who was detained in a so-called "black prison" . Tang's colleagues were Zhang Junjie, Jiang Tianyong, and Wang Chen . These four lawyers were reportedly detained in administrative detention for 15 days during which they were ill-treated. Front Line Defenders reported that on the same day of their arrest, Chinese officials said at a UN Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva that the Chinese government was not conducting extrajudicial detentions.

Several human rights defenders and lawyers went to Jiansanjiang to express their support for the arrested lawyers, but were arrested and interrogated by the police before they were released. More people gathered outside the Qixing City Administration Center and held a vigil for the arrested lawyers.

The four human rights defenders were reported to have taken on politically sensitive cases and have been extremely active in defending the rights of others in recent years. As a result of their work, they were subjected to harassment, detention and beatings, were forcibly removed and disappeared. Tang Jitian and Jiang Tianyong are reported to have been detained for "putting society at risk with a cult organization." The people who have been illegally detained in the black prisons are Falun Gong practitioners who have been labeled by the Chinese government as followers of a heretical teaching since the persecution of Falun Gong in 1999. Such a judgment can be made and executed at the sole discretion of the Chinese police without judicial review.

Some reporters mentioned that they are concerned about these lawyers because of the past abuse of human rights defenders in China. Tang is just one of many of these human rights lawyers who told Amnesty International after his release, "I was handcuffed to an iron chair, slapped in the face, kicked in the legs, and hit the back of the head with a full plastic bottle so badly that I was I lost consciousness. "

Media reports after release

The Epoch Times published a report in October 2013 that said Tang had campaigned for a Falun Gong practitioner to be released and was put into "administrative detention" himself. Tang and the practitioners' husband drove to a so-called re-education camp, where the two of them wanted to appeal for their release. After the two in the 610 Office of the city of Jixi province Heilongjiang arrived, said Tang with an official. After a lengthy discussion, he was finally arrested on the grounds that he had "disrupted the office rules". Days later, some of his colleagues and activists went to Beijing to support him and asked for his release. One of the lawyers said that the police chief just laughed at her and said, “Look how many of you lawyers are here! We want to know how many lawyers from all over the country still want to come by. ”In addition, the municipal police are said to have received an order from the Political and Legal Affairs Committee in Beijing not to release Tang because he was not a“ proper lawyer ”and was not a Falun Gong practitioner. To defend gong practitioners.

On March 27, 2014, Tang Jitian and three other lawyers were released from the Jiansanjiang Administrative Detention Center in Qixing City , Heilongjiang Province. The Guardian reported in April 2014 that Tang Jitian remembered being taken to a room. His head was covered with a black hood and he heard a sound that sounded like pulling a rope. His hands were handcuffed behind his back and pulled up with a jerk so that his body was dangling in the air. "I was pulled with my head down, my feet pulled off the ground, and my bum was in the air," said Tang. "Five or six people hit and kicked me, all I heard was constant thuds."

Amnesty International reported in November 2015 that ill-treatment and torture are prohibited by law in China, but this does not prevent police officers or the Chinese authorities from torturing people until they confess.

Amnesty International's new report, No End in Sight: Torture and Forced Confessions in China, shows that lawyers are also victims of ill-treatment and torture. “The Chinese legal system relies to a large extent on confessions that are obtained through mistreatment and torture,” says Verena Harpe, China expert at Amnesty International in Germany, “the new Amnesty report proves that lawyers in particular stand up for victims Use state violence, are threatened, harassed - and even tortured. The aim is to deter them from taking on cases from human rights activists and members of oppressed minorities. "

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Tang Jitian , Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers, June 5, 2013, accessed February 9, 2017
2. ^ Edward Wong, 2 Chinese Lawyers Are Facing Disbarment for Defending Falun Gong , The New York Times, April 21, 2010, accessed February 9, 2017
3. ↑ China: Free Unlawfully Detained Legal Activists, Relatives  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Human Rights Watch, February 22, 2011, accessed February 9, 2017  
4. ↑ ^{a b} Tang Jitian, HRD Lawyer , Front Line Defenders, accessed February 9, 2017
5. ↑ ^{a b} From A Prosecutor to A Human Rights Lawyer: Tang Jitian , New Tang Dynasty Television, November 14, 2013, accessed February 9, 2017
6. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Case History: Tang Jitian , Front Line Defenders, March 28, 2014, accessed February 9, 2017
7. ↑ S. Fischer, Amnesty International Report 2014/15: On the global situation of human rights , accessed on February 9, 2017
8. ↑ ^{a b c} LAWYERS ARE TARGETED TORTURE IN CHINA , Amnesty International, November 12, 2015, accessed February 9, 2017
9. ↑ Amy X. Wang, Human rights lawyers in China tell harrowing stories about their own torture and abuse, Quartz Media , November 12, 2015, accessed February 9, 2017
10. ↑ ^{a b c} China: Human Rights Lawyer Arrested - Colleagues Protest , Epoch Times, October 23, 2013, accessed February 9, 2017
11. ↑ Four Chinese rights lawyers allege torture by police , Associated Press, The Guardian, April 15, 2014. Retrieved on February 9th, 2017
12. ↑ Amnesty: China tortert Rechtsanwälte , n-tv.de, November 11, 2015, accessed on February 9, 2017
13. ^ No end in Sight: Torture and Forced Confessions in China , Amnesty International Report, November 2015, accessed February 9, 2017
14. ↑ Amnesty: Lawyers in China are deliberately tortured , Zeitzeichen, evangelisch.de, November 11, 2015, accessed on February 9, 2017