(Clearwisdom.net) In an article dated August 1, 2009, the established French newspaper Le Monde denounced the increasingly violent repression of lawyers in China who dare to defend Falun Gong practitioners and other victims of the Chinese regime's blind violence.

The article stated, "Early in the morning of Wednesday, July 29th, in Beijing, the arrest of Xu Zhiyong, 36, one of the founders of Gongmeng, the organization that serves as a platform for human rights lawyers and the closing of which the authorities have decided on July 17th, marks an escalation in the offensive led against the movement which is more and more frightful."

"These years, lawyers linked to Gongmeng have embraced legal cases that are particularly sensitive. Besides the victims of contamination by melamine-tainted milk, they defend petitioners harassed by the police, members of the religious movement Falun Gong, as well as Tibetans. They are mobilized against the compulsory installation of censorship software on Chinese computers. [...]"

The Le Monde correspondent in China very regularly mentions the repression of Falun Gong in his articles, as well as the repression of people such as lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who has taken on the defense of Falun Gong in the repressive environment of China.