September 7, 2009 saw the founding of IBJ’s South Defender Resource Center of China (“SEDRC”) in Wuhan, south of China. The opening ceremony was held in the Law School of Wuhan University, which is one of the most famous law schools in China.  The center – located at this law school – is dedicated to improve the level of legal aid, juvenile defendants’ rights protection, especially in the southern China.

Karan Tse, CEO of IBJ, envisions that the new center will expand IBJ’s influence in the whole of China, since we already have the China headquarters in Beijing and another center in the northwest city, Xi’an. Yongping Xiao, dean of the law school, also gave a speech, he cited that the founding of SEDRC and the cooperation between the center and the law school have three impacts:

• It boosts the pursuit of social justice;
• It creates a platform for resource sharing and serving the society;
• Through the SEDRC, IBJ and the Law School of Wuhan University can deeply collaborate to push the progress of rule by law in China.

James Taylor, director of IBJ China, introduced IBJ’s programs in China, one by one, giving every attendant a clear image of IBJ. Then the director of the new resource center, Leslie Rosenberg, gave a short speech as well. She said that justice is in the process, it’s not only about the result. We are on this process of building bridges to fairness.

At this ceremony  two new staff to IBJ were introduced. They are Xiaomin Zhou and Yawen Luo. Xiaomin has a PhD from Wuhan University. Yawen mentioned that, to her, IBJ means not only “International Bridges to Justice” but also “I Believe in Justice”. Other IBJ staff and interns included James Gronquist, Kimberly Ambrose, Jennifer Tsai, Xiaomin Zhang, Yujin Liu, Yun Zhang, Hao Zhao, Jigang Luo.

SEDRC is the result of two years of preparation and intends to systematically aid the development of the criminal justice system in southeast China. It will strive to increase criminal defense lawyers’ capacity to provide competent and effective defense to indigent accused persons and safeguard their lawful rights under the law. SEDRC is dedicated to promote access to counsel,  ensure effective assistance of counsel, improve access to experts and investigatory services, foster a community of practice, increase rights awareness, and promote juvenile justice reform.

After the ceremony, IBJ held a roundtable, discussing juvenile rights protection, with approximate 20 legal aid lawyers, judges, prosecutors, law school professors and government officials attending. All of the participants expressed their experience, thoughts, and suggestions regarding juvenile rights protection in their own practice.

James Gronquist introduced IBJ’s juvenile justice programs in China. Hao Zhao, IBJ’s staff in Xi’an office introduced IBJ’s programs in the northwest China. Ao Li, who’s a clinical professor, suggested that clinical courses should aim at fostering future lawyers for China. A prosecutor of Wuhan named Elan Pan said the juvenile court should combine education, rehabilitation and reform together, and the prosecutors ought to investigate the juvenile offenders’ family, society and education background integrally and carefully enough during the pre-prosecute investigation. Chunsheng Li and Guohua Pan and some other legal aid lawyers introduced the most impressive cases they had represented ever.

In addition, a student representative who had taken clinical courses also spoke at the roundtable.  He gave an introduction to his study and his experience during his clinical courses. Attendants refelcted that he showed that a seed of public interest has been planted. Participants cited that such roundtables help them to understand their work through other perspectives thus giving them a whole view of the juvenile legal aid in their area.

(Luo Jigang contributed to this post.)