Legal News

Chinese Dissident Lawyer Gone Missing

By Dan Slater

Back in January, the Law Blog read a story about a Chinese “dissident blogger,” Hu Jia, who, while working from his apartment complex, called, perhaps improbably, Bo Bo Freedom City, was arrested by Chinese authorities. Hu was charged with attempting to subvert state power and then jailed.

The story contained this quote from one of Hu’s lawyer-friends, Teng Biao: “This is a coordinated cleansing campaign. All the troublemakers — including potential troublemakers — are being silenced before the Olympic Games.”

Now it appears that Teng has become one of the cleansed. Reports out of China yesterday indicate that Teng — a 34 year-old law professor and supposed “activist Beijing lawyer” who had close ties to Hu — has gone missing, according to his wife and friends. Here’s the AP story.

In September, Teng, a law prof at Beijing’s China University of Political Science, and Hu, co-authored a letter challenging Beijing’s rights record ahead of the 2008 Olympics. “’When you come to the Olympic Games in Beijing, you will see skyscrapers, spacious streets, modern stadiums and enthusiastic people,” they reportedly wrote. “You may not know that the flowers, smiles, harmony and prosperity are built on a base of grievances, tears, imprisonment, torture and blood.”

According to reports, a spokeswoman at the Beijing Public Security Bureau said she didn’t know anything about Teng’s case. Last month, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said that Chinese people enjoyed “extensive” freedom of speech. “Ask 10 people to stand in front of public security officers and say, ‘Human rights are far more important than the Olympics,’ and I’d like to see which officer would put him in jail,” he said. “But I think it’s possible that one of the officers might offer him a cup of tea if he spoke for too long and got tired.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 07, 2008 (boomark / email).