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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
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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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