Xi Jinping’s Leadership Starts with a Crackdown on Human Rights Advocates

By , May 11, 2014

Prof. Eva Pils

As soon as President Xi Jinping took office in 2013, Chinese human rights lawyers and activists began experiencing  a crackdowns on their activities.  In January 2014, well-known human rights advocate, Xu Zhiyong was convicted of “disturbing public order” for attempting to hold a protest demanding equal education rights for children of migrant workers.  He received four years in prison.  On March 14, 2014 the world woke to learn that rights activist Cao Shunli had died of tuberculosis while in police custody.

In April 2014, China Law & Policy was able to sit down with Prof. Eva Pils, professor of law at the Dickson Poon School of Law at King’s College London. In 2006, Prof. Pils wrote the seminal article on human rights lawyers in China, Asking the Tiger for His Skin: Rights Activism in China and has published two books on human rights advocacy in China, China’s Human Rights Lawyers: Advocacy and Resistance (2014) and Human Rights in China: A Social Practice in the Shadows of Authoritarianism (2017).

Listen to the Interview with Eva Pils:

Length 37:48 minutes

Click here to open a PDF of the Transcript of the Eva Pils Interview.

If the length of the interview is too long for one sitting, check out our “three-part breakdown” of the 37 minute interview:

Part 1 – A Thorn in the Government’s Side – China’s Human Rights Advocates – 14:49 minutes

Part 2 – Wagging the Dog? The Chinese Government’s Response to the New Citizen Movement – 13:38 minutes

Part 3 – Reform or Regression? The Corruption Inquiry of Zhou Yongkang – 9:20 minutes

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