Weiquan movement

Weiquan movement
Simplified Chinese维权运动
Traditional Chinese維權運動
Literal meaningprotect rights movement
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinWéiquán Yùndòng

The Weiquan movement is a non-centralized group of lawyers, legal experts, and intellectuals in China who seek to protect and defend the civil rights of the citizenry through litigation and legal activism. The movement, which began in the early 2000s, has organized demonstrations, sought reform via the legal system and media, defended victims of human rights abuses, and written appeal letters, despite opposition from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Among the issues adopted by Weiquan lawyers are property and housing rights, protection for AIDS victims, environmental damage, religious freedom, freedom of speech and the press, and defending the rights of other lawyers facing disbarment or imprisonment.[1][2]

Individuals involved in the Weiquan movement have met with occasionally harsh reprisals from Chinese government officials, including disbarment, detention, harassment, and, in extreme instances, torture.[2] Authorities have also responded to the movement with the launch of an education campaign on the "socialist concept of rule of law," which reasserts the role of the CCP and the primacy of political considerations in the legal profession, and with the Three Supremes, which entrenches the supremacy of the CCP in the judicial process.

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  2. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference HRW Thin Ice was invoked but never defined (see the help page).