16/06/22
The sixth annual China Human Rights Lawyers Day will be held virtually on July 9, 2022, at 9 a.m. EST (U.S.).
In 2017, human rights organizations in the U.S., Taiwan, and Hong Kong established July 9th as the China Human Rights Lawyers day to commemorate the mass arrests, detention, and torture of human rights lawyers in mainland China that began on July 9, 2015. Since then, the Chinese authorities have continued to imprison and torture lawyers who dare take on politically sensitive cases, while preventing others from engaging in their legal practice. In the last few years, more than 40 Chinese human rights lawyers have had their licenses suspended or permanently revoked. With far-reaching consequences, the authorities have been successful in suppressing these independent defenders of dissidents, religious believers, activists, and others who fall afoul of the Party-state.
The China Human Rights Lawyers Day was created to support Chinese lawyers by bringing their plight to the attention of the international legal community, human rights organizations, and other concerned groups and individuals. While politicians, stakeholders, and multinational corporations fear the Chinese Communist Party and even aid and abet it in undermining and corrupting liberal values and the international liberal order, Chinese human rights lawyers have been working every day on the front lines of the fight against human rights abuses by an authoritarian government, upholding the rule of law in a country where there is none. The price they have paid is huge, but without regret. The world has come to a crossroads where democratic countries are beginning to recognize and confront the dangers of the totalitarian Chinese Communist regime. The meaning of the Day lies in that we must remember the tireless work of the Chinese human rights lawyers over the past two decades. We must therefore acknowledge them and support them, because their fate is tied to the belief in liberty and the rule of law that we cherish.
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IAPL Monitoring Committee on Attacks on Lawyers 
