From right, jailed Hong Kong barrister Chow Hang-tung and Chinese rights attorneys Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi were honored with human rights awards by the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe. Credit: Reuters, AP, Reuters
Three jailed attorneys from Hong Kong and China have been honoured with Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe human rights awards, as a Chinese court rejected appeals from two of them, upholding their original sentences for “subversion.”
For more on these CCBE human rights awards, see: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/awards/A3C73F81-6FCB-4DDD-9356-61C422713949
Jailed Hong Kong barrister Chow Hang-tung, who has been behind bars since September 2021, and Chinese rights attorneys Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi, who were jailed in April for attending a 2019 gathering of dissidents in the southeastern city of Xiamen, were given the awards in absentia in recognition of their work upholding human rights, the association said on its website. See: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2023/04/11/xu-zhiyong-and-ding-jiaxi-two-human-rights-defenders-in-china-sentenced/
The ceremony in Athens took place on Friday 24 November, the same day that a court in the eastern province of Shandong rejected appeals from Ding and Xu, who are currently serving 12- and 14-year jail terms handed down by the Linshu County People’s Court for “subversion of state power,” respectively.
Chow said in an acceptance speech sent from prison that the fight for democracy in China is part of ensuring that the law serves democratic and humanitarian values, rather than just the wishes of those willing to use force to bring others in law. See: https://www.ccbe.eu/fileadmin/speciality_distribution/public/documents/HUMAN_RIGHTS_AWARD/2023/EN_2023_HR_Speech_Chinese-Human-rights-lawyer-Hang-Tung-Chow.pdf
“The dignity of our profession … it is bound up with the dignity of the law, with whether the law reflects our autonomy or denies it,” wrote Chow, who organized now-banned annual vigils commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.
“In that sense the building of democratic institutions that alone can safeguard the law’s dignity is also a lawyer’s duty, which is why all three of us receiving this prize today are jailed for working for democracy in China, a fight that may seem unrelated to our profession but is in fact, central to it,” said Chow.
She is currently awaiting trial under a security law on charges of “subversion” amid an ongoing crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong.
“It is a fight we cannot waver from, even when knowing that the laws we served would likely condemn us,” she said, describing the fight as “the highest service a lawyer can offer her fellow men.”
Rights activist Patrick Poon said the fact that Chow was honored alongside Xu and Ding shows how little difference there is now between the judicial systems in Hong Kong and mainland China, following a years-long crackdown on political opposition and public dissent in the wake of the 2019 protest movement.
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/china-lawyers-awards-11272023160715.html
This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.
