(TibetanReview.net, May19’24) — While it is an all too well-known fact that the very idea of an independent judiciary is anathema to the Communist Party of China-state’s approach to delivering justice, many lawyers in the country were still shocked to see a judge of a county court in Qinghai province receiving real-time instructions from his supervisors in the middle of a trial earlier this month, according to the scmp.com May 19.
About an hour into the trial on May 11 at the Tianjun (Tibetan: Themchen) county court in Haixi (Tsonub) Mongol and Tibetan autonomous prefecture, the presiding judge suddenly adjourned the proceedings, the report said, citing a public letter published on the microblogging site Weibo by a group of lawyers who were defending clients in the case.
“Afterwards, we accidentally found the criminal court judge of the Haixi intermediate court and the director of the Tianjun county court were remotely giving instructions in a WeChat group,” the letter was quoted as saying, referring to a messaging and the social media platform.
One of the lawyers involved in the trial, Liu Zheng of the Beijing Zebo Law Firm, took a photo of the judge’s computer screen, which displayed a WeChat group that included several judicial officers and staff of local courts, the report said, citing the liberal-leaning newspaper Southern Weekly.
The photo was stated to show the county court director Fan Xuhua saying in the group chat: “You don’t have to communicate with him about it.”
Following it, Hasi Chaolu, president of the criminal court at Haixi intermediate court – the court that will hear the case if it is appealed – was stated to have directed the county court judge to “just interrupt” and “be tough, don’t speak randomly”.
The public letter was stated to have condemned these actions of the judicial and court staff, saying, “Their actions blatantly sabotage our legal system where the appeal court’s decision is the final one, and those involved should be probed for malpractice or even criminal activity.”
The Qinghai provincial prosecutor’s office and the Qinghai Higher People’s Court have said they will investigate after the lawyers reported the incident to them.
On the other hand, the Haixi intermediate court has issued a notice on Weibo, saying the lawyer had disobeyed court discipline in taking the photo.
It was also reported to have said the case belonged to one of four categories that could seek “key supervision”, and that Haixi had followed protocols in its instructions to a lower court. It has only admitted that the manner of instruction was irregular.
Still, many lawyers around the country have spoken up to say they disagreed with the Haixi court after the incident went viral online.
Wang Cailiang, a Beijing-based criminal lawyer, has written on Weibo, “The superiors’ instruction sabotaged the court’s right to independently exercise judicial power,” saying, “if a court and its superior could collude in a lawsuit … then why do we need evidence? Why do we need the law?”
He has said that when the higher court’s supervision weakened, cases are wrongly decided and not corrected on appeal. Others have said the Haixi court had abused the idea of “key supervision”.
Are regards the four types of cases in which could require “key supervision”, a document issued by the Supreme People’s Court in 2021 was stated to have listed them as: complex and sensitive cases, cases that might affect social stability, those that might have a conflicting judgment with a similar case, and if the judge was reported to have engaged in illegal conduct during the trial.
When a case is classified as one of these four types, the presiding judge may supervise certain aspects that need attention during a trial, such as demanding a report on case progress, evaluating the results, reviewing case files or sitting in on a trial, the report said.
However, “if the judges directly gave instructions or interfered with the case, then they are not following protocol,” Lao Dongyan, a prominent China policy critic and law professor with Tsinghua University, has said during a live-streamed discussion on Weibo earlier this month with the Hongfan Institute of Legal and Economic Studies, a private liberal think tank.
Well-known lawyer Xu Xin has written on WeChat that such incidents were quite common, and that he had experienced or heard of at least four. These included one in Zhangzhou Intermediate People’s Court in Fujian province ten years ago and one in Zoucheng, Shandong province, in 2022.