Uganda has made headlines this past week for violent clashes in the capital city of Kampala over development, property rights, and the traditional Buganda king. The unrest is unusual for Uganda, but highlights growing discontent with the government of Yoweri Museveni.

The cause of the clashes was a planned trip by the Buganda king, King Ronald Mutebi II, to a neighborhood filled with a rival ethnic group. When police attempted to stop the visit, some Bugandan loyalists burned tires in protest and things quickly spiraled out of control. Several days of violence followed, and while death counts vary it is believed that at least 20 were killed and over 100 wounded in the riots while 600 protestors have been arrested.

Buganda is the largest of the five ancient Ugandan kingdoms and the Baganda people are the largest ethnic group in the country. All kingdoms were abolished under former president Milton Obote in the 1960s, but were reinstated by Museveni after the Ugandan Bush Wars. However the king only has ceremonial powers and is prohibited from interfering or attempting to influence politics. It is this last point that has brought increasing conflict between Museveni and King Mutebi, and by extension between the government and Buganda loyalists.

The primary conflict between the government and Buganda kingdom is over land rights and sovereignty issues, namely the alleged legal obligation that the government has to hand over all Buganda land that was seized by Obote in 1967. Not surprisingly, Museveni has declined to do this. Instead, the government has enacted some very creative laws that appear to be designed to marginalize the Baganda, at least as much as the largest ethnic group in Uganda and a key political base for Museveni can be marginalized. As described in The East African, examples of these reforms include:

Donating Buganda’s land to “investors”; settling non-Baganda newcomers in these areas and then proposing laws to protect the new “tenants”; creating new districts under “decentralisation,” whose “district land boards” then claim and sell Buganda’s land; creating new “kingdoms” out of ethnic minorities within Buganda; using the 1995 constitution-making process to “constitutionally” remove Kampala from Buganda and most recently, tabling a Bill to expand the same Kampala’s boundaries to eat up areas previously constitutionally defined as being within Buganda.

Such abuse of land laws has been reported on in the past but of course much of this has been lost in last week’s rioting. Instead, people appear to have taken advantage of the chaos to express their growing discontent with the government and with Museveni specifically, who has been in power since 1986. Thus the riots ended up being not so much about Buganda as about what Ugandans see for the future of their country.

In this regard, the government’s response is also telling. Hundreds of people have been arrested including a Baganda MP and radio talk show host, while four radio stations have been shut down. Today, he blamed the opposition for fueling the violence. In other words, Museveni has responded with political and military force to show that he has no plans to leave anytime soon, and perhaps hint to what may lie ahead to those who challenge him, regardless of the rights of those who are in his way.

Click on the photo to launch the 5 minute audio-photo slide. Testimonies…in their own words.

Yesterday I met two Iranian political refugees.  Their relatives are at Camp Ashraf, a refugee camp north of Baghdad with around 3500 Iranians.  At the end of July, Iraqi security forces entered the camp and beat the residents.  Eleven died and 500 were injured.

More info and previous posts here:

The Ashraf Saga

Massacre at Ashraf

I just attended a meeting of the subcommittee on human rights at the European Parliament in Brussels.  On the agenda was Burma.  And as ever, the lack of political will and inaction in the international community was particularly salient.

For two decades Aung Sun Suu Kyi has been in the headlines.  Her cause celebrated and discussed ad hominem among the elite here in Brussels, in Washington, in Paris as well as in the inner circles of the United Nations.  A large banner of  Aung Sun Suu Kyi hangs dominant just outside the European Parliament. On it - we are reminded that she was awarded the coveted Sakharov prize 19 years ago.  On it - we are reminded that she won the Nobel Peace Prize.

And that is just the point. Nineteen years and here we are today with a military junta that now has access to the Obama administration, to a military junta that commits egregious violations of human rights, to a junta that pretends to lay down a democracy but will pull all the strings, to a junta that can now sideline China.

Don’t forget that General Than Shwe had the “decency” to organize a referendum on the constitution last year under the aegis of the so-called Burmese State Peace and Development Council (SPCD).  Remember cyclone Nargis?  Despite the humanitarian disaster that followed the storm - the regime reported a massive turnout in favor.

“Whole villages had voted against the constitution but were counted as having voted in favor,” said Emmanouil Athanasiou of the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) who also present at the committee.

Aung Sun Suu Kyi’s detention was extended which will prevent her from participating in the up coming elections.  The American who swam across the moat has since been released thanks to the intervention of one US senator.  But the consequences of this man’s bizarre act and desire for international attention? has reinforced the junta.

“The breach of security allowed the regime to detain her and establish direct links with the US administration.  The regime can now ignore pressure from China over the attacks on ethnic groups on the boarder,” Harn Yawnghwe, Director of the Euro-Burma office, told the gathering of EU deputies.

The General maintains close political and economic relations with neighboring countries and ASEAN.  How then can EU sanctions have any impact?  If anything, they strengthen the resolve of the regime while some 30% of Burma’s population just - and only just - manage to feed themselves.

The reports of continued crimes against humanity cannot be ignored.  The military junta has banned NGOs and denied the UN  Special Rapporteur access to investigate human rights abuses.  But public sources on the ground, from individuals and clandestine groups continue to document abuse.  Mr. Yawnghwe told me after the meeting that they have secret sources who are able to send the information via satellite.

How many more testimonies, how much more evidence is needed to push the international community into a proactive stance against the regime?  At the 2005 World Summit, world leaders harped on about the “responsibility to protect” victims. Perhaps there is too much money at stake.  The list of international companies, American, European and Asian that deal with the regime is long.

Aung Sun Suu Kyi has repeatedly asked people not to visit Burma as tourists because it helps finance the regime and undermine the opposition. So let’s see what the BBC’s Lonely Planet endorses by encouraging tourism in Burma.

1. Extrajudicial killings in ethnic minority areas by the Tatmadaw (the Burmese army). The Tatmadaw is using murder as a weapon of fear and have a “shoot on sight” policy.  Their target - Shan, Karenni and Karen communities in the east of the country.

2.Death in custody of political prisoners:  The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) have documented 139 political prisoners who have died because of severe torture.

3.Violations of the right to life: The Depayin Massacre on 30 May 2003 demonstrated the regime’s brutality.  Evidence was later revealed that the military regime had premeditated the attack on Aung San Suu Kyi and her entourage.

4. Enslavement:  Individuals are abducted and forced to work under threat of violence. These people can be found toiling away at military camps where they do any number of tasks from portering to heavy construction to services for the profit of private individuals.

5. Rape:  Rape is common throughout the country.  The military use it as a means to terrorize the population and establish control over land and resources of ethnic minority groups.   Shan Women’s Action Network (SWAN) and Shan Human Rights Foundation (SHRF) documented 173 incidents of rape involving 625 girls and women committed by the Tatmadaw.  Eighty-three percent were committed by officers, mostly in front of the troops.  Twenty-five percent ended in death. Sixty-one percent were gang rapes.  For more information on this see “License to Rape.”

And the list goes on and on.

The International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH), working with individuals and clandestine civil society organizations inside Burma, is demanding action for the international community to stop dealing with the junta as if it were a legitimate government.

“We have received reports of crimes against humanity and war crimes which are still occurring and yet the international community focuses on the political issues,”  said Mr. Athanasiou.

The FIDH wants the UN Security Council to appoint an international Commission of Inquiry that would channel the widespread accusations of human rights abuse.  This Commission would investigate and verify allegations, document, and make recommendations.

“We support the FIDH,” said Mr. Yawnghwe, “but  their solution is on a long term basis.  We want solutions now.”

Mr. Yawnghwe is instead hoping for a domestic solution to the problem that entails supporting the upcoming elections if only to expose the farce.

Governments and religions around the world remain intensely interested in what women, but not so much what men, are wearing in public. On September 6, 2009 I wrote about the proposed parliamentary ban on the public wearing of the niqab in France. On September 8, media outlets lit up with discussions of the recent trial and subsequent jailing of Lubna Hussein, a Sudanese journalist and United Nations employee, for the crime of wearing trousers. Ms. Hussein was caught in a raid on a café by Sudan’s public order police, a raid that resulted in the arrest of 13 women and the fining and flogging of 10 of them within the next two days. Ms. Hussein and the remaining two chose to go to trial, and the final verdict for Ms. Hussein–guilty–was handed down on September 7. Bec Hamilton argued in Foreign Policy that this case has had a significant impact in Sudan, noting that “the Sudanese woman found guilty of the crime of trousers…may not have won her case, but she has done one important thing: made the Khartoum regime fear the world’s response.” In Ms. Hussein’s trial we see evidence of the power of a woman’s outfit to stimulate international scrutiny upon an already beleaguered and much criticized government, and to motivate at least moderate concessions by Sudan’s legal system.  

Thinking about the possible connections between Ms. Hussein’s case and the issue of banning the public wearing of niqabs in France, one has to wonder—what is so important about what women are wearing that it can cause such political outcries around the world, even resulting in some cases in floggings and imprisonment?  Why would governments prohibit specific articles of clothing for women only, and why would they go so far as to physically beat women who do not conform to the prohibition? 

Lubna Hussein’s case, similar to the situation in France, illustrates a difficult interaction between national law, a certain set of Islamic ideas regarding what women should, or must, wear, and what women themselves choose to wear in public. In Ms. Hussein’s case, she and the 12 other women arrested at the same time were found to violate Sudan’s national “indecency” law that forbids women to wear trousers in public. The Boston Globe describes the law forbidding “indecent clothing”, the violation of which is punishable by 40 lashes and a “potentially unlimited fine”, as vague, a commonality between many indecency laws. The Globe also quotes Ms. Hussein as stating that tens of thousands of women have been flogged under this law, an absurd instance of human rights abuse at the hands of a government. Rather than accept the terms of the law, Ms. Hussein has—by some measures successfully—challenged it.

Lubna Hussein has turned her individual case into an international fight against this law and the control and abuse of women that it facilitates. The Huffington Post ran a story on August 4, 2009 describing how Ms. Hussein had invited diplomats, journalists, and activists to her trial, and how dozens of women–including women wearing trousers–protested outside her trial on this day. Sudanese police chose to reward the protestors for their efforts with tear gas and beatings. Lubna Hussein’s case represents a departure, however, having made police and government abuse a rallying cry; the Huffington Post quotes Ms. Hussein as stating she would take 40,o00 lashes if this is what is needed for the abolition of the law. In the end, the court found her guilty of violating the “indecency” law, but chose not to sentence her to flogging, fining her instead. Ms. Hussein continued to protest the law by refusing to pay the fine and instructing her friends and relatives not to pay it on her behalf. Bec Hamilton reports that Ms. Hussein was forcibly freed after a journalist with ties to the Khartoum regime paid the fine. Although she was quickly released from jail due to the unwanted “help” of this journalist, Ms. Hussein has made her point, and has succeeded in having her protest communicated to the international community.

Will this case provide the momentum on the ground required to result in a repeal of the law? It certainly represents a powerful synergy between local action and international support. Bec Hamilton, who for years has worked in Sudan and has a forthcoming book on citizen advocacy there, characterizes the court’s decision not to sentence Ms. Hussein to flogging as “a nod to the sensitivities to the global media watching from outside the courtroom” and further predicts that the strength of the women’s movement in Sudan evident in observing this case will only grow with time. What relation does such a case bear to other cases around the world concerned with controlling what women wear? There were vocal and visible protests regarding France’s 2004 ban on the hijab in public schools, but the ban remains, and additional bans are proposed. Are the situations similar, in that the government is requiring women to refrain from wearing garments in public—in the Sudan trousers, in France the hijab? Or are they different, because the motivations behind the rules are dissimilar, and because there is a difference in the degree to which the settings are public—e.g. a child’s classroom is relatively private when compared to public streets?

Which brings us back to the original question—why is what a woman wears in a public space so important that governments and religions want to have control over it? Attempting to find the answer to this question will no doubt help orient us as to the extent to which and manner in which the control, and/or punishment for transgressions of the laws that control, constitute violations of the wearer’s human rights.

A recent story in The Guardian highlighted the ongoing abuses of police forces in Venezuela and the difficulties in bring about police reform.  Increasingly, police in Venezuela act with complete impunity and growing brutality against criminals, their families, and anyone else caught in between.  Stories of disappearances and false imprisonment by police, especially in Caracas, have become more and more common in Venezuela which at the same time boasts a meager 3% success rate in solving homicides. However, the story told in The Guardian is not new; for years both journalists and activists have reported on extrajudicial killings by police, which is believed to number over 900 a year.  Because of the controversial reputation of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in the West, the issue tends to be overshadowed by the Chávez government’s political use of police, including the raid of an opposition television station and violent breakup of an opposition protest this past May, but nonpolitical abuses are just as serious and devastating to the population.

It is important to note that while the current government appears to condone these actions, the problem is not limited to the Chávez government.  Human Rights Watch issued a report on police excesses in Venezuela back in 1998 when Rafael Caldera was still president, and police brutality has historically been a problem throughout Latin America.  But the problem has reached new heights in Venezuela in recent years, with Caracas becoming the second most violent city on the continent.  Even the current Justice Minister admits that as much as 20% of crime is committed by police forces and public opinion polls show that most Venezuelans see no real difference between the police and common criminals.

Such statistics illustrate how much reform is needed, but reform is a process and not a decree.  Without stronger support from the government, it is unlikely that real change will come.  But herein may lay the problem: common abuse makes political abuse less objectionable to the population because they are already used to it.  In that situation, the government has little incentive to encourage change.

However, given the role of police in the justice system, all human rights will be threatened without police reform.  This underscores how essential the police are in securing human rights in general as well as the importance in reigning in police abuse regardless of the political situation.  For now, while there have been some improvements in Latin America in regards to police excesses it appears that some countries, including Venezuela, still have a long way to go in making the police not part of the human rights problem.

A court in Kazakhstan sentenced a prominent human rights activist to four years imprisonment for manslaughter yesterday in a case that many observers believe was politically motivated.  The charges against Yevgeny Zhovtis stem from a car accident in July where Zhovtis hit and killed a man while driving his car.  However the initial forensic exam into the accident found that Zhovtis had no alcohol in his system at the time of his accident and that there was no way he could have avoided hitting the man, who was apparently drunk when he stumbled into the street in front of Zhovtis’s car.  However, in one of many anomalies in the case, the government ordered a second exam days later which found that Zhovtis was drunk while driving and could have avoided the accident.  It was largely on this basis that the court convicted Zhovtis for manslaughter and a host of other traffic violations.

The conviction will not improve Kazakhstan’s reputation for human rights which has been quite dismal in recent years under the increasingly autocratic government of President Nursultan Nazarbayev.  As the Director of Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law, the country’s only remaining human rights advocacy organization following government crackdowns on NGOs, Zhovtis is the country’s most outspoken and well known human rights activist, a position that has garnered him some unwanted attention from the government.  But even for those familiar with Kazakhstan, the conduct of his trial borders on the absurd.  After talking with Vera Tkachenko, one of the defense attorneys representing Zhovtis, Robert Amsterdam of the Huffington Post gave a succinct description of the trial and all its faults:

I asked Vera to explain to me the clearest signs that this was a biased, politically ordered trial, instead of an independent and fair judicial proceeding for a regular crime. First, there was the fact that the judge refused nearly every motion submitted by the defense (the only two motions admitted were to delay the trial until Sept. 2, and the addition of another lawyer). The defense counsel arranged to have two separate independent experts, one Kazakh and one Russian, examine the auto-technical expert testimony and provide corrections to all the distortions. The judge refused to admit these independent expert testimonies. Zhovtis prepared a 12-page motion denying the charges, and again, the judge refused to admit it. No exculpatory evidence was allowed into the court, and after a brief cross-examination, the judge announced that the trial would move into the final phase - which must have been a world record for speed in Kazakhstan justice.

The shell shocked defense lawyers submitted a motion to recuse the judge, whose behavior they said obviously displayed that he did not have an impartial standing. The judge left the room for just a few minutes, only to return to say that the defense does not have this right. The defense then asked for just one more day to prepare for the closing arguments - the judge denied the request, and gave them only 40 minutes. Finally, after hearing the prosecutor’s presentation, the judge spent no more than 25-30 minutes in deliberation, returning with a seven-page printed and stamped verdict - which is a procedural impossibility given the short amount of time.

This account makes clear that Zhovtis did not receive anything resembling a fair trial.  But the conduct of the government has observers worried for another reason as well since Zhovtis’s conviction comes as Kazakhstan prepares to chair the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in 2010.  As the largest regional security organization in the world, the OSCE is well known for its focus on the human dimensions of security as well as the traditional military and socio-economic dimensions and is responsible for promoting democracy and rule of law programs in its member countries, including Kazakhstan.  This has several human rights groups concerned, including Human Rights Watch who expressed its unease over potential political interference before the trial began.  Now that the worst has been confirmed, it remains to be seen what repercussions if any Kazakhstan will face over its treatment of Zhovtis but it is likely that the OSCE’s reputation will take a hit if some action is not taken.  As Andrea Berg of Human Rights Watch said in a press release, “We are shocked at how easy it is for the government to violate basic human rights just a few months before it will chair the OSCE.  Kazakhstan clearly is not ready to take on a role as important as the OSCE chairmanship.”

In recent months, Zhovtis himself publically questioned whether Kazakhstan was ready to chair the organization given the government’s current position regarding human rights and dissidents.  But for now, with the imprisonment of Zhovtis it appears that the government is winning its battle against civil society and no one outside the country is yet willing to stand up to the Kazakh interpretation of “democracy.”

The human rights group Physicians for Human Rights released a new report yesterday detailing the role that health professionals played in interrogating and torturing inmates at Guantanamo Bay.  The role of health professionals first came to light in a 2004 CIA report, but Physicians for Human Rights now claim that they played a much more central role than previously believed.  The report, entitled “Aiding Torture: Health Professionals’ Ethics and Human Rights Violations Demonstrated in the May 2004 CIA Inspector General’s Report”, alleges that American doctors and psychologists violated medical ethics and contributed to human rights abuses by “designing, implementing, and legitimizing a worldwide torture program.”

The report is sure to add more fuel to the ongoing debate on what action should be taken against those who participated in the torture of inmates.  Under former President Bush, the interrogation program at Guantanamo was deemed legit and legal despite protests from the International Committee of the Red Cross and numerous human rights groups.  But the revelation of role that medical professionals played in supervising interrogation techniques such as water boarding and sensory deprivation also reignites the debate over what should happen to doctors who participate in such programs.

The connection between doctors and human rights abuses committed by military and police is one that stretches throughout the twentieth century.  Doctors and other medical professionals played a central role in aiding human rights abuses during World War II under both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.  More recently, military dictatorships have made use of medical help in their torture programs, most notably in Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile.  Allegations against doctors have also been made in apartheid South Africa, communist East Germany, and Turkey while under military rule.  Yet despite the evidence that doctors and other medical professionals have often been called upon to witness and assist in torturing prisoners, very few have ever been judicially tried for their actions.  Instead the matter has been largely left to the medical boards to deal with through professional sanctions, but even then there has not been a strong record of successful action against accused health professionals.

Following the exposure of the crimes committed by Nazi doctors during World War II, the World Medical Association adopted the Declaration of Geneva to serve as a more modern version of the Hippocratic Oath.  Since its adoption in 1948, it has been revised several times but as it stands today, there eleven commitments that doctors take under the Declaration, two of which are worth mentioning here.  Commitment eight of the Declaration states, “I will not permit considerations of age, disease or disability, creed, ethnic origin, gender, nationality, political affiliation, race, sexual orientation, social standing or any other factor to intervene between my duty and my patient,” while commitment ten reads, “I will not use my medical knowledge to violate human rights and civil liberties, even under threat.”  It is because of commitments like these that we give our trust to doctors and generally hold them to a higher standard.  But these are the exact values that doctors at Guantanamo Bay ignored, and despite the political ramifications they should be held accountable for violating not only the law but the duty to humanity they swore to uphold within their profession.

The cracks are widening.  The pieces are falling through.  The people are holding on for dear life, trying their best to regroup - to speak to a world where so many are suffering.  Journalists have been barred.  Only a few brave individuals with camera phones were able to record the brutality of the Iraqi Security forces. And then there is the grassroots movement.  In Europe, activists and demonstrators are getting sparse attention.

Ashraf Camp has close to 3500 Iranian dissidents - the remnants of a democratic movement that had helped topple the regime - all of whom are “protected persons” under the Fourth Geneva Conventions.  No matter - realpolitik rears its ugly head.

Exposed, the Ashraf residents are left to the devices of an Iraqi government that has since bowed to the intransigent Iranian despots - President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei.  Revenge is in order and these people are easy prey.

Last month Iraqi Security forces stormed the camps.  The refugees were defenseless but stood their ground at a cost of 11 dead and several hundred wounded - some severely.

I write this again because I have since been forwarded a mail from an Ashraf camp resident.  A young man close to thirty.  His name is Hassan - his last name will not be revealed.  But he had this to say:

Dear Mr. Nikolaj Nielsen,

My name is…………and I’m one of the residents living in Ashraf. My friends and I decided to write you this letter and thank you in regards of your report about camp Ashraf. I’ve been following up on your work and I truly appreciate your effort towards human rights. I believe that the only way such barbaric massacres can be stopped is by reporters such as your self who choose to reveal the truth to the world, regardless of any personal or political interests that they may or may not have. As you may be aware, the foreign media is prohibited to enter camp Ashraf and no reporters are allowed in. due to the bonds of the Iranian regime and the Iraqi government, the residents of Ashraf (who form the democratic opposition to the clerical regime in Iran) face the danger of another raid which will certainly end with more unarmed civilians beaten, ran over and shot to death. We, the residents of Ashraf rely on the public opinion to ensure our safety and security. Your commitment to the international human rights means a great deal to us and I am very grateful of your support.

Dr Alejo Vidal-Quadras, Vice President of the European Parliament, has since sent an open letter  to all Members of the European Parliament.  In it he describes Ashraf Camp as a humanitarian disaster and is urging the European Council to  find ways to protect these civilians.

Ultimately, the responsibility belongs to the United States who left the refugees to a pitiful fate in January.  It was only a matter of time.  To add insult to the festering wound of international diplomacy and hypocrisy, Nouri al-Maliki sent in his hatchet wielding forces into the camps on the very same day that U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was on official visit.

At the very least, the US can drop these people from their anachronistic terror list.  Europe did - based on reason and good will - not spurious idealistic convictions that have done little to advance US diplomacy before Obama took center stage. Shame.

Aye Chan Naing, Executive Director of the Democratic Voice of Burma, was in Brussels last April for the One World film festival where Danish film maker Anders Ostergaard had screened Burma VJ.  I spoke to Aye afterward and was struck by his resilience and determination in the face of an oppressive military junta. “We now have more reporters in Burma than we did in 2007,” he said.

The crackdown in September of that year was truly astonishing.  Thousands of monks came out into the streets and for a few days, the world waited in hopeful anticipation that finally…finally the dictatorship would collapse.  Those dreams were swept away along with all the blood spilled in the streets.

So today, it comes as little surprise that Aung San Suu Kyi had been sentenced to serve another 18 months of house arrest.  Originally sentenced three years of hard labour, the junta in their gracious wisdom and after a five minute recess decided to commute the sentence.  Suu Kyi has already served 14 years in house arrest.

Their motive is simple - to prevent her from campaigning in next year’s election. But this act is in itself revealing.  For one, the junta fears Aung San Suu Kyi.  They fear what she represents and what she symbolizes.  She has within her grasp the power to mobilize an entire people who have since 1964 been suffering under the abuse of a paranoid kleptocracy. Their days are numbered  and this latest farce is testimony to their desperation.

The blogosphere is abuzz with the unsettling news that the Chinese government has arrested Xu Zhiyong, a 36-year-old attorney, thereby dealing another blow to the growing Chinese rule of law movement. In authoritarian countries or nations in transition, lawyers often play a key role in bringing greater democracy through the judicial protections, accountability, and transparency that are hallmarks of the rule of law. In 2007, Pakistan’s so-called lawyers revolution demonstrated the centrality of the judiciary and attorneys in protecting Constitutional freedoms and the rule of law in the face of General Musharraf’s imposition of emergency rule. While Pakistan is lauded as a successful instance of resistance, human rights lawyers around the world continue to face a hostile environment. To name a few examples, in 2003 the Ethiopian government disbanded the Women’s Lawyers Association, a women’s rights group, and in the same year the Tunisian government assaulted human rights lawyers and refused to legalize their organizations. As recently as January 2009, a human rights lawyer working on abuses by the Russian military in Chechnya was shot and killed in broad daylight, following a news conference in Moscow. In China as elsewhere, corrupt and oppressive governments fear being held legally accountable, and strike out against lawyers in an attempt to maintain impunity.

Mr. Xu seems by all accounts an excellent but certainly far from radical lawyer. Since his graduation from Peking University law school he had taken up cases of disenfranchised or abused persons, such as those suffering from government beatings, arrested for publishing news offensive to the Chinese government, and victims of poisoned milk. Before his arrest he was preparing to challenge “black jails,” the Chinese government’s illegal holding cells for vocal critics. He co-founded the Open Constitution Initiative, a Beijing-based non-profit legal services and research center, which the Chinese government shut down following a raid on July 17, 2009. Claiming that the center was involved in tax evasion, the government also disbarred 53 Beijing lawyers at this time. The center had been involved in highly sensitive cases such as challenging the Chinese government’s role in 2008’s Tibetan unrest, and this together with Mr. Xu’s arrest imply that, whatever tax problems did or did not exist, the government’s motive in closing the center and in Mr. Xu’s arrest is to squash the rule of law movement.

Lawyers play a critical role in investigating and reporting human rights violations and in ensuring the responsibility of the state and remedies for victims. Mr. Xu and the Open Constitution Initiative represent real and effective action to secure human rights in China; for example, Mr. Xu’s very first case led to the abolition of vagrancy laws that allowed police to detain people traveling without a permit outside of their registered towns, demonstrating that one legal action can have significant impact throughout China. The New York Times writes today that “China is at a critical juncture” following 30 years of legal reform. China lacks neither lawyers nor functioning courts, and while objectively this is a good thing and necessary for the rule of law, the government appears immensely threatened by the prospect of a functioning judiciary and the ability of its citizens to redress human rights violations. Chinese law professor He Weifang states that the Communist Party’s concern regarding lawyers is that they will be able to challenge China’s one party rule and to lead a pro-democracy movement by mobilizing their network of clients that have legal and other grievances against the Chinese government. More generally, the Chinese government seems to fear any movement from civil society to hold it legally accountable.

Whether the next wave of democratic change in China will come at the hands of lawyers remains to be seen, but it is certain that future reforms cannot take place without progress towards the rule of law. Like human rights defenders around the world, Mr. Xu is owed protection by his government rather than attack from it. Hopefully, the current media attention around his case will save him from harm and ensure his prompt release.