The stifling of independent voices through apparently administrative procedures instead of nakedly repressive measures is a common feature of the new authoritarians’ distinctive backlash against democracy.
China’s communist state provides the latest example, targeting lawyers who have taken up – and even won – too many human rights, labor and religious freedom cases for the authorities’ liking. The Washington Post picks up on the story first highlighted by Human Rights in China, a grantee of the National Endowment for Democracy:
Formally, there is no crackdown; no police are swooping in to seize files or send attorneys en masse to labor camps. Instead, Beijing is simply using its administrative procedures for licensing lawyers and law firms, declining to renew the annual registrations, which expired May 31, of those it deems troublemakers. Human rights groups say dozens of China’s best defense attorneys have effectively been disbarred.
HRIC reports that ”as of June 1, at least 17 Chinese rights defense lawyers did not receive their ‘annual licensing inspection and registration’ approval from the Lawyers Association in their localities, a requisite for lawyers to continue to practice law.”
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