Books & Ideas (the English-language mirror website of
La Vie des Idées) has published an interesting essay by
Judith Bout (l'École des hautes études en sciences sociales) on "
The Creation of Defence in China: Revisiting the Trial of the Gang of Four." Here's a brief summary:
The trial of the Gang of Four, which included Mao Zedong’s wife, took
place after the end of the Cultural Revolution, during the winter of
1980-81. In the West, it is usually seen as a show trial; in China it
constitutes the founding act of defence, throwing light on the
particular way in which contemporary Chinese lawyers focus on technique
and impartiality.
And a snippet of the introduction:
Before 1979, the People’s Republic of China had no lawyers except for
a brief period of experimentation between 1954 and 1957. The profession
was immediately discredited within a Marxist system based on a
rejection of the neutrality of law and its servants: defending an enemy
of the people was to be an enemy of the people oneself. Most lawyers
were categorised as rightists after the Hundred Flowers Campaign in
1957. It was not until August 1980 that defence was established by a
provisional regulation.
Before then, no place was given to lawyers in China, particularly
considering that trials were a rare occurrence. Most of the sentencing
powers were delegated to local Party activists and leaders in
self-criticism sessions and struggle sessions in which . . . the population was mobilised
against the accused, who were deprived of the right to defend themselves
or to be defended. . . . Under such circumstances, how did Chinese lawyers reinvest in that
stolen right to defend in order to create a right of defence at the
beginning of the 1980s?
Read on
here.
