China's human rights lawyers speak out, 10 years after crackdown

A decade on from China's biggest crackdown on human rights lawyers in modern history, lawyers and activists say that the Chinese Communist party's control over the legal profession has tightened, making rights defence work next to impossible. The environment for human rights law has "steadily regressed, especially after the pandemic", said Ren Quanniu, a disbarred human rights lawyer. "Right now, the rule of law in China - especially in terms of protecting human rights - has deteriorated to a point where it's almost comparable to the Cultural Revolution era." The Cultural Revolution was a decade of mass chaos unleashed by…