The fearless lawyer

JUSTICE

by THE OLBIOS TEAM

Pu Zhiqiang, a human rights lawyer and best known as a pioneering free-speech lawyer, has been arrested on May 2014 after he had attended a meeting where the Tiananmen Square protests 25 years ago were commemorated. The Tiananmen Square protests was a peaceful protests of students at Tiananmen Square but they were beaten down violently by the Chinese authorities on 4 June 1989, leaving hundreds of demonstrators dead. Pu Zhiqiang, born in rural eastern China in 1965, is a partner at Beijing Huayi Law Firm. He received a Bachelor’s in History from Nankai University in 1986 an a LL.M. from China University of Political Science and Law in 1991. In the spring of 2005, Pu was a visiting scholar at Yale Law School, where he conducted comparative research on media and the law. Although Pu practices in the areas of real estate, bankruptcy, anti-trust, finance, and criminal defences, he is best known as a pioneering free-speech lawyer. Pu has come under scrutiny by Chinese authorities as a result of both his free-speech cases and his political beliefs. In 1989, Pu joined the pro-democracy movement; in 2008, he was one of the original signers of Charter 08, a manifesto calling for fundamental changes in China, including an independent legal system, freedom of association, and the elimination of one-party rule. In 2006, Pu Zhiqiang was already arrested once, to prevent him from attending a commemoration of the Tianamen protests. He sent out a text message to friends asking them to join him the following day to reflect on the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. The police summoned him at 1 A.M. to have a “chat,” and then again at 10:20 A.M. the next day, after which he was detained and questioned the whole day. Pu was similarly summoned by police in response to the release of Charter 08 and after the announcement of Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Peace Prize. Pu Zhiqiang_website Website: http://lawyerpu.com/

 

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