Two lawyers who defended a member of Falun Gong have had their licenses revoked permanently. From AP:
Tang Jitian and Liu Wei said during separate telephone interviews that Beijing judicial authorities informed them Friday that they had lost their credentials. The ruling is permanent, but both plan to appeal.
…The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice posted separate notices Friday on its website announcing that Liu and Tang had lost their licenses. The notices said the pair had “disobeyed court personnel and disrupted order in the courtroom” during an April 2009 trial at the Luzhou Municipal Intermediate People’s Court in Sichuan province.
The lawyers say they were illegally videotaped during the trial, interrupted repeatedly by the judge and ordered out of the courtroom by unidentified men. Tang and Liu eventually walked out of the courtroom after they objected to being videotaped — which is illegal in Chinese courtrooms — and the court descended into chaos.