Group: China targets defense lawyers

NEW YORK, June 4 (UPI) -- Human rights advocates say two Chinese lawyers who offered to help Tibetans accused of participating in anti-China protests have lost their law licenses.

Chinese judicial authorities refused to renew the licenses of Teng Biao and Jiang Tianyong, who were among 21 lawyers signing a letter offering civil rights defense representation to participants in the March anti-Chinese protests in Lhasa, the group Human Rights in China, based in New York, said in a news release Tuesday.

The non-government agency said China's system of license review is deeply flawed and amounts to political repression. It said Teng Biao was denied a renewal when the Chinese University of Politics and Law, where he is a lecturer, refused to consent to his working part-time as a lawyer.

Jiang Tianyong of the Globe Law Firm in Beijing was denied a license renewal after his firm was warned to stop participating in "sensitive cases," the group said.

"The targeting of lawyers who take cases deemed sensitive by the authorities makes a mockery of rule of law and newly effective amendments to the Lawyers Law, which claims to 'protect the practice of law by lawyers,'" Human Rights in China Executive Director Sharon Hom said in a statement.