Today (January 7, 2021), the Beijing Chaoyang District Judicial Bureau served me with a decision on administrative punishment. Because of the criticism of Lv Xiansan’s case that the organ handling the case was handling the case illegally and extracting confessions through torture, the Hefei Public Security Bureau, the organ handling the case, filed a complaint against me and asked the Beijing judicial administrative organ to “seriously deal with it”. The Beijing Chaoyang District Judicial Bureau decided to suspend my business for one year as an administrative punishment.
Two days ago, on January 5, 2021, at a place called Heizhuangdu, the Sunshine Halfway House, the Chaoyang District Judicial Bureau held a hearing on the proposed one-year suspension of my business. Professor He Haibo of Tsinghua University and my colleague, lawyer Wang Fei, attended the hearing as my representatives. Their cooperation was perfect.
The hearing was an opportunity to reason. I cherished it.
The case against me was filed through a superior referral to the Chaoyang District Judicial Bureau. Therefore, I hope that my plea, my agent’s opinion, will be heard not only by the comrades of Chaoyang District Judicial Bureau who organized the hearing, but also by my superiors as well as my superiors’ superiors.
The determination of the two agents was not easy.
What I originally considered was to hire a reputable and courageous practicing attorney and an expert in constitutional and administrative law to act as my agent.
The lawyer I originally considered to represent me was rule of law commentator Liu Changsong, Esq. Attorney Changsong has a strong public presentation skills. I have read and benefited from many of the rule of law commentaries written by Attorney Changsong. After I contacted Mr. Changsong and expressed my desire to consider hiring him as my hearing agent, he readily agreed. He said that it was not just for me, but also for the whole lawyer community.
After I disclosed the information that I had been filed by the Chaoyang District Judicial Bureau and decided to propose a suspension penalty, many fellow lawyers forwarded the relevant information and comments, all of which were pressured to delete by different regional judicial administrations and greeted to prevent fellow lawyers from showing solidarity with me. I was worried that entrusting Liu Changsong as my attorney would bring pressure to him and trouble to his law firm. Therefore, I contacted another law university professor who also works as a part-time lawyer.
I think the law professor who is a part-time lawyer is a practicing lawyer, who knows the judicial practice, who can understand the way of lawyers’ behavior more easily, and who has a high theoretical level, who is better at seeing the essence through the phenomenon.
After contacted, the professor and part-time lawyer of the University of Law also agreed to represent me. But he had a deal: no public expression; if the school where he worked said he would not be allowed to represent him at any time, he would have to withdraw. I expressed my understanding, but I felt some regret that I could not have public expression. He actively arranged for his assistant to interface with me and prepare for the proxy process.
But soon, the professor and part-time lawyer told me that the law firm he worked for part-time, would not give the procedure and could not represent me.
At that time, Liu Changsong, the lawyer who promised to represent me in the hearing, published a letter to the Chaoyang Judicial Bureau about the proposed punishment of lawyer Zhou Ze on the Internet, and I heard that he was also under pressure.
I wondered whether Liu Changsong, as a rule of law commentator, would be less bound by his status and appear more transcendent if he did not represent me, but commented on public events concerning the rights and interests of lawyers’ practice as an ordinary lawyer, and made public expression. When I contacted Mr. Changsong and discussed my idea, he expressed his full agreement. Perhaps, Mr. Changsong agreed to be my hearing agent at first, but was just not in a position to refuse.
Regarding representation, I had also considered having a colleague from my firm serve. But I was already such a big target that I was a little worried about them becoming a target as well. This case, what ever attorney represents, may become the target of focus. I don’t want to cause trouble for my peers. I thought about not using a lawyer to represent me and finding a legal expert to represent me and go to the hearing with me.
During that time, my partner, lawyer Wang Fei, volunteered to represent me.
I was hesitant because lawyer Wang Fei had also been complained by the case authorities many times before for his out-of-court remarks. The case of Li Si-Man, which he successfully defended, was dismissed by the prosecutor after the second trial, which proved that the public security judiciary had committed a clear violation of the law and had made significant errors in the prosecution, and Wang Fei was also complained by the authorities.
For this reason, our partners held a meeting to discuss the appropriateness of representation by Wang Fei’s lawyer. Because of Wang Fei’s insistence, the partners’ meeting weighed the pros and cons and finally decided that Wang Fei would be my representative.
It was an easy decision to find Professor He Haibo, an expert in constitutional and administrative law from Tsinghua University, to represent me. I had represented Li Jinsheng’s lawyer with Professor Haibo in the hearing of the suspension penalty; I also published a joint open letter with Professor Haibo and four other scholars on the Qiu Xinghua case, which was widely concerned by the public, when I was teaching at the China Youth Politics Academy some years ago.
After I requested a hearing, I called Professor He Haibo the same night to report the situation and express my wish for Professor Haibo to represent me at the hearing. Professor Haibo seemed to be a little hesitant, mentioning that the hearing of the suspension case of lawyer Li Jinxing, which I represented with him, was not useful at all, and doubted whether it was useful to represent me in the hearing.
I stated to Professor Haibo my request for a hearing and the value of other legal procedures if the penalty falls, as well as the importance of hearing by his proxy. Professor Haibo asked me to send him the relevant information, and we agreed on a general time to meet and talk.
I was very uneasy about the fact that it would take a lot of effort for Professor Haibo to represent me at the hearing, and I politely offered to pay him some fees. Professor Haibo declined, saying that he could never accept my fee.
I provided Prof. Haibo with background information about the case and set up a time to meet and exchange with him. However, until the deadline of the Judicial Bureau to submit the agent’s information, Prof. Haibo did not send his ID information to me or to Wang Fei, the lawyer who was in charge of the contact with him. I was a little worried that Professor Haibo might have some concerns about representing my case.
For this reason, I contacted my good friend and professor Haibo’s doctoral classmate, lawyer Zhang Qingfang, and asked him to have dinner with me, and expressed my intention to persuade professor Haibo to act as my hearing agent and pay the fee through him.
Lawyer Qingfang said that Haibo was his own buddy and told me to leave it alone, he would arrange it. He said it was not my personal matter, it was the matter of the whole lawyer community.
Finally, Mr. Qing Fang arranged a dinner with me, Prof. Haibo and Mr. Wang Fei to finalize that Prof. Haibo would be my hearing agent, and that he would transport Prof. Haibo on the day of the hearing.
The hearing on January 5 lasted from 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., and we didn’t even eat lunch. As soon as I stepped out of the door after the hearing, I was surrounded by those who had come from far away to show their solidarity and braved the cold wind to wait for me outside the hearing room, as well as their relatives. When I finished pacifying these tearful clients or their relatives and contacted Professor Haibo, he had already been sent away by lawyer Zhang Qingfang. I wanted to invite him to dinner, but I had to leave it for the future.
Perhaps as Liu Changsong, Zhang Qingfang and other colleagues said, and as I thought, the incident of my suspension is not only my personal matter, but also the matter of the whole lawyer community. Therefore, many people are in different ways in solidarity with me, many fellow lawyers, legal experts and celebrities, but also wrote an article to defend me, they are media people Huang Zhijie (YoYoLuMing), Chen Baocheng (CaiXin media senior editor), literature and history writer Li Yong (ten years to chop wood), rule of law commentator Tan Mintao, Liu Changsong lawyers, Yang JinZhong lawyers, Professor Tong ZongJin (part-time lawyers), Professor Yi YanYou (part-time lawyers) ), Professor Wu Danhong (part-time lawyer), Xu Xuefen (lawyer) ……
Among them, Prof. Yi Yangyou was extremely critical of the public security authorities who complained against me and the judicial and administrative authorities who proposed to punish me. Professor Yi said: “The torture of confessions is originally a street rat everyone shouted, but now the people who carry out the torture of confessions are justified. It is really back to the liberation of the night ah. The Hefei Public Security Bureau’s complaint against Zhou Ze’s lawyer is the suppression of good deeds by evil people; it is an act that breaks the bottom line of the government. If the Ministry of Justice and the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice fail to adhere to their principles, I personally believe that this matter is not only detrimental to Zhou Ze’s personal practice interests, not only to the practice interests of the lawyer community, but also to the credibility of the government, lowering the moral standards of the government, reducing the government to an accomplice to wrongdoing, which will lead to the regression of the rule of law and moral standards of the entire government. I hope the parties concerned will be careful. If the Hefei Public Security Bureau still hopes to save some face for itself and some dignity for the law and morality, it should withdraw the complaint, apologize to Zhou Ze’s lawyer, trace the person responsible for the torture to extract confessions, and give an explanation to the people of the country and give an explanation to history and justice.”
In my pleading opinion, I quoted the legal analysis opinions published by Professor Yi Yangyou and Lawyer Yang Jinzhong, Lawyer Liu Changsong and Professor Tong Zongjin on the incident of my suspension. I would like to express my gratitude to them. I also thank other people from all walks of life who supported and showed solidarity with me.
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