Word: chen
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Watching the lawyer Chen Bulei argue his case, it was easy to forget that he was almost certain to lose. Pacing confidently before a packed courtroom in the northeastern Chinese city of Haicheng earlier this year, he scored rhetorical points so deftly that sympathetic onlookers pumped their fists like fans at a sporting event. Chen's client, a 56-year-old talc miner named Zhao Jitian, was on trial for "assembling a mob to disrupt social order"-a politically charged criminal offense often invoked to silence Chinese citizens who band together to air grievances against their employers or the government...
...According to Chinese law, to convict Zhao the prosecutors would have to prove he had organized the protest and that it had caused substantial material harm. Chen argued compellingly that the prosecution's case rested on a report by an appraisal company that explicitly stated it had treated all the mining firm's claims as fact-instead of conducting an independent audit-and on an eyewitness account by someone who had been miles away from the scene of the protest. Chen also called a witness who testified under oath to having been coerced by police into signing an affidavit...
...Chen was disappointed, but not surprised. Like a small but growing number of Chinese lawyers, he has made it a part of his career to argue cases he knows he probably won't win. Whether pleading the cases of criminal defendants pro bono or filing lawsuits against government agencies and other powerful entities, these lawyers-"rights defenders" as many now call themselves-share a belief that the law can be used to change the status quo. Though hardly a movement, they have become an increasingly significant force. In a country allergic to challenges to authority, they make noise about everything...
...course, China's news media, which are still subject to Party control, are often unable to cover the most sensitive cases. One story that has been reported extensively in the foreign press but that has remained off limits to journalists in China is the case of Chen Guangcheng, a blind legal activist detained by police last year after he tried to help victims of a forced-abortion campaign sue their local government. Convicted in August of destroying property and "organizing a mob to block traffic," Chen was sentenced to four years in prison. A higher court ordered a retrial...
...honest, I don’t even know if I can’t get into Harvard, what I’m going to do. Sometimes I think about it, sometimes I don’t dare to think about it,” high-school junior Haisha Chen says. “Maybe I will transfer to Harvard after a year.” —Staff writer Ying Wang can be reached at yingwang@fas.harvard.edu. —Staff writer Lulu Zhou can be reached at luluzhou@fas.harvard.edu...