Lawyer Mr. Zhu Yubiao Subjected to Detention for Five Months

Falun Gong practitioner Mr. Zhu Yubiao, a lawyer from Guangzhou City, was arrested again on August 18th, 2010 by officials of the Communist regime. The local procuratorate subsequently admitted that the detention was illegal. So far, Mr. Zhu has been detained in the Haizhu District Detention Centre of Guangzhou for five months. In late November 2010 his family members hired a lawyer to defend him. However, the Counsel Management Office of the Bureau of Justice in Guangzhou City interfered with the work of Mr. Zhu’s counsel, causing his family to have to dismiss him.

On December 24th Shen, a deputy director of the Counsel Management Office of the Bureau of Justice in Guangzhou, told Mr. Zhu’s counsel to come to his office so he could speak to him. During the conversation, Shen told Mr. Zhu’s counsel that he could not use his defence speech in court unless all of his defence speeches were submitted to and reviewed by the Bureau of Justice first. In addition, Shen hinted that the counsel needed to follow the officials’ directives and go through the motions according to a plan that had been made in advance. In the end, Mr. Zhu’s family had to dismiss the counsel on December 30th for his own safety.

Since then, a number of counsels from other provinces have contacted Mr. Zhu’s family, saying that they would like to defend Mr. Zhu.

Mr. Zhu Yubiao is a lawyer with the Guangda Law Firm and GFE Law Office in Guangdong Province. He received his master's degree from Zhongshan University. He is a lawyer of strong moral fibre, and often defends disadvantaged people either for very little money or for free. He has received coverage in the media for his kind acts.

From 2005 to 2006, Mr. Zhu successively defended three Falun Gong practitioners who were subjected to illegal hearings. His defence speech was so thorough that the court officials appeared shocked. In order to pressure him, officials from the Department of Justice charged him with being a “counter-revolutionary” and threatened him in order to force him to quit the defence. On February 11th, 2007, police officers arrested Mr. Zhu from practitioner Mr. Lin Zhiyong’s home in Panyu District of Guangzhou, and sentenced him to one and a half years of forced labour. Now Mr. Zhu is once again being subjected to persecution.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2011/1/13/234850.html