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15 - The International Legal Complex: Wang Yu and the Global Response to Repression of China’s Rights’ Lawyers

from Part IV - Political Liberalism and the Legal Complex

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 April 2019

By
Terence C. Halliday
Edited by
Rosann Greenspan ,
Hadar Aviram  and
Jonathan Simon
Rosann Greenspan
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Hadar Aviram
Affiliation:
University of California, Hastings College of the Law
Jonathan Simon
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Summary

On June 15, 2015, China’s official media launched an unprecedented public disinformation campaign against Wang Yu, a commercial lawyer who had emerged as a bold rights activist in the several years following her imprisonment by the Railway police for what she asserted was a false charge of beating someone on a station platform in Tianjin, a coastal city near Beijing. The coordinated nationwide attack, labeled by many of her supporters as a “smear campaign,” included coverage in official newspapers, including People’s Daily, online at People’s Net, and on CCTV, China’s multi-channel TV network. The articles alleged that this petite ex-prisoner had beaten someone to death, and then the official press “sarcastically” questioned whether she could be an authentic advocate to “represent justice and human rights” (B1610).

Type
Chapter
Information
The Legal Process and the Promise of Justice
Studies Inspired by the Work of Malcolm Feeley
 , pp. 289 - 313
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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