Bleak times for Chinese lawyers

China's two-year intensive crackdown on human-rights lawyers have left only a handful of attorneys in the country willing to take on difficult and political sensitive cases, says a new report from Amnesty International.

The report, called Against the Law – Crackdown on China’s Human Rights Lawyers Deepens, details how the Chinese government has intensified pressure on lawyers, particularly in recent months, through a variety of means, including surveillance, threats, intimidation, "enforced disappearances and even torture." Lawyers were among the groups targeted for a sweep following failed calls for a Jasmine Revolution in China this spring, but the government's campaign against attorneys who represent critics of the government and problematic cases stretches back much farther.

"The Chinese state is attempting to wield and manipulate the law to crush those it perceives as a threat," Catherine Baber, Amnesty International’s Asia Pacific deputy director, said in a news release. “Human rights lawyers are being targeted as they try to use the law to protect citizens against the excesses of the state. The government must release all those detained or forcibly disappeared for exercising, or even protecting fundamental rights."