Chinese jurist Xu Zhangrun, expelled from Tsinghua University, speaks out again on the arrest of Geng Xiaonan and his wife, stating how many “pocket crimes” exist in China, and that “if you want to be punished, we will put you in. He called on Chinese criminologists to deeply reflect on the sins of establishing evil laws and not to continue to help the evil-doers.
After Geng Xiaonan, an independent publisher and advocate for a large number of public officials, was arrested for “illegal business operation,” Professor Xu Zhangrun issued a ‘Letter to Tyranny on Women in Prison’ on September 10, urging the authorities to give Geng and his wife freedom and justice to the world. “On September 17, Xu Zhangrun issued a letter ‘To Doubting Criminalists’, calling on criminalists not to betray themselves and to correct their mistakes.
Xu Zhangrun pointed out that the 1979 ‘criminal law’ had provided for “speculation” and “hooliganism” two crimes, over the years became “take it or leave it”, I do not know how many people have been wronged, the so-called “pocket crime”, “want to treat you, you put you in”, only later to be revised, is to learn of the mistake and change.
It was only later that it was amended, and it was considered to be a good idea to correct the mistake. “It is also a major pocket crime, and the introduction of this crime into the publishing industry is an oxymoron. The author argues that the government’s monopoly of publishing resources, strict control of book numbers, and the implementation of the most stringent censorship of the entire publishing process in the history of mankind have made it difficult for small private publications to survive, forcing them to go to the edge of the law. “If a practitioner’s speech is ‘out of line’ and offends a division, he or she can always be convicted on that basis,” the author argues.
The author argues that the law cannot be a tool for selective application by law enforcers to suppress speech, or everyone will be at risk. Therefore, Article 225 of the current criminal law, once extended to the publishing industry, “can be described as an outright draconian law,” and its adverse effects extend beyond the publishing industry. According to Xu Zhangrun, Geng and his wife unfortunately fell into this “pocket crime”.
The author believes that criminologists should first defend the rights and liberties of the people, and must be vigilant against extreme abuses of public power, “or at least set up legal mechanisms that can hopefully strike a balance.
However, the author said that most of the criminologists here are “clerks”, who are keen on “the barrel of a gun and the handle of a knife,” those old-fashioned doctrines of dictatorship, “offering their loyalty, betraying their professionalism, and aiding and abetting the evil-doers ……”, “surprisingly mediocre”, the so-called “illegal business crime” such laws, “is the retribution for their mediocrity to the society”, and a very few, “surrendered with an iron heart, profoundly thoughtful, unconscionable, but is an accomplice of the Wresinski style”.
Xu Zhangrun said that he had been practicing law for forty years, and his professional endowment and intellectual qualifications could not be deprived by any official institution. He would like to use this article to defend Geng Xiaonan and his wife. “May justice flow through the land like a mighty river.”
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