Judicial authorities in Beijing have shut down the law firm of a prominent civil rights lawyer after he refused to withdraw an open letter urging President Hu Jintao to respect freedom of religion and stop persecuting members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement.

On 4 November 2005, Gao Zhisheng, director of the firm, received an official notice from the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice informing him of the temporary closure of the firm.

Gao Zhisheng, among the most daring of a generation of self-trained lawyers who have been pushing the Chinese government to obey its own laws, said that the Beijing Bureau of Justice ordered his firm suspended for one year on Friday. The move came just hours after he filed an appeal on behalf of an underground Protestant pastor accused of illegally printing Bibles and other Christian literature.

The Shengzhi Law Office has recently been involved in a number of high-profile cases, including a land dispute case filed against locally elected officials in Taishi village, Guangdong province, which is seen as a test case for local democracy in China.

The firm has also supported Chen Guangcheng, a self-educated lawyer currently under house arrest in Linyi city, Shandong province, because of his involvement in a class action law suit against local authorities over coercion in implementation of China’s family planning policies, and is involved in the case of Zheng Yichun, a journalist and former professor who was sentenced to seven years imprisonment in September for his on-line writings and who is reportedly appealing his sentence.

According to Gao, the government said the firm was being suspended because it had failed to register with the authorities after moving into a new office this year. But he said the action followed his refusal to renounce the open letter to Hu and withdraw from politically sensitive cases as demanded by officials during a series of recent meetings.

The closure comes as officials crack down on religion, press freedoms and other civil liberties in China, and confirms that Hu's government is also willing to take action to restrict the growing influence of members of China's budding legal profession. Lawyers such as Gao have been at the forefront of a campaign to inform citizens of their rights under laws that are often ignored by the government and to help them assert those rights in court.

In an Oct. 18 letter addressed to Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao that he posted on the Internet and distributed widely by e-mail, Gao described several cases he had investigated involving Falun Gong practitioners who have been detained, sent to labor camps and tortured. In one case, he said, a man was hanged from overhead pipes until his legs rotted.

Gao also urged the government to accept that a revival of religious faith in China was inevitable. In addition to working on behalf of Falun Gong members, Gao is one of several lawyers who have volunteered to defend Cai Zhuohua, the pastor of a house church in Beijing who has been jailed on charges of "illegal business practices" for printing and distributing hundreds of thousands of Bibles. The Bush administration has expressed concern about Cai, who was arrested with several other Christian figures in September 2004.

Gao has been under pressure from the authorities for months. Government officials recently demanded that he withdraw from two politically sensitive cases: a citizen effort to impeach the chief of Taishi village in southern China's Guangdong province and a landmark lawsuit brought by thousands of private investors accusing officials in northern Shaanxi province of seizing oil wells from them worth as much as $1 billion.

Commentators see Gao's letters as a sign that the Chinese are able to now stand up for human rights and publicly vote against the totalitarian Communist regime.

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