Legal aid program brings support from 3,000 km away

Encompassed by several majestic mountain ranges and the Yellow River, the county of Guinan in Northwest China's Qinghai province was still experiencing night temperatures as low as -15℃ in early February when southern parts of the country had started to embrace spring.

To their surprise, staff at the local judicial bureau received a hefty package on the early morning of Feb 3 with the characters on the attached mail order too blurred to identify. They could only recognize the bureau's name on the order.

Then, an emotional moment came when the staff opened up the package and found a bunch of medical masks inside.

As it turned out, these masks were mailed by a lawyer surnamed Chen from the city of Qionghai in the southernmost province of Hainan some 3,000 kilometers away.

In fact, Lawyer Chen, who has been voluntarily assisting the bureau through a legal aid volunteer program, had been concerned about the situation in the county since the novel coronavirus outbreak. 

Despite a severe shortage of masks in his hometown, Chen still managed to collect enough for every staff member of the bureau, which deeply moved them.

On top of that, Chen also kept close contact with the bureau via phone calls and text messages, and voluntarily suspended his home leave to plunge into the work of epidemic prevention and control in Guinan.

Similarly, Feng, another volunteer lawyer providing legal aid services through the same program in Honghe, a county in Southwest China’s Yunnan province, was spending her home leave on a 3,000-kilometer-long self-driving tour stretching from Honghe all the way up to her hometown of Shenyang, capital of the northeastern province of Liaoning, before the COVID-19 outbreak abruptly changed her course.

"When I first heard about the epidemic, the situation was not very clear," recalled Feng. Through logical thinking and the acute sense she often applies to her work as a lawyer, Feng knew that she had three choices: drive back to Shenyang and stay home with her family, return to Honghe with her family and keep prepared all the time or return to Honghe alone with her family heading back to Shenyang.

When she laid out those choices to her family, they all chose to return to Honghe with her. "They said home can be anywhere as long as the family stays together," said Feng. As a result, the family spent a special Spring Festival in Honghe.

Feng publicized her phone number in order to make legal aid more available to the public. So far, she has provided legal consultations for at least eight people.

"We see the epidemic as a battle," she said. "During this battle, we must stay alert all the time." 

One day, at the urgent request of the local public security organ, Fang went to the local detention house to meet with a suspect since the lockdown imposed on the facility has made such meetings impossible for other lawyers.

"I firmly believe that the epidemic is not fearsome and will be defeated," she said.