Legal News

International: Judges Released in Pakistan, Chinese Activist Jailed

By Dan Slater

On the international civil-liberties front, we’ve got mixed signals coming out of Asia today. The round-up:

Judges Go Free: Pakistan’s new prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gillani, has ordered that 62 judges, including Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry (pictured), who were placed under house arrest when President Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency this fall, be released. Musharraf’s critics in Pakistan — led largely by protesting lawyers — contend he dimissed the judges out of fear they would invalidate his presidency, and have been calling for the judges’ reinstatement.

5 Years for Land-Rights Activist: Yang Chunlin, an advocate for land rights, was sentenced yesterday to five years in prison and then given shocks with electric batons during a scuffle between his family and the police, according to the AP story. The crime? Subversion of state power. Yang, a 54 year-old former factory worker, had gathered more than 10,000 signatures for an open letter entitled “We want human rights, not the Olympics.” Most of the signatures came from farmers demanding redress for land taken from them by officials for development. According to the report, property disputes and illegal land grabs have accelerated as China’s industrial economy expands.

According to Yang’s lawyer, the blind Li Fangping (pictured) — the same lawyer who represents Hu Jia, the Chinese dissident blogger — Yang called the legal proceedings against him illegal because freedom of speech is supposed to be guaranteed in China.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 25, 2008 (boomark / email).