Zhou Ze, a lawyer at Beijing Zebo Law Firm, was suspended for one year by the Communist Party’s Chaoyang District Judicial Bureau in Beijing on December 21 for disclosing evidence on Weibo that the Communist Party’s Hefei Public Security Bureau had tortured him to confess.
According to Hong Kong’s Apple Daily, the CCP’s Chaoyang District Judicial Bureau listed “facts of illegal acts” in the punishment letter to Zhou Ze, including
Zhou Ze posted an article on Weibo on January 17, entitled “Hefei Public Security Office’s Routine for Lu Xian San Lawyers,” with a screenshot of the interrogation in the third room of the Hefei Criminal Investigation Branch, accompanied by the text “Police: We are now going to put them in place, as instructed by the leader, according to the Shanghai set to put them in place,” as well as a photo of the suspect being “punished by standing for 37 minutes” and “Mei Quan’s transcript” with the watermark of the “Procuratorate.
In addition, on March 20 in the microblogging article “Zhou Ze: Lv Xian San case, the public prosecutor problem is big! with a picture labeled “The ninth time the handcuffs were pressed lasted 23 seconds”.
On August 22, Zhou Ze published an article entitled “Zhou Ze: The Fluke of a Dozen Lawyers in Hefei”, disclosing the contents of the transcripts in the case file of the Hefei City Prosecutor’s Office.
According to the Justice Bureau, Zhou Ze’s criticism of Lv Xian San’s case and his staff for extracting confessions by torture and handling the case illegally was “an illegal act to influence the handling of the case in an improper manner”, and he was punished by suspension.
As a senior criminal defense lawyer with nearly 20 years of practice and a master’s thesis on the relationship between the judiciary and the media, Zhou said he thought he had an accurate understanding of the relationship between lawyers’ speech and the judiciary and the legal boundary of lawyers’ out-of-court speech, so he was very confused by the decision of Chaoyang District Judicial Bureau.
“Does the Constitution’s provision that citizens have the right to criticize, accuse, appeal, and prosecute the violations of law and dereliction of duty by state organs and state employees apply to lawyers’ criticism of the violations of law and dereliction of duty by the organs and personnel handling the case?”
Zhou Ze proposed, “Several major wrongful cases that occurred over the years were handled justly or relatively justly by public opinion through lawyers’ disclosure of the case and criticism of the illegal handling of the case by the organ and personnel handling the case, which aroused the attention of the society; the Nie Shubin case was also finally handled through lawyers’ disclosure and criticism of the illegal handling of the case back then, which aroused the attention of the society and Nie Shubin’s case was also brought to the attention of the public through the lawyers’ exposure and criticism of the illegal handling of the case, and was vindicated by public opinion. If the lawyers’ criticism of the illegal and negligent behavior of the case handling authorities and case handling personnel is considered as… What is the justification for punishing them for influencing the conduct of handling cases in accordance with the law in an improper manner?”
The punishment of Zhou Ze caused discussion on social media. Some lawyers and members of the legal profession also commented and even posted articles to express their discontent for Zhou Ze. But quite a few of them have been quickly deleted.
Among them, Professor Zhang Qianfan said, “Nowadays, we don’t solve the problem of breaking the law, but the people who expose the law.” Lawyer Si Weijiang: “Well, it is true after understanding. State officials can torture to extract confessions, the people can not network to expose?” Lawyer Yuan Yulai said, “I think that it is the public security organs that should be held accountable for running the case in violation of the law, not the defense lawyers who expose the violations, and besides, the court ruling in force has confirmed that the main charges of the public security organs are not established.”
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