China has sent a warning to its independent legal activists with a spate of secret trials of lawyers caught up in a crackdown that began nearly two years ago.
The sudden detention in July 2015 of dozens of Chinese lawyers and their assistants generated an international outcry. Now, courts are slowly sentencing those still detained, in a warning to the rest of the legal community to toe the line in a sensitive political year.
President Xi Jinping, who has presided over a political purge combined with a sweeping crackdown on civil society, will host a meeting of the ruling Communist party later this year that will cement his second term in office.
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