ICC Note:

China has indicted human rights lawyer Li Heping with treason. Li is a Christian and has defended underground Christians, Falun Gong practitioners, as well as many others in China’s courts. New directives from Beijing require lawyers to agree with the state on many issues and prevent them from defending members of religious groups in many cases. This comes at the same time as a massive crackdown on religion, human rights lawyers, and anyone else the state sees as a threat. This crackdown ignores calls from the international community to respect human rights and the freedom of religion and removes almost any defense that Christians have in Chinese court.

12/10/2016 China (Voice of America) – hina is showing no sign of easing its crackdown on the nation’s rights defenders.

Earlier this week, rights lawyer Li Heping was officially indicted, and the whereabouts of three other rights activists, including public interest lawyer Jiang Tianyong, are unknown more than two weeks after they disappeared.

Li’s wife, Wang Qianling, learned of her husband’s indictment days after she and attorney Ma Lianshun began pressing authorities in Tianjin for an answer.

“Today [on Thursday], Ms. Wang went to [the procuratorate in] Tianjin again and confirmed that Li is formally charged with treason. No more details were given,” Ma told VOA.

Wang hired Ma to defend Li, one of the country’s best-known lawyers, who was taken away from his home in Beijing during the Communist Party’s sweeping crackdown on rights activists last July.

But the lawyer has never been allowed to meet his client, and the authorities, by putting Li in detention where he is incommunicado, have not followed due process of law.

Ma said Li’s situation is like a “boiling black pot with its lid on for no one to see clearly.”

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