More on #709crackdown: On the fifth anniversary of the crackdown, @jeromeacohen told me in an interview that while the scale of #Beijing's crackdown on human rights lawyers hasn't increased since 2015, the crackdown has become a permanent process.
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"I don’t think the scale and intensity of the 709 crackdown has increased since 2015 but surely what was originally thought to be a campaign of limited duration, like other “crackdowns”, has now became a permanent, ongoing process."
"This is because the original crackdown has not wiped out its targets, despite the grievous losses it has caused to human rights lawyers, their clients and their families."
"It is also because of the increasingly tense political and economic circumstances confronting the Xi Jinping regime at home and abroad, circumstances that motivate the regime to suppress any attempt to dissent from or even question its policies."
"709 has demonstrated the extent to which the regime has perfected what I have called the “non-release release”. It gives the public the impression that convicted human rights lawyers are being treated leniently and freed following criminal convictions and long jail terms," ...
"... while actually the conditions of their release impose continuing harsh restrictions on their freedoms. "
"'Release' usually has meant permanent silence under constant surveillance and harassment and the continuing threat to impose imprisonment again if the supposedly released person seeks to exercise his or her supposed freedom."
"Lawyers in China have an extremely narrow space to pursue human rights protections now. They are always fighting with at least one arm tied behind their backs and under the sword of Damocles."
"Yet they have to try to continue to provide defense without overstepping the red lines that hedge them in absurdly and violation of which leads to disbarment and criminal conviction."
"They now seldom can resort to the media, domestic or foreign, but can only hope to get their stories out informally to interested foreign lawyers, observers and other organizations that might better inform the world of their plight."
Regarding whether 709 crackdown would be repeated in #HongKong under #NSL: "#HK lawyers must now begin to live in fear of similar mistreatment. Many are already adjusting their strategies and tactics to avoid becoming ensnared in what will be a tightening political net."
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